Strata Hub

Throughout 2022, deadlines came and deadlines went for the registration of strata scheme details with a new online portal called “Strata Hub”.

Eventually, the government landed on a deadline for registration of 31 December for existing schemes, though this deadline was on the explicit basis that no fines would apply for failure to register until at least July 2023.

So what is Strata Hub and what do owners need to know about it?

Firstly, Strata Hub is not entirely new. It is an online portal operated by the state government to administer some information regarding strata schemes. Whilst all of the headlines recently have been about the 31 December registration requirements, Strata Hub has actually been up and running for some time now to administer the building defect bond regime that applies to new buildings. That hopefully means that many of the technical kinks associated with it (and there have been a few) have been ironed out by now.

If your scheme is part of the building defect bond regime, it has likely already been registered for Strata Hub for that purpose. The building defect bond regime applies for new builds where the construction contract was signed on or after 1 January. Watch this space for an article on this regime in the future…

The 31 December deadline was for the registration of every other strata scheme in the state (though Community Associations, Neighbourhood Associations, Company Title buildings, and Building Management Committees are not required to register). The intention of the hub is that it will be a centralised register by the government for key information regarding strata plans within New South Wales. This was intended to do two things. Firstly, it was intended that the government could have better access to data regarding strata schemes generally. Secondly, it was intended to assist the government in getting in touch with specific owners corporations in the event of emergencies.

Some of the information on the Hub is solely visible to the government, whilst other elements are publicly available.

What needs to be registered?

A table that sets out the information that is required to be registered and who may then view that information is below.

 

Item Visibility
Balance of capital works fund Not publicly available
Emergency contact details Not publicly available
Insured replacement value of the building Not publicly available
Date of issue of occupation certificate Not publicly available
Any NABERS ratings for the building Not publicly available
Contact details for secretary, chair, strata manager, and building manager Owners on the strata roll
Date of last AFSS Owners on the strata roll
Last AGM date Owners on the strata roll
Whether the building has appointed a strata renewal committee Owners on the strata roll
Strata plan number, number of lots, and their usage Publicly visible
Registration date of strata scheme Publicly visible
Local government area Publicly visible
Stories above ground Publicly visible
If the strata scheme is part of a community or precinct association, the date of registration of that association Publicly visible

 

The more sensitive information, such as contact details for strata committee members, is not publicly available. Although there have been some privacy concerns raised by owners, we do not see a great need for concern around privacy. The information that is publicly available is largely available through other sources anyway, and the information available to owners in the building would be available through a strata search in any event.

The requirement for registration is that it must have occurred for the first time by now and then after that it needs to occur annually within three months of each scheme’s AGM. From a strata management perspective, this is all fairly workable in that management companies have been able to put in place bulk upload processes for every scheme recently to kick things off, and then the annual update needs to be built into the AGM process.

What’s the cost on all of this?

Well, at the moment the government is charging strata plans an administration fee of $3 per lot for each registration. For most schemes in New South Wales, this fee is fairly small (the average strata scheme in NSW is something like 8.4 lots, so less than $30). For larger schemes though, this fee can add up a bit and needs to be factored into budgets moving forward. Unfortunately, the fee does not differentiate between primary and utility lots (a utility lot might be something like a car space or storage unit, though more commonly those will be part of the lot itself). Strata Sense manages a building that contains 320 residential units and then about 100 utility lots (which are just storage cages). For that scheme, they’ll now need to be paying an extra $1,200 per annum to the government to this scheme, which is not an inconsequential amount of money.

For clarity, this $3 per lot fee is a recurrent charge. According to our enquiries with the Department of Fair Trading, it is an annual fee payable after each upload after the AGM. It is not payable if minor corrections or changes need to be made throughout the year (so you won’t have to pay again if the secretary resigns and you need to replace them – phew!).

So how long does this all take to administer?

This is a fair question, as the administration of this task will be outside of the scope of most strata management agreements. The answer is “longer than you’d think, but not as long as some are suggesting”.

Unfortunately, the online process is not the most intuitive. Gathering the actual data for each scheme doesn’t take overly long but then inputting it online is a bit of a pain. There are also some questions that seem straightforward but require some investigation to answer. For example, there is a requirement to note the date of the occupation certificate for the building (though there is an option to state that that document is not available). This is simple enough for a new building, but for a thirty year old scheme it might take quite a bit of digging to determine whether this document actually exists.

From our perspective, most registrations take between half an hour and forty-five minutes.

What’s the future for this online register and should it be easier to upload in the future?

Across the entire strata management industry, probably 95% of all business utilise one of three major strata management software systems. Those software providers are working on upgrades that will allow for Strata Hub to be updated with the push of a button. In those circumstances, updating Strata Hub following an AGM should take a few minutes (update strata committee, press “sync to Strata Hub”).

Realistically, though, it probably won’t be that straightforward and that functionality has already taken a surprisingly long time to develop. The other caveat we would put to this would be that this is all assuming that there are no changes to the information required to be uploaded to Strata Hub.

In practice, the information required to be uploaded to Strata Hub is set out in regulations which can be very easily changed by the minister responsible. For starters, it could be that the government decides it wants to next gather data on number of committee members on each scheme. That would be an added field that would need to be uploaded to Strata Hub that would add another couple of minutes to the registration process. Alternatively, the government could decide that it would like data on something like energy consumption for strata plans, which is an item that most strata management companies don’t track in a structured way and would therefore dramatically add to the time involved in the registration process.

It’s not clear in that respect what information might also be required for Strata Hub. At a minimum, though, we wouldn’t be surprised if some of the current fields are clarified in the next year or so. Currently, Strata Hub calls for (for example) the insured value of the building but doesn’t clarify whether, for strata plans that are part of BMCs, that is just the portion of the building comprised of the strata plan or the entire complex. Similarly, Strata Hub right now asks for the breakdown of lots between “residential”, “commercial”, “retirement village”, or “other”. If “Other” is selected, it requests information but just as free text. If your scheme is a block of eight brick townhouses, that’s simple enough. But there are instances where articulating whether a storage cage or a parking space or a telco tower or other niche lot is less straightforward. It’s certainly doable but the government is going to end up with a thousand different definitions for “Other” lots that won’t be useful for data gathering purposes.

Do you have any questions about the operation of Strata Hub? If so, feel free to reach out to our office for a discussion.

Please note that this article strives for accuracy but Strata Hub is an ongoing development project for the government and you should check that this information is still accurate at time of reading before relying upon it. This article was drafted on 18 January 2023.

Scroll to Top