In a NSW strata scheme, the owners corporation pays for common property repairs. Section 106 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 places a strict statutory duty on the owners corporation to properly maintain and keep common property in a state of good and serviceable repair, and to renew or replace common property fixtures. Cost, funding difficulty or inconvenience are not defences. An owner who suffers reasonably foreseeable loss because the owners corporation breached that duty can recover it as damages, with a six year limit running from when the owner first became aware of the loss.
What counts as common property
It varies with the strata plan, and the plan is the authority. As a general rule the structure, the external walls, the roof, the slab, balcony membranes and the services that serve more than one lot are common property. Paint on the inside face of a wall, floor coverings and fixtures inside the lot usually are not. Where a defect crosses the boundary, get the plan checked before anyone argues about it.
The narrow exception
An owners corporation can decide by special resolution that it is inappropriate to maintain or repair a particular item, but only where that decision will not affect the safety of any building or structure and will not detract from the appearance of the property. It is a narrow exception and it does not cover deferring a structural repair because the fund is short.
Practical order of events
Report the defect in writing and keep the date. Ask the owners corporation to inspect. If the cause is unclear or the defect is structural, a building consultant or engineer should diagnose it before anyone prices a repair. Then the committee compares scopes. A scope written so a committee can read it without a builder in the room is worth more than the cheapest number.
Getting a scope you can compare
Ask every builder to price the same written scope. If one quote is materially cheaper, check whether it addresses the cause or only the symptom. See concrete spalling and why patching fails, and our strata and remedial page.