Strata Maintenance Management for Small Perth Schemes
Strata maintenance in Perth works when somebody owns the job from the first report to the final invoice. Perth Strata Co. manages the maintenance of common property for strata schemes of 20 lots or fewer, across Perth's southern river suburbs, Busselton and the South West. We carry out the maintenance obligation on behalf of your strata company and stay with each job until it is finished and recorded.
Most councils of owners come to us after a run of the same experience. A repair reported in March is still open in August. Nobody can say what the last quote was for. A roof or a pump fails and there is no money set aside, because the scheme has never had a plan that looked further ahead than the next budget. Our strata management service is built around small schemes, where that kind of drift is the norm rather than the exception.
What Our Strata Maintenance Management Covers
Maintenance management is the part of the strata management service councils of owners feel most often. These are the areas it usually covers.
| Area | What We Do |
|---|---|
| Reactive repairs | Receive the report, arrange access, engage a suitable trade, follow the job to completion and close it out with the owner who raised it. |
| Preventative servicing | Schedule the recurring items so they happen on a cycle rather than after a failure: gutters, pumps, gates, lighting and grounds. |
| Contractor engagement | Obtain quotes, check licences and insurances, and put the work to the council of owners where the amount or the by-laws require a decision. |
| Ten-year maintenance plans | Arrange the preparation and review of the plan for designated strata companies, and keep it inside the statutory five-year revision cycle. |
| Condition and defect records | Keep a running record of what has been repaired, when, by whom and at what cost, so the scheme has a history rather than a memory. |
| Insurance claims | Lodge and manage claims where damage to common property is insurable, and coordinate the repair alongside the claim. |
| After-hours response | Route genuine common property emergencies to the after-hours line so a burst main at 11 PM reaches somebody. |
This is the work that comes up most often rather than the limit of what we handle. If your scheme has something unusual, a shared bore, a private road, a lift or a pool, tell us what you are dealing with, and we will tell you plainly how we would manage it.
How We Handle Your Maintenance Requests
The most common complaint about strata management in Western Australia is silence rather than the standard of the repair. An owner reports a fault, hears nothing further, and learns at the next general meeting that nothing happened. Perth Strata Co. handles a maintenance request in four steps.
1. Log and assess.
The request is recorded against the scheme, and we establish which side of the boundary the item sits on, common property or the lot itself.
2. Quote and authorise.
We obtain quotes and check the trade's licence and insurance. Where the amount or the scheme's by-laws require it, the decision goes to the council of owners rather than being made for them.
3. Schedule and access.
We book the work and arrange access, which is usually the step that stalls in a small scheme with no on-site presence.
4. Close and record.
We confirm the work is finished, pay against the invoice, and record it so the next council of owners can see what was done.
The person who logs your request is the person who follows it through. There is no separate maintenance department to be transferred to, and no queue of larger buildings sitting between your gate motor and somebody's attention.
Waiting on a repair that should have been done months ago?
Why Small Schemes Choose Perth Strata Co.
A scheme of 12 lots generates a fraction of the fee income of a 200-lot tower and close to the same volume of work. In a large portfolio, that arithmetic decides which calls get returned, and it is why a small scheme's gate motor waits three weeks while a tower's is fixed on Tuesday.
Perth Strata Co. was built the other way round. Every scheme we manage is 20 lots or fewer, so no larger client is competing with your maintenance request. Our office is in Mount Pleasant, a short drive from most of the schemes we manage, and being close enough to walk a site before quoting a repair is a practical advantage rather than a marketing one.
We are strata managers, so we manage the maintenance rather than carry it out. We are not a maintenance contractor, and we do not send our own tradespeople, which means we have no incentive to recommend one quote over another.
"Donna is very responsive, she is often present at the complex when new trade workers attend for quotes to clearly guide them on the work needed to be done."
Aksheet Raikundalia, Perth Strata Co. client
Does Your Scheme Need a Ten-Year Maintenance Plan?
Under the Strata Titles Act 1985 (WA), a "designated strata company" must establish a reserve fund and keep a ten-year maintenance plan. Section 100(7) defines that as a scheme with 10 or more lots, or one brought in by the regulations. The Strata Titles (General) Regulations 2019 add schemes where the building replacement cost is over $5 million.
| Scheme | Designated? | What Applies |
|---|---|---|
| 6 townhouses, replacement cost under $5 million | No | No statutory reserve fund or plan. A voluntary plan is still worth having. |
| 8 apartments in a lift-serviced building | Often yes, on building value | Reserve fund and ten-year plan both required. |
| 14 villas, replacement cost under $5 million | Yes, on lot count | Reserve fund and ten-year plan both required. |
The building value threshold is the one that catches small schemes out. An eight-lot scheme sounds too small to qualify, and an eight-lot apartment building in Applecross or Mount Pleasant can exceed $5 million in replacement cost comfortably. A scheme in that position carries a statutory obligation it does not know about, with no reserve fund behind it.
The plan itself has to identify the common property expected to need non-routine maintenance, repair, renewal or replacement over the next ten years, with estimated costs, and it has to be revised at least once every five years. If you are unsure which category your scheme falls into, we will work it out with you before you commit to anything.
What Drives Your Maintenance Costs
Owners in small schemes often assume their costs are low because their building is small. Cost follows the shared plant and the shared surfaces rather than the number of lots, which is why a six-lot scheme with a lift and a pool can cost more to run than a sixteen-lot group of villas.
- Shared plant. Lifts, pumps, gates, fire systems and pool equipment carry compulsory servicing and eventual replacement.
- Building age and construction. Concrete, membranes and roof structures are the expensive renewals, and they arrive on a schedule a scheme can predict.
- Stormwater and drainage. Across most of Perth, stormwater goes to soakwells rather than to a street drain, and soakwells silt up. They sit on common property, they are easy to forget, and they are the source of a good number of the water-ingress problems we are asked to fix.
- Grounds and trees. Established trees on common property need cyclical work, and a mature limb over a carport is a liability question rather than a gardening one.
- How far behind the scheme is. Deferred maintenance compounds, so a scheme that has skipped six years of gutter cycles has not saved anything.
We do not quote maintenance costs without seeing a scheme. What we can do is show you where your levies actually go, which our full guide to strata fees sets out, and how a reserve fund spreads the large items instead of landing them as a special levy.
Who Is Legally Responsible for Common Property Maintenance
Section 91(1)(c) of the Strata Titles Act 1985 (WA) requires the strata company to keep in good and serviceable repair, properly maintain and, if necessary, renew and replace the common property. Landgate publishes fact sheets setting this out in plain terms.
Two points follow that owners are often surprised by. The duty sits with the strata company, which in Western Australia means all of the lot owners together, and not with the management firm. It is also not discretionary, so a council of owners that resolves to defer a necessary repair indefinitely is exposed rather than thrifty.
Where the line between common property and a lot is unclear, the strata plan governs it, and our guide on who is responsible for maintenance in a strata property works through how to read it.
Areas We Serve
We manage strata maintenance for schemes across Perth's southern river suburbs and the South West.
- Alfred Cove
- Applecross
- Ardross
- Booragoon
- Brentwood
- Busselton
- Melville
- Mount Pleasant
- West Busselton
- Willagee
We also manage schemes in Rockingham and the wider South West.
Talk to Us About Your Scheme's Maintenance
At Perth Strata Co., we start by looking at what your scheme actually has, before anyone talks about a management agreement. That means the plan and the by-laws, the shared plant and services, what has been repaired in the last few years and what has quietly been deferred, your scheme's status as a designated strata company, and the condition of the reserve fund if you have one.
You will get a straight assessment of what your scheme is required to do, what it should be doing, and what we would charge to run it.
Call us on (08) 6388 1189, request a strata management quote, or get in touch and tell us what has been going wrong.