Using AI to Manage Your Building: What Committees Should Check First

AI can organise dates, tidy a first draft, and help you find a clause in documents you already hold. It should not send levy notices, minute a meeting, pay a contractor, or tell you which section of the Act applies unless someone with authority has checked the output against the source.

Self-management is legal in every Australian state and territory. Software that keeps the books and the calendar in one place is a reasonable part of that choice. Committees have used tools like that for years.

What has changed is the sales line. Some platforms now say you can run the building through a chat box or WhatsApp: draft the resolution, generate the minutes, send the levy reminder, process the invoice, answer the legislation question. Setup in minutes. No manager required.

Strata management is expensive and often slow. Owners cannot see what is happening. That is why the pitch works. It is also why it is dangerous. The owners corporation still has every statutory duty it had yesterday. If the output is wrong, the building is still the person who got it wrong.

Committees already use AI, and strata firms do too. Macquarie's 2026 industry survey found AI in 80% of responding businesses, mostly for drafting and templates. That is clerical work. Trouble starts when the same software is treated as if it can run the scheme.

For the legal and workload test of self-management itself, start with the self-managed strata guide. For a software category map that is not about AI, see the 2026 committee software buyer's guide. Using ChatGPT in a tribunal is a separate problem.

Two jobs that look similar on a sales page

A shared record of fund balances, invoices, contracts, by-laws, AGM packs, compliance dates and owner questions is useful whether you keep a manager or not. A person still decides. Later you can see why.

Issuing levies, serving notices, convening meetings, recording resolutions, instructing trades, paying money, and answering "who is responsible for this leak" are different. Those acts have legal consequences. Notice periods, spending limits, resolution types and privacy rules differ by state.

A platform can help with the record. The risk starts when running the scheme is sold as a conversation.

For any AI feature, ask whether it produces a draft for a person to check, or whether it sends, pays, or minutes on its own. Drafts can be fixed. The other acts need authority.

The duties do not move into the app

If you stop using a strata managing agent, the work comes back to the committee. The legal person does not change.

In NSW the owners corporation still has to maintain common property, insure the building, estimate and levy contributions, and issue a sale certificate. You can drop the appointment under section 49. You cannot drop section 106, section 160, sections 79 to 83, or section 184.

Victoria still requires a professional owners-corporation manager for Tier 1 schemes (more than 100 occupiable lots) unless the owners corporation opts out by special resolution. Owners Corporations Act 2006, section 119. A chatbot does not satisfy that rule.

Queensland still has a regulation module, meeting rules, a sinking-fund forecast and spending limits. A body corporate that "runs AGMs in the group chat" can produce a decision that will not survive a challenge. South Australian strata disputes still go to the Magistrates Court, not SACAT. WA, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT each have their own meeting and record rules.

Software that "auto-adapts to all eight jurisdictions" is making a large claim. Legislation, modules, forms and notice periods change. The committee, not the vendor, relies on the output.

A licensed NSW strata managing agent is a regulated occupation. Trust-account withdrawals sit with a class 1 licensee-in-charge. NSW Government, strata managing agent licence. Volunteer self-management is legal. That is not the same as a licence inside a language model. If a platform collects levy money into an account it controls, ask who is the trustee, who can authorise a payment, and who is audited. If it only sits on top of the corporation's own bank account, say that plainly and keep dual signatories.

Money is where a fluent answer does the most damage

ASIC's MoneySmart page on AI and money decisions (updated 17 August 2026) is written for individuals, but the warnings apply to a committee as well. General-purpose AI is not licensed to give personal financial advice. It can be wrong. It only knows what you typed. It often sounds more complete than it is. ASIC also notes that scammers now use the same tools to manufacture investment ads and fake endorsements. A model trained on the public web can repeat that material back to you.

A committee asking "should we keep levies flat and special-levy the lift in three years" is making a money decision for other people's property. Treat the reply as a list of things to check in the capital works plan, the insurance schedule and last year's accounts. Do not treat it as the decision.

The ATO has said the same thing about tax. You remain responsible for what is lodged, whether the figure came from a friend, a finfluencer, or a chatbot. AI answers regularly mix in overseas rules and stale thresholds. GST on a contractor invoice, an ABN for the owners corporation, and BAS timing are easy to get wrong if you guess.

In NSW an owner must get at least 30 days to pay a levy, and the notice must include the Financial Hardship Information Statement or the information from it. Payment-plan rules and 30-day recovery notices changed through late 2025. An AI "levy reminder" that is only a WhatsApp ping may fail as a statutory notice even if the owner saw it.

NSW requires two independent quotations for proposed expenditure over $30,000 (SSMA s 102; Regulation clause 25). Large schemes cannot spend more than the budgeted item plus 10% without a general-meeting resolution, except in listed emergencies. Queensland's default committee spending limit under the common modules is $200 per lot unless owners change it. A 12-lot body corporate committee that "approves" a $4,000 invoice in chat has spent past that default. The model will not stop you. The module still applies.

Levy splits, voting weights and special-levy shares come from the registered plan, not from a table that looks about right. If the AI rebuilds the schedule from lot numbers and floor area, check it against the plan before anyone is billed.

Generative AI has also made fake invoices cheaper: cloned letterheads, the right job number, a new BSB in the footer, a follow-up email in the contractor's tone. Accounting bodies now tell staff to verify bank-detail changes through a known number, not the number on the invoice. Dual authorisation on the corporation account is still the control. Software that "processes invoices" without a second pair of eyes gives fraud a place to sit.

Meetings, minutes and notices are easy to fake and hard to unwind

A valid decision needs the right meeting, the right notice, the people who are entitled to vote, the right resolution type, and a record of what was actually resolved.

NSW general-meeting notice is not "whenever the chat is active". AGM notice is at least 14 days, and longer for large schemes. Electronic service only works if the owner has nominated an address or location for service (SSMA s 263). A mobile number used because it is convenient is not automatically that nomination. Defective service is how a later dispute gets the meeting thrown out.

Minutes have to be a true record. If the AI "generates compliant minutes during the meeting", read them against what people said. Models complete the pattern of a minute. They will invent a seconder, drop a condition, turn an ordinary resolution into a special one, or tidy a messy debate into a decision that was not put. Once those minutes are circulated, the next committee will treat them as what happened.

Voting by WhatsApp or in-app chat can be useful as a straw poll. It is only a vote if your Act, module and any adopted electronic-voting rules allow that method, with the right entitlement weights and proxies. Queensland schemes should not assume a group chat is a general meeting.

Drafting a special resolution is a legal instrument, not a writing task. The wording, the notice and the threshold have to match the work. A fluent paragraph that cites the wrong section is worse than a plain motion written by the secretary from the official form.

Owner data in a chatbot

A strata file holds other people's information: names, lots, emails, phone numbers, arrears, hardship, access logs, sometimes health information, sometimes CCTV. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner says organisations should not enter personal information, especially sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools. Putting owner data into a vendor model can be a disclosure. Inferred or even false output about an identifiable person is still personal information. Decisions that affect a person's rights, such as a pet refusal, a by-law breach or a debt letter, are treated as higher privacy risk. Read the OAIC guidance.

Before a committee pastes the roll, the arrears list, or a complaint into any chatbot, ask:

• Is this a consumer ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude account, or a contract with the building as customer?
• Is prompt data used to train the vendor's model?
• Where is it hosted, and who on the vendor's staff can see it?
• Can you export everything and delete it if you leave?
• Have owners been told, in the privacy collection notice, that this use exists?

WhatsApp as the owner portal adds Meta as another party to balances, maintenance requests and possibly votes. Owners like the convenience. The extra disclosure is still there. If you use it, keep statutory notices on a method the Act actually allows, and keep hardship and dispute files out of the chat.

Removing a name from the top of a document is not de-identification. Scheme number, address, lot, dates and a quoted email will often identify the person when combined.

Software that acts without a click

Most current tools still wait for a person to click send. The next step is software that acts.

In October 2025, strata adviser Michael Teys published a working prototype that approved or refused a pet from a short online form, with no human in the loop, as a demonstration of delegated-function automation. Read the account. A chatbot that drafts a letter is not the same as a system that issues the letter.

Auto-replies to owners as "the owners corporation", auto-approval of invoices under a threshold, auto-booking of a contractor, and auto-refusal of a renovation can each be a decision the committee never made. If the by-law requires conditions, or the spending is above the committee's limit, or the applicant was entitled to reasons, the building still owns the outcome.

A person should stay on any step that spends money, creates a legal notice, or affects a particular owner. An audit log of what the model proposed is not a resolution.

What to ask before you buy, or before you turn the feature on

If a vendor cannot answer those without a slide, keep the tool in draft mode until they can.

Where AI is worth using

Used as a clerk, with the source documents in a system the building controls, AI is already saving volunteer time.

It is safer when you:

• Turn a list of dates you have already confirmed into an agenda or a reminder list, then check each date against the certificate or the diary.
• Summarise a public NSW Fair Trading, Consumer Affairs Victoria or BCCM page, then open the official page before you act.
• Ask "what does our uploaded by-law 12 say about floor coverings" and read the clause it cites.
• Reduce hostility in a non-evidentiary email without changing the facts or the ask.
• Produce a first-pass chronology of a leak from emails you selected, then compare every line to the originals.

A person should still own:

• The motion that will be put
• The minutes that will be issued
• The levy notice, the hardship statement, the letter of demand
• The choice of contractor and the payment
• Common-property versus lot-property
• Anything you would be embarrassed to explain at the next AGM if it were wrong

The usual mistake is confidence. The answer arrives formatted, cited and calm, so the secretary who would have looked up the module pastes it instead. Six months later the insurance has lapsed, or the special levy used the wrong entitlement, or the minutes describe a resolution that was never put.

If you have already sent something the model wrote, do not ask the same model whether it was correct. Open the Act, the minutes, the invoice and the bank record. Correct the building's file. Tell the other owners if a notice or a figure has to be withdrawn.

Keep the building's record, then let tools sit on top of it

Self-managed schemes rarely fail because nobody had a chatbot. They fail because the treasurer left, the files were in an inbox, and nobody can reconstruct what was resolved. A tool that holds the fund position, the compliance dates, the contracts and the history of those resolutions will still be useful after that person goes. A tool that will "just handle it" is opaque in the same way a bad manager is opaque, with less of a licence behind it.

UnitBuddy is built as that shared record: finances, documents, compliance and decisions the committee can inspect. It does not hold or move money. It does not replace a strata manager or the committee's judgment. Where it uses an assistant, the useful job is answering questions about the building's own data, not sending the levy or minuting the AGM.

If you want to see that record laid out for your building, have a look. If you are still deciding whether self-management is even the right structure, read the complete self-management guide first and be honest about the treasurer's hours.

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This article is general information, not legal, financial or tax advice. Legislation, platform terms and AI products change. Check the current Act and module for your scheme, and get advice on your facts before you change how notices, money or meetings are handled.

Sources and further reading

• ASIC MoneySmart: AI and money decisions
• OAIC: privacy and commercially available AI products
• Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW)
• NSW Government: levies, hardship statements and recovery notices
• NSW Government: strata managing agent licence
• Owners Corporations Act 2006 (Vic)
• Macquarie 2026 Strata Industry Benchmarking Report
• Michael Teys: From Labradors to Camels
• UnitBuddy: Using AI for strata disputes

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