It isn’t possible to say Daphne, you have to take into account a wide range of factors including the age of the building/s, maintenance that has been done in the past, projected maintenance needs, whether anything needs urgent attention now, size of the common property vs what is lot property,
That is what a sinking fund plan is for – and they are required under the Strata Schemes Management Act. My experience from those plans is that they are often wrong, but they are a start. A sinking fund plan will tell you what will need to be done over a period of time and how much money you should put aside to meet those projected costs.
In our case we got a detailed engineer’s report which gave us a much better idea of what needed to be done. We have put the strata levies up over time to build up funds to meet expenses we know we are going to incur, as that is the way we prefer to do it.
Does your scheme have a sinking fund report?
Going back to your original question – the state of the sinking fund is only one factor in considering whether a scheme is well managed. There are a number of elements you have to take into account.