[tina]

Regarding training for strata committee members.  If it is to be determined by the secretary and not described in the Strata Management Regulations, it does not sound like the government takes this seriously.  A secretary may feel pressured to make the training as light as possible.  Who is to say the secretary is qualified to determine a training program anyway?

It should be mandatory to join the FlatChat forum and read the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (or the equivalent in your jurisdiction).

[tina]

Hello dianed

STRATA INSURANCE

I suggest bookmarking the “Strata Schemes Management Act 2015” for future reference.  This is the law governing what goes on with strata properties, owners, strata managers, building managers, meetings etc.

Scroll down to “Schedule 1 Meeting procedures of owners corporations”

9 Additional matters to be include in notice of AGM

The following matters must also be included in, or accompany, the notice given of annual general meetings:

(d) particulars of each insurance policy taken out by the owners corporation (as required to be specified in the strata roll).

Now you have find out what is “required to be specified in the strata roll“.

To do this, scroll back up to section 178.  (What I actually did was search for the character string “strata roll“.)  Here is what it says:

Section 178 2 (d) particulars of insurance taken out by the owners corporation, including the following—

(i)  the name of the insurance company,

(ii)  the number of the insurance policy,

(iii)  the nature of the risk insured,

(iv)  the amount of the insurance,

(v)  the due date for payment of the premium,

(vi)  the date on which the premium was last paid,

 

STRATA MANAGER COMMISSIONS
Read this page Guide to strata law changes for strata committee members and owners.
Scroll down to Changes that started in February 2025.  Strata managers now have increased disclosure obligations.

I subscribed to the ‘Property Matters” newsletter.  There is a subscribe button near the bottom of that page.  More changes are on the way in 2026.  Everyone on this forum should read that page and stay informed.

[tina]

It is almost as if the strata manager knows the value of this information.  Withholding it from the strata committee gives them power.

Are they at least providing you with a “quarterly cash management statement”?  I used to get a list of financial transactions and lot position report every three months.  For the Annual General Meeting, they are required to provide a “key finanical information statement”, balance sheet, lot position report, income and expenditure reports, budget for the next accounting period, capital works plan (every ten years), copy of insurance certificate.

Strata management agreement

Closely read the schedules of fees in the back of your strata management agreement.  There might be something about how much it costs to retrieve information.  There might also be a heading that says “hourly rates” followed by a list of job positions and dollar amounts.

Another way to get the strata roll is to knock on everyone’s door and politely ask who owns the place.  Even if it is a tenant, they have a landlord / property manager.

NCAT applications

You can download the NCAT application form for “strata application”.  It contains a long table of orders you can ask NCAT to make.  It explains what you need to do before you submit the application.  There are two “Orders about strata managing agents and buildings managers”.   One is to terminate the strata management contract or make another order about an agreement.  The other is to replace the strata manager with another strata manager of your choice.

Both NCAT orders require you to submit a copy of the strata roll.  This would be difficult if the strata manager refuses to give it to you.

 

[tina]

Hello WoodWalker

If this questions is still important to you, my self-managed system is run from non-strata specific software:

• Email on my computer
• Spreadsheet and wordprocessing software (Excel, Word, Google Sheets etc)
• Personal Finance Software (e.g. Quicken, MoneyDance)
• Cloud data storage (e.g. Google drive, Dropbox, OneDrive)

It took many hours to set it up.  Now it is easy to send levy notices, create meeting agenda, minutes, financial reports.  If you want to go cost free self-management, you have to be very organised and experienced with the abovementioned software.

OurBodyCorp

In the beginning, I tried OurBodyCorp for one year.  I took the cheapest subscription (owner controlled).  I discontinued the service because the owners did not use it.

Pros:

1. Easy to use.  Not much technical support beyond the initial setting up.
2. All owners can login and see the state of the financial accounts.
3. Levy notices easy to send:  With the unit entitlement information, the system calculates the levies and sends invoices to all owners at the click of a button.
4. Financial reporting:  This system records every transaction.  You can attach documents (invoices) to a transaction.  There is a summary page showing how much is spent on each category.
5. Meeting agenda / minutes can be set up.  The minutes let me assign actions to people and check them off when they are done.
6. Noticeboard for communicating news to all members.
7. By-laws and other files could be saved.

Cons:

1. If an owner has paid their levies before the next quarter started, I could not adjust the levy notice easily.
2. I already had MoneyDance set up with the financial records.  I found myself entering the same transaction twice:  once for each system.  Personal finance software lets me find out “how much did we spend on xxx over the past five years?”
3. As a NSW owner, I need to have a ten year capital works plan and a “Key Financial Information Statement”.  I still needed to use a spreadsheet.
4. Printing the agenda / minutes.  There was a lot of grey background.  At the time, background printing could not be turned off on my printer.  It wastes a lot of toner.

Since I had to use my own spreadsheet / personal finance software anyway, OurBodyCorp was only useful for owners, who wanted to view the accounts.  Since none of them did, I ended the subscription.

STRATABOX

I trialled this product because it was advertised in FlatChat.  I did not pay for it.  The system was still in beta.

Pros

1. Easy to use
2. Geared for larger owners corporations.
3. Seemed to be geared for documenting communications between owners, residents, strata committee, strata manager, building manager.
4. Facility for logging an issue and keeping track of what is being done to resolve it.
5. by-laws could be saved.  Can’t remember if other documents could be saved.
6. Could set up meeting agenda / minutes

Cons

No financial information could be recorded.  It would be a deal breaker for me if I can’t send levy invoices and do the financial accounting.

In conclusion, the only system which met my needs was the one I created from a couple of spreadsheets, personal finance software and a word processor.  If anyone is interested in self management, I could open a thread to talk about how I did it.

1 user thanked author for this post.

WoodWalker

[tina]

If you have your own personal electricity account, go to the Australian Government’s energy made easy web site:

https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/

You need to have your electricity invoice at hand so that you can enter your NMI.  That number is shown on your electricity invoice.  The web site will ask a few questions about how long you lived there.  It will go through your last twelve months of electricity usage and give you a list of electricity plans which you could consider.

I use this web site at least once a year to see if I am on the cheapest plan available.  Be prepared to change electricity supplier if a cheaper plan is available.

As secretary of a strata plan, I have also entered the NMI of the strata plan’s electricity invoice to find a better plan.  As stated earlier, if you are locked into a long term plan or your hot water heating is part of the strata’s electricity plan, you don’t have as many options.

 

[tina]

Thanks Jimmy.  As I noted in the thread about the Strata Matters forum, Property Commissioner Angus Abadee is well worth your readers’ attention.

I note that registration page states there are:

159 tickets available to OCN members (lunch included)

71 tickets available to non-OCN members (lunch included)

58 tickets available to online participants.  I would have thought on-line audiences could be unlimited in size.

[tina]

It is extremely difficult to fill doctor positions in regional areas because any doctor working in a regional town will discover they are the only doctor in town.  There is no relief and no support.  It is very stressful.  Also, if they want to train for a specialty, they need to be on a training programme and supervised.  That’s mostly done in city-based hospitals.

If a foreign trained doctor comes to Australia, they have to get their qualifications recognised in Australia.  If Australia does not recognise their qualification, they can sit the Australian Medical Council examinations.  If they pass, they get provisional registration.  They can work in a supervised environment.  After completing supervised practice, they get general registration.  They would probably choose to work in the city too.

[tina]

@Jimmy, if you have not interviewed Angus Abadee yet, I think you should.  He knows a lot about the power of the Strata and Property Services Taskforce.  He’s enthusiastic about the resources being put together to help strata committees.  People were firing all kinds of personal strata questions.  He was 15 minutes over time in the Strata Matters forum tonight.  As I left the building, there was still a line of people wanting to talk to him.

Jason Yat-Sen Li (NSW MP for Strathfield) hosted.  More than 100 people attended.  Anoulack Chanthivong (Minister for many things including Fair Trading) addressed the crowd briefly.  Angus Abadee (Property Commissioner) gave a Strata 101 overview and took questions from the floor.  There were heaps of questions.  They covered the same kind of topics we read about here.  It was like Jimmy taking questions on the James Valentine radio show but it went for two hours.

Angus Abadee mentioned the Strata and Property Services Task Force.  He wants to take the workload off NCAT.  Everyone should try and talk to each other to sort out disputes.  If that fails, go to mediation with Fair Trading (which is free).  NCAT should be the final step.

He expressed concern that strata buildings were not well maintained.  Successive generations of owners have kicked the can down the road.  Failure to maintain common property years ago means they cost much more to fix today.

Rising Insurance premiums:  he attributed this high volume of insurance claims.  He thinks claims would reduce if people maintained their buildings in the first place.  ACCC is looking into the small size of the insurance industry (not many players).  Without competition, premiums can be kept high.

Angus Abadee encouraged people to join a strata committee.   It was explained that they have to get involved by attending meetings and voting.

Strata Hub was mentioned a few times.  There are tools to help people do a building health check and put together their own capital works plans.

We were encouraged to use NSW govt resources to query the qualifications of builders / contractors, project managers.

He said that strata managers are not happy to see him when he and his team come to audit their practices.

A sampling of complaints heard tonight:

.  Strata managers being corrupt, overpaid, unqualified, biassed towards certain strata committee members.

.  Problems with repairs, increased cost of repairs due to a “design and building practitioner” scheme

.  Cost of updating by-laws (someone was quoted $800) whilst renovating a bathroom.  Other people in the strata plan had renovated their bathroom without seeking permission.

.  Ten-year building manager / cleaning contract costing $300K raised sympathetic grumbles in the room.

.  Embedded networks

 

[tina]

I am one of your 300 podcast listeners.  I have enjoyed listening to your podcasts whilst driving or pottering around at home.  I totally understand you need a bigger audience to keep going.  Every strata owner should be subscribed.

The AI voice of Jimmy sounded less animated than in real life.  It made me think that Jimmy was on valium if he had actually made that recording.

The AI voice of Sue seemed more realistic.  They snipped her “Absolutely!” and threw that in a few times.

[tina]

Lazzer wrote:

I have a serious problem with a neighbor using CCTV cameras that are all around the property.

not sure if he got permission to install these cameras

Two NCAT cases handled by the same Senior Member documented here:

https://muellers.com.au/owners-corporations-and-security-cameras/

You cannot alter the external appearance of common property without having the approval of the owners corporation.

[tina]

Jimmy, you don’t deserve that rudeness.  This is an excellent web site.  People can learn so much about strata if they take the time to read the content.

I enjoy having an occasional vent about strata managers … I probably enjoy this too much.

My only wish is that the “Your latest questions & answers” would show who made the last post and when.  I have to click on every link to see if someone has posted after me.

I used to run a forum on a platform called Simple Machines Forum which showed that kind of data.  WordPress might not be so advanced yet.

[tina]

KatherineB wrote:

My question is really how concerned should we be about the current balance of the Capital Works Fund and any other useful comments people may have

Thank you

Yes, you should be concerned.

Some ten-year plans are not worth the paper they are written on.  My owners corporation had a ten-year capital works plan.  It was written by consultants, who walked up and down the driveway and made a list of jobs to do.  e.g. repaint the garage doors, replace window fittings, maintenance pipework …  Then they assigned a cost to each job.  They determined a date for doing each job.  They added inflation if it is going to be done in a future year.  Then they calculated how much money we need to save each year to pay for these jobs in the future.  That amount became the capital works component of our strata levy.

This is a reasonable approach.  The biggest problem was that the money was NEVER spent on these planned jobs.  The money was spent whenever a disgruntled owner demanded a repair (which was not always common property).

An owners corporation must have the discipline to keep the capital works money SEPARATE from the day to day administrative (maintenance) money.

There are two components of your strata levy:

Administrative fund:  At the start of the year, you work out how much you need to cover things like insurance, electricity, water, building manager, pool maintenance, gardening, insurance excess for claims, elevator maintenance, “general repairs” etc.

Capital works fund:  is only for the big jobs listed in your capital works plan.  This is the money you don’t spend until it is time to do the big jobs in the capital works plan.

About “general repairs”

One of these funds should also allocate money for “general repairs” for when someone calls to fix something.  You should not be dipping in to the money set aside for the capital works plan.

At the end of they year, you can look back on what you spent on “general repairs” and determine if that figure should be changed for the next year’s budget.

At a guess, almost every strata plan is dipping into its capital works fund money for “general repairs” or to pay for shortfalls in its administrative fund budget.  That is why they will never have the money to do the big jobs in their capital works plan.

[tina]

@guestguest, Ask your strata manager for a copy of the registered strata plan.  The registered strata plan should show the unit entitlement for each lot in the strata plan.  The unit entitlement is a number.  In my plan, there are eight lots.  The entitlements are:

128, 128, 128, 125, 125, 122, 122, 122

If the three lots with 128 unit entitlements get together, they can block any motion which requires a special resolution.

Here is a copy/paste of what the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (Schedule 1, Part 3 General Meeting Procedure, Section 14 Decisions at meetings) says about poll votes.

14   Decisions at meetings

(1) Simple majority vote to generally apply A motion put to a meeting, or an election of officers of the owners corporation or members of the strata committee, is to be decided according to a majority in number of the votes cast for and against the motion with each person having one vote for each lot in respect of which the person is entitled to vote.
(2) Vote of original owner who owns more than half of lots to be reduced For the purposes of determining an election for officers of the owners corporation or members of the strata committee or appointing a strata managing agent (other than in the case of a poll), the value of a vote cast by an original owner must be calculated in the same way as for a special resolution.
(3) Value of votes to apply for poll If a poll is demanded by a person present and entitled to vote on a motion or for the election of officers of the owners corporation or members of the strata committee at the meeting, the motion is to be decided according to the value of the votes cast for and against the motion and the value of a vote cast by a person entitled to vote in respect of a lot is equal to the unit entitlement of that lot. However, the value of the vote of an original owner is to be calculated in the same way as for a special resolution.

Note.

Section 5 sets out the manner in which a special resolution is determined.

(4) Polls A poll may be demanded immediately before or after a vote decided by a majority in number has been taken. The demand for a poll may be withdrawn by the person who made it.

[tina]

No, I have had no success in changing the strata manager’s terms.  My owners corp held a meeting and passed motions to change the strata manager’s terms were passed.  The consequence was that the strata manager resigned and we had to seek another strata manager.

When we sought other strata managers, their contracts appeared to be made from the same template.  It was the template from the Strata Community Association.  Again, we requested changes such as don’t give yourself a $500 spending limit on repairs without consulting the owners corporation.

Reason:  Tradies were charging $490 or $495 for work.  We did not know about it until we read them in our periodical financial statements.

The strata managers concerned were not willing to give us that concession.  They said it was too much trouble to call the owners for small jobs.

I don’t think options (a) and (b) are legally valid.  It is another way of expressing (c) Take it or leave it.

[tina]

I suggest you google “Property and Stock Agents Act 2002” and “Residential Tenancies Act 2010” and see if what it says about relationships between landlord and managing agent.

When the tenant pays more rent, the manager’s commission increases with it.  Have you instructed your property manager to restore the original rent?

[Author]

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