10 Myths About Strata Living in Australia

Most people buy their first apartment with a house in their head. Four walls, a door, a mailbox, a set of keys. The rest is assumed: someone else runs the building, the balcony is yours, insurance covers the sofa, and if the lift is a mess you can hold back the next levy until someone fixes it.

Those assumptions are expensive. They show up as special levies, rejected insurance claims, tribunal applications and committee fights that start with "but I thought". The law in every Australian state is more specific than the hallway version, and the hallway version is usually wrong.

This is the hallway version, set against the strata plan and the Act.

The ten myths

1. The strata manager is in charge
2. You can withhold levies if the building is badly run
3. You should not pay for amenities you do not use
4. Your balcony, courtyard and car space are yours to change
5. Strata insurance covers your belongings
6. The committee can ban pets
7. The chairperson can decide alone
8. If water comes from above, the upstairs neighbour pays
9. By-laws only apply if you were given a copy
10. Low levies mean a well-run building

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Myth 1. The strata manager is in charge

They are not. The manager is a contractor.

The legal body that owns the common property and holds the insurance is the owners corporation, body corporate, strata company or strata corporation, depending on the state. Every lot owner is a member of that body from the day they settle. The committee, elected at the AGM, handles day-to-day decisions between general meetings. The manager's job is to carry out what that body has decided, keep the records, issue the levy notices, and run the meetings the committee asks for.

A lot of buildings invert this. The manager sets the agenda, picks the contractors, drafts the motions and tells the committee what it can and cannot do. That happens because volunteer owners are busy and the manager is in the file every day. It does not change the legal position. A manager who issues a notice to comply without a proper delegation, or who signs a contract the committee never authorised, is acting outside their brief.

If you want a decision made, you put a motion to the committee or a general meeting. You do not wait for the manager to "look into it". If the manager is slow or conflicted, the owners can change them. That process has a contract, a handover, a records transfer and a vote attached. It is work. It is also how the building takes the job back.

Myth 2. You can withhold levies if the building is badly run

You cannot. Not legally, and not safely.

Levies fund the building's actual bills: insurance, lifts, fire systems, cleaning, electricity, the manager's fee, repairs and the long-term works fund. Those bills do not pause because you have a dispute. If owners stop paying, the building still has to pay the insurer and the lift contractor. That is why every state treats unpaid levies as a debt, not as a negotiating tactic.

In NSW, overdue levies can attract interest at 10 per cent a year under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, usually from a month after the due date. An owner who is unfinancial can lose the right to vote and the right to sit on the committee. Recovery costs can be added to the debt. Other states use different numbers and different tribunals. The pattern is the same. The conversation stops being about the leak and becomes a file about you.

If the building is badly run, pay the levy and open a separate dispute. Ask for the papers. Put a motion on the agenda. Use the mediation and tribunal path in your state. NSW Fair Trading guidance is blunt on this point: keep paying, even if you have a fight with the scheme. Withholding feels like a bargaining chip. It is how owners turn a repair problem into a personal debt plus a lost vote.

Myth 3. You should not pay for amenities you do not use

Ground-floor owners say this about the lift. People without children say it about the playground. Shop owners say it about the residential lobby. Owners who never swim say it about the pool.

The split is not based on use. It is based on the number attached to your lot on the registered plan.

In NSW that number is unit entitlement. Victoria uses lot liability for money and lot entitlement for some ownership questions. Queensland splits contribution schedule lot entitlements (how much you pay) from interest schedule lot entitlements (your share of the common property). WA, SA, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT each have their own plan language. The practical result is the same. Your share of the insurance, the lift contract and the pool pump is set when the scheme is registered, or later adjusted by a formal process. It is not recalculated each quarter according to who went downstairs.

There are limited exceptions. Some schemes have a valid exclusive-use or special-privilege by-law that puts a cost on the lots that actually have the right. Some mixed-use buildings have a valid cost-allocation arrangement. Those are written instruments, not hallway deals. If the document is not registered, the "I don't use it" argument does not move the levy.

If the split is genuinely unfair, the remedy is a formal review of the entitlements. That process is slow and needs expert evidence. It is not a discount on the next notice.

Myth 4. Your balcony, courtyard and car space are yours to change

Standing on a balcony feels like standing on your own land. The strata plan usually disagrees.

In most NSW, Victorian and Queensland apartment schemes the floor surface you walk on may be part of the lot, but the slab, the waterproofing membrane under the tiles, the balustrade, the external wall and the drainage outlets are common property. Some plans go further and treat the whole balcony as common property, with exclusive use granted to the lot. Courtyards and many car spaces work the same way. Exclusive use is a right to occupy, not a right to drill, tile, screen, enclose or build.

That distinction is where the expensive mistakes live. A composite deck laid over an existing membrane is one of the faster ways to destroy a surface that should last 25 years. A privacy screen bolted to a balustrade can void a warranty and change the facade. A heavy planter sitting on a drain outlet sends water sideways into the lot below. Lannock Strata Finance and the major strata insurers rank balcony waterproofing among the leading causes of defect claims. Remediation after a failed membrane commonly runs from $25,000 to $80,000 once tiles, screed and membrane come up.

If you want to change the balcony, courtyard or car space, read the plan first, then the by-laws, then apply. A chairperson saying "yeah, that's fine" in an email is not an approval the next committee will defend.

Myth 5. Strata insurance covers your belongings

It covers the building. It does not cover your life inside the building.

The scheme policy, paid through levies, is there for the structure and the common property: walls, roof, slabs, lifts, lobby, car park, shared plant, and usually the original fixtures as they stood when the scheme was registered. It also carries public liability for incidents on common property, and in most states some cover for committee members acting in good faith.

Your sofa, clothes, laptop, jewellery, and the kitchen you renovated in 2024 sit on your side of the line. So do a lot of owner improvements that people assume are "part of the building". The original 1998 kitchen is usually on the scheme policy. The stone bench and the induction cooktop you put in last year are not, unless you arranged specific extension cover.

The gap that hurts most is temporary accommodation and loss of rent. Some scheme policies include a limited amount if common property damage makes lots unliveable. Many do not cover you if the damage started inside your lot, or if you have no contents policy of your own. After a burst washing-machine hose, owners discover they have no money for a hotel and no cover for the ruined floorboards they installed themselves.

Landlord owners have a second gap. A contents policy is not a landlord policy. Loss of rent, tenant damage and liability inside the lot need their own cover.

Myth 6. The committee can ban pets

In NSW, a blanket ban is dead. In several other states it is on the way out.

The turning case is Cooper v The Owners – Strata Plan No 58068 [2020] NSWCA 250. The NSW Court of Appeal held that a by-law banning all animals was harsh, unconscionable or oppressive. Parliament then put the rule into the Act. Section 137B says a by-law or a decision has no effect to the extent that it unreasonably prohibits keeping an animal. Keeping a pet is treated as reasonable unless the animal unreasonably interferes with someone else's use of their lot or the common property.

Unreasonable interference is a behaviour test: persistent noise, a dangerous animal, damage to common property, a health or safety risk, or conditions that are unsanitary. It is not a breed preference and it is not "we have always been a no-pets building". NSW also blocks pet bonds, pet fees and pet-specific insurance as a condition of approval. The committee can still set rules for common property: leash in the lobby, clean up after the animal, keep it out of the pool area.

Victoria, the ACT and other jurisdictions have moved in the same direction, with their own statutes and tribunal decisions. Queensland and WA still give schemes more room to restrict, but a flat ban is harder to defend than it was ten years ago. Assistance animals sit in a different legal category everywhere. Treat them as a disability-rights question, not a pet question.

If a committee wants fewer problems, it writes a behaviour by-law and applies it. If it wants a fight it can lose, it writes "no animals".

Myth 7. The chairperson can decide alone

The chair runs the meeting. The chair does not run the building.

Committees decide as a body. A valid decision needs a properly convened meeting or, where the state allows it, a written resolution that follows the Act. One person approving a $40,000 roof quote, granting exclusive use of a storeroom, or telling a contractor to start work is not a committee decision. It is a personal instruction that the next committee, or a tribunal, can unwind.

What the chair actually does: open the meeting, keep the speaking order, put the motion, declare the result. In some states the chair has a casting vote if numbers are tied. That is a tie-breaker on a motion already before the meeting, not a general power to settle disputes in the lift.

The same limit applies to the secretary and the treasurer. Those are roles, not ranks. The secretary handles notices and minutes. The treasurer watches the funds. Neither of them can bind the owners corporation on their own unless the committee has delegated a specific function in writing.

This myth is how buildings acquire unofficial bosses. A long-serving chair who "just handles it" produces a record no one can find, contractors who think they work for one owner, and a committee that discovers after the election that half the decisions of the last two years were never minuted. If it is not in the minutes, it did not happen.

Myth 8. If water comes from above, the upstairs neighbour pays

Water follows gravity. Liability follows the plan.

The first question is the source, not the ceiling that is wet. If the leak starts in a common pipe, a common membrane, a slab, a roof or a balcony waterproofing layer, the owners corporation (or body corporate) is on the hook to repair the common property. In NSW that duty sits in section 106 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015. The upstairs owner is not the insurer of the building just because they live over you.

If the leak starts in a lot item, the lot owner is responsible. A burst washing-machine hose or a dishwasher the owner never plumbed correctly is a lot problem. The owner above may have to repair, and may have to pay for damage below, but that is a different claim from "the water came through my ceiling so they pay".

Queensland adds a further split. On a building format plan, typical of high-rise, more of the fabric sits with the body corporate. On a standard format plan, typical of townhouses, more sits with the lot owner. Victoria works from the plan of subdivision. Get the plan out before anyone sends an invoice.

The practical sequence is: stop the water, photograph everything, tell the committee and the manager in writing the same day, and ask for a plumber who will put the source in a report. Arguments about who pays that start from "it came from above" waste the week in which the ceiling is still wet.

Myth 9. By-laws only apply if you were given a copy

By-laws bind owners and occupiers whether they read them or not.

In NSW, by-laws have force under the Act once they are registered. Tenants are bound as occupiers. "I never received the by-laws" is not a defence to a notice to comply. The same idea holds in the other states, under different names: owners corporation rules in Victoria, by-laws in Queensland and WA, articles or rules elsewhere. Settlement should have included them. A managing agent or landlord should have handed them to a tenant. If that step was missed, the by-laws are still the by-laws.

What does fail is a "rule" that was never made. A laminated sheet in the lift, a Facebook post, an email from the manager or a verbal OK from the chair is not a by-law. If the committee wants a rule it can enforce, it has to make it the way the Act requires, register it where the state requires registration, and then follow the notice process when someone breaches it.

The other half of this myth is the opposite error: "nobody has enforced it for years, so it is dead." Non-enforcement makes a by-law politically awkward. It does not repeal it. A new committee can start issuing notices tomorrow. If a by-law is outdated, repeal or rewrite it at a general meeting. Do not leave it on the register and hope people forget.

Myth 10. Low levies mean a well-run building

Low levies often mean the building is saving too little.

The administrative fund pays this year's running costs. The capital works fund, called a sinking fund in Queensland, a reserve fund in Western Australia and a maintenance-plan fund in parts of Victoria, is supposed to grow so the roof, the lifts, the paint and the waterproofing can be paid for when they fall due. A building that keeps levies flat while insurance doubles and the ten-year plan is ignored is not efficient. It is deferring a bill.

That bill arrives as a special levy. Owners who bought on the strength of "only $800 a quarter" discover they owe $12,000 each for a lift they were always going to need. Buyers who skip the capital works plan, or who treat a thin fund as a bargain, inherit the shortfall. The buildings that look expensive on a levy notice are often the ones that will not ambush the next owner.

A useful check is not the quarterly figure. It is the current fund balances against the next ten years of forecast work, the last insurance premium, any open defect report, and whether the scheme has been raising special levies to cover ordinary maintenance. If the plan says the facade is due in 2028 and the fund holds a fraction of the estimate, the levy is not low. It is incomplete.

What to do with this

Pull three documents before the next argument starts: the registered plan, the current by-laws, and the latest budget with the capital works or sinking-fund forecast. Most of the ten myths above collapse once those papers are on the table.

If your building keeps having the same fight because the last committee's emails disappeared, that is a records problem. The law is already written. The building needs a place where the plan, the decisions, the notices and the money sit together so the next owner does not have to learn all of this from a wet ceiling.