Before you buy into a strata building

What this means for you

If the certificate the seller gives you does not list a dispute, or a cost that might become a debt, that cost can become yours when you settle: not a someday risk, a debt that arrives with the keys. An owner who did not know can find the home hard to sell. What the certificate must include is set by law; what appears on any given certificate depends on what the manager or committee recorded.

The costliest surprise is a legal matter. A dispute between an owners corporation and a builder, an insurer or a contractor can run for years, and its legal fees and the levies that follow can reach several hundred thousand dollars across a building, with the stress of it carried by the owners the whole time. The certificate must list proceedings the owners corporation is a party to and any circumstances it knows of that are likely to lead to them, and knowing whether a case has been filed, and whether one is being prepared, is worth finding out before you sign. The register shows any sworn account the other party to such a dispute has placed on the record, whether or not a case has been started; a search that finds nothing means no one has lodged, not that there is no dispute.

This page is general information, not legal advice; your conveyancer or solicitor advises on your purchase.

What the certificate must tell you

Before you sign, the seller gives you a vendor statement that includes a current owners corporation certificate, or the information a certificate would hold (the certificate is the document that shows what the owners corporation, the body that manages the shared parts of the building, records about its money, its repairs and any legal proceedings). Any person may ask the owners corporation for one, and it must be issued within ten business days of the application and fee.

Victorian law requires an owners corporation certificate to disclose the owners corporation's liabilities and contingent liabilities (costs that might become debts if something happens), repairs or other work about to be done that may add charges, and any circumstances it is aware of that are likely to lead to proceedings. The certificate is prepared by the manager or the committee from what they judged relevant and chose to record. A buyer has no way to check whether everything the owners corporation knew made it onto the page. The register is where the other party to a dispute puts their sworn account on the public record, so a buyer can see whether the two tell the same story.

Before you settle, it is worth asking yourself:

• Is this owners corporation in a dispute, or doing something that could draw it into one?
• Are there repairs, defects or maintenance problems in the building that have been discussed or argued over, even informally, that do not appear in the certificate?
• If a problem surfaced the week after you signed, would you have had any way to find out about it beforehand?

You may ask the owners corporation or its manager. A buyer, or someone acting for a buyer, may inspect the owners corporation's records at any reasonable time, free of charge. The certificate is the summary; the records are the source.

If your search finds nothing

No sworn notice has been placed about this building yet. This register is new and not every strata building has a notice on it. A search that finds nothing tells you what is on the register at this date. Whether other information exists is a question for the owners corporation certificate, the vendor statement (the document a seller must give a buyer) and your conveyancer.

What the register shows you

Search a building by address, free. You will see the notices people have placed on the record about the building's owners corporation: the kind of matter, the date it was recorded, its status as at a date, and whether the owners corporation has replied. Each notice is a sworn statement (signed in front of a qualified witness) by the person who lodged it, with a supporting document, and a person reads every notice before it shows. The register does not check the facts, rate the building or comment on anyone. The owners corporation is told first and its reply is published beside the notice, free. Statuses come from the parties, so check the current position with the owners corporation, its manager or your conveyancer before you rely on anything you read here.

What has been reported

What goes wrong has been reported publicly. PNDR does not comment on the cases or the people involved; the reporting speaks for itself.

• nine.com.au, 7 September 2026: "An additional mortgage": a sinking Melbourne apartment complex could see owners pay a special levy of three hundred and seventy-four thousand dollars each
• The Age, 27 September 2026: "Ten years, 3500 complaints, zero prosecutions: Inside Victoria's strata enforcement vacuum"
• The Guardian, 21 April 2024: "Completely blindsided: new owners of strata properties shocked by special levies"
• The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April 2025: "Maria thought her townhouse was 'perfect'. Then her bedroom ceiling began to drip"
• The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 July 2019: "Years of jackhammers and arguments: how homeowners deal with faulty buildings"
• Yahoo Finance Australia, 3 August 2026: Apartment owners warned after a woman's repair bill of fifty-two thousand dollars, "more than my mortgage"

Where it starts, and where it is going

We are building an Australia-wide register, and Victoria is where it starts. The register opens state by state.

The register is built and supported for the people who live in and buy into strata buildings, for the owners corporations that run them, and for the conveyancers, managers and service providers who work with them, across Australia. Wherever you are, you can register your interest now and we will tell you when the register opens in your state.