NSW: Which strata records are well managed in NSW and where owners corporations often fall short

Question: In NSW owners corporations, what strata records are managed better than others? eg financials, meeting minutes, compliance certificates?

Answer: While the minutes are generally up to date, what is in the minutes could be better.

While the minutes are generally up to date, what is in the minutes could be better. In many cases, the minutes lack sufficient detail. Where there are issues in the building, it would be great to have more commentary in the minutes about the decision-making process. Sometimes we see a separate document that gives you some understanding and that’s good, but a bit more detail would be great.

Missing records is a problem. This is frustrating. I know it’s frustrating for strata managers, too. We sometimes have situations where EYEON has better records than the strata manager. Sometimes we inspect the same building regularly. We may have inspected that building half a dozen times over the last four years. We’ve got records from four years ago that the strata manager can no longer access. That’s really not good enough.

This point is often on the owners more than the strata manager, but sometimes the owners corporation is not up to date with their forecasting for capital expenditure in the building. That’s an area that a lot of buildings could be better at. They’re supposed to get an update at least every five years, but we regularly see capital works forecasts that are 10 years old. In the minutes, we can see they’ve talked about it every year, but nothing happened. This is an area a lot of buildings could be better at. Maybe according to the last forecast, they were supposed to repaint the building, but it hasn’t happened. The building starts to look a little tired and things start to snowball.

Michael Ferrier
Eyeon Property Inspections
E: michael.ferrier@eyeon.com.au
P: 02 9260 5510