Do Small Strata Buildings Need a Building Manager?

It's one of the most common questions at a small building's AGM, usually asked after something has gone wrong: do we need a building manager?

The short answer for most boutique blocks: you don't need a full-time one, and you probably can't justify one. But someone has to do the job a building manager does, and in a lot of small buildings nobody has been given it. This article sets out what that job involves, the four realistic ways to cover it, what each one costs, and why the question matters more now than it did twenty years ago.

What a building manager actually does

In NSW, a building manager is defined by what they do, not by their title. Under section 66 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, anyone who helps the owners corporation manage and control the use of its common property counts, whether they're called a building manager, caretaker, resident manager or anything else. (For how the role differs from a strata manager, see Strata Manager vs Building Manager.)

In practice the job is the physical side of the building:

• Looking: regular walk-throughs and inspections of common property, so problems are found while they're small.
• Recording: a maintenance register of what's been done, what's due, and what was found.
• Scheduling: gutters before storm season, fire-safety servicing, roof and drainage checks, all on a calendar instead of a crisis.
• Coordinating trades: getting quotes that compare like with like, arranging access, and checking the work was done before the invoice is paid.
• Reporting: telling the committee, in plain English, what needs a decision and why.

None of that is optional in a legal sense. Every owners corporation has a duty to maintain and repair common property under section 106. The only question is who does the work that duty requires.

Four ways to cover the job

1. A full-time or resident building manager

This is the traditional model: someone on site daily, sometimes living in the building. It suits large schemes with lifts, pools, car-park plant, concierge desks and hundreds of residents. Industry sources put a full-time building manager's base salary at roughly $63,000–$90,000 a year (BMA's 2026 cost guide), before on-costs or an agency's margin, and note that building managers usually look after buildings of more than 70 lots.

For a 12- or 20-lot walk-up, the maths doesn't work. Spread across 16 lots, a salary at the bottom of that range is close to $4,000 per lot per year before anything else is paid for.

2. A visiting (part-time) building manager

The same job, done on a schedule sized to the building. A visiting building manager does the walk-throughs, inspections, register, trade coordination and reporting, but is on site at set intervals (monthly, every two months or quarterly) rather than every day, with remote support in between and a same-day response when something urgent happens, like a burst pipe.

This is the model built for boutique blocks. It's what we do: our visiting building management packages run 4, 6 or 12 scheduled site visits a year (full inspections included), and typically cost $492–$836+GST a month for a 16-lot building. That works out to roughly $7–$12 per lot per week.

3. Asking your strata manager to do more

If you have a strata manager, it's natural to ask whether they can cover it. Strata managers are licensed professionals who run the governance side: levies, insurance, meetings, records and by-laws. Their core fee is set for that work (industry estimates put strata management at roughly $250–$550 per lot per year). Site inspections, trade meetings and project oversight are usually billed as additional services under the agency agreement, and a manager with a large portfolio is rarely resourced to walk your building regularly.

This option can work for one-off tasks. It is rarely a maintenance rhythm, and it isn't what the strata manager's role is built for.

4. The committee does it

For many small buildings, this is the default. More than half of NSW strata schemes have five lots or fewer (Australasian Strata Insights 2024, UNSW City Futures), and for a small block with a practical, available committee member, doing it yourselves can be the right answer. That member needs the time to walk the building regularly, the confidence to judge what they're looking at, and the discipline to keep a register. Our free strata maintenance checklist is a good place to start.

The costs of this option are harder to see, but they're real: volunteer hours, the issues nobody noticed, and records that live in one person's inbox until that person sells.

(There is a fifth option, doing nothing until something breaks. It costs the most, and it's the one the rest of this article is about avoiding.)

The options side by side

Why this question didn't come up twenty years ago

Plenty of committees reasonably point out that their building got along for decades without anyone called a building manager. That's true. The work was always needed; what has changed is the building's age and the price of not doing it.

The buildings are older. In 2006, a walk-up built in 1970 was 36 years old and most of its original elements still had life in them. Today the same building is 56. The early-1970s building where our founder has served on the committee for more than a decade was 34 in 2006 and is 54 now. At that age, original waterproofing, galvanised pipework, switchboards, roofing and concrete cover start reaching the end of their lives together, which we've called the mid-building-life crisis. A building at that stage needs someone looking at it on a schedule.

The law now expects a record. Several changes have landed in quick succession:

• Owners can claim for longer. An owner who suffers loss because the owners corporation failed to maintain common property can claim damages under section 106. Since 1 July 2025 they have six years from when they first become aware of the loss, up from two. That express right to damages only arrived with the 2015 Act — under the previous law, the courts had held that a breach of the old maintenance duty gave owners no action for damages at all (Thoo's case, NSW Court of Appeal, 2013). Twenty years ago the road to compensation was far less clear.
• Capital works fund plans must be evidence-based. From 1 April 2026, every 10-year plan prepared or reviewed must use the new standard form, which assumes someone knows the building's actual condition.
• Fire safety needs a paper trail. Servicing requirements tightened in February 2026, putting documented, standards-based servicing behind every Annual Fire Safety Statement.
• Enforcement follows the sale. NSW Fair Trading can issue compliance notices for maintenance failures, and from April 2026 compliance action shows on the certificate a buyer's conveyancer requests. (More on that in Who Looks After Your Building?)
• Building managers now carry statutory duties. Since 27 October 2025, anyone doing the job must act honestly and in the owners corporation's best interest, promptly report maintenance and safety issues, and disclose conflicts (Swaab). Parliament wrote those duties down because the role matters.

Put together: twenty years ago, a small building could run on goodwill and a handy owner, and the cost of a missed problem was mostly the repair. Today, the same missed problem can bring a damages claim, an inaccurate capital works plan, a compliance notice and a harder sale. The job hasn't changed much; the cost of leaving it undone has.

How to tell which option fits your building

A few honest questions for your committee:

1. How many lots, and how much plant? Five lots and a garden is a different job from 20 lots with a car park, pumps and a fire system.
2. Who walks the building now, and how often? If the answer is a person's name, ask what happens when they move out. If there's no answer, that's the gap.
3. Is there a written maintenance register? Could you show a buyer, or a tribunal, what's been inspected and when?
4. How old is your building? Anything built before about 1990 is entering the stage where elements fail together.
5. When was your 10-year plan last based on someone actually inspecting the building? If the plan was prepared at a desk, it's describing a building nobody looked at. (See our 10-Year Capital Works Fund Plans.)
6. How much volunteer time is going into trade quotes and access? Count it honestly.

As a rough guide: a very small block with a capable volunteer can run it themselves, with a checklist and a register. A boutique walk-up of about 6 to 40 lots, especially an older one, is where a visiting building manager makes the most sense. A large scheme with serious plant is where a full-time manager pays for itself.

Where to start

If you're not sure what your building needs, start with the evidence. A free Building Health Check takes about five minutes and shows where your building's maintenance stands across 12 areas. If you already know the job isn't being done, our visiting building management packages set out exactly what's included at each level, and what it costs.

Every owners corporation has to maintain its building. It just needs someone assigned to do it.

Disclaimer: This guide provides general information about NSW strata roles, costs and legislation. Cost figures attributed to industry sources are estimates and will vary by building. It is not legal or financial advice. For advice about your scheme's specific circumstances, consult a qualified strata professional or strata lawyer.