Stra­ta Law Changes — Effec­tive 27 Octo­ber 2025

What do the lat­est NSW stra­ta law changes mean for own­ers and com­mit­tees? On 27 Octo­ber 2025, the next stage of reforms under the Stra­ta Schemes Leg­is­la­tion Amend­ment Act 2025 came into effect, intro­duc­ing stronger com­pli­ance pow­ers for NSW Fair Trad­ing, fair­er finan­cial hard­ship arrange­ments for levy pay­ments, and new account­abil­i­ty rules for build­ing managers.

On 27 Octo­ber 2025, the next round of changes to NSW Stra­ta Leg­is­la­tion commenced. 

These changes include:

• Changes to Stra­ta Levy Notices will mean that any Levy Notices issued from 27 Octo­ber onwards, will need to include Finan­cial Hard­ship Infor­ma­tion State­ments. This will include a require­ment for Com­mit­tees to pro­vide fair­er debt recov­ery requests includ­ing the abil­i­ty to allow Own­ers to apply for pay­ment plans.
• Build­ing Man­agers are now sub­ject to a statu­to­ry duty to act hon­est­ly and in the best inter­est of the own­ers cor­po­ra­tion and must prompt­ly being main­te­nance or safe­ty issues to the own­ers cor­po­ra­tion. They will also be required to dis­close any ben­e­fits they receive under a con­tract or finan­cial inter­est or rela­tion­ships with sup­pli­ers or the devel­op­er of the scheme. Own­ers will also have addi­tion­al grounds they can use to apply to the Tri­bunal to change or end a build­ing man­ag­er agree­ment where a build­ing man­ag­er has act­ed unlawfully.
• Fair Trad­ing NSW receive expand­ed pow­ers to ensure the own­ers cor­po­ra­tions are being held to high­er stan­dards with their duty to main­tain and repair com­mon prop­er­ty. This will be achieved through the pow­er to issue com­pli­ance notices where own­ers breach these duties. Fair Trad­ing will also have pow­er to issue penal­ty notices, seek enforce­able under­tak­ings and the abil­i­ty to apply to the tri­bunal for an order against an own­ers corporation.

1. Own­ers and Com­mit­tees should famil­iarise them­selves with the above in order to make sure they remain com­pli­ant with future changes; this includes review­ing cur­rent scheme by-laws to ensure they are con­sis­tent with the changes. 
2. For more infor­ma­tion and in-depth updates on the changes, please vis­it the NSW Gov­ern­ment web­site for stra­ta law changes here.

Back­ground

This is the sec­ond of three tranch­es of reform to stra­ta law in 2025.

As high­light­ed by Fair Trad­ing NSW, the State gov­ern­ment expects that 50% of all res­i­dents in NSW will be liv­ing in stra­ta schemes by 2050. These recent changes to stra­ta leg­is­la­tion also reflect the gov­ern­men­t’s desire to reach its hous­ing tar­gets by mak­ing stra­ta liv­ing more effec­tive for cur­rent and future residents.

In the Sec­ond Read­ing speech for the Amend­ing Act released on 20 of Novem­ber 2024, the Gov­ern­men­t’s aim is stat­ed to ​“improve account­abil­i­ty and con­fi­dence in stra­ta man­ag­ing agents and build­ing man­agers” as well as to ​“enhance pro­tec­tions for own­ers from mis­con­duct by stra­ta man­agers” in a bid to meet the state’s hous­ing needs.

Fur­ther Changes to Come

In the last tranche of this reform, we will see: 

• increased devel­op­er account­abil­i­ty, regard­ing ini­tial main­te­nance sched­ules and levy estimates
• increased build­ing man­ag­er account­abil­i­ty, by enhanced statu­to­ry duties
• pro­vi­sion for vari­a­tion or ter­mi­na­tion of stra­ta man­age­ment and build­ing man­age­ment agree­ments by the Tri­bunal if car­ry­ing on busi­ness con­trary to law
• manda­to­ry train­ing for stra­ta com­mit­tee mem­bers, how­ev­er this change is still unclear as to specifics so watch this space
• levy col­lec­tion and recov­ery of over­due levies – this will be a sig­nif­i­cant change which recog­nis­es costs of liv­ing pres­sures on own­ers and the need for cer­tain­ty for own­ers cor­po­ra­tion who can­not main­tain build­ings with­out the pay­ment of levies
• expan­sion of inves­tiga­tive and enforce­ment pow­ers of NSW Fair Trad­ing, around infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing pow­ers, pow­ers of entry, issu­ing com­pli­ance notices and enforce­able undertakings
• new dis­clo­sure require­ments in con­tracts for sale of stra­ta lots to require dis­clo­sure of whether there are any embed­ded net­works in a stra­ta scheme, with pro­vi­sion for pre­scribed war­ranties cov­er­ing same under sale of land con­veyanc­ing regulations

We have an expe­ri­enced team of lawyers spe­cialised in stra­ta law to assist with any queries aris­ing out of the most recent leg­isla­tive changes.