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Cityfutures: current projects

Managing Major Repairs in the Residential Strata Sector

Funded by: NSW Office of Fair Trading

Project Leader: Doctor Hazel Easthope, hazeleasthope@unsw.edu.au
Researchers: Prof Bill Randolph , Prof Jane Marceau , Dr Hazel Easthope and Mr Andy Tice

Description:

This project will undertake research into the attitudes towards, and practice of, funding major repairs liabilities in the strata sector. The findings will, for the first time, provide strata owners, owners' corporations, strata managers and policy makers with new and systematic information on the nature and scale of issues surrounding the provision for major repairs in strata in NSW.

The project has three aims:

•  To establish current practices in respect to funding major repairs and maintenance, including capital works budget setting, funding options and administration arrangements, in residential strata titled complexes.

•  To explore the attitudes and knowledge of planning for major repairs funding among consumers of residential strata, including resident- and investor-owners and owners' corporation members.

•  To undertake a benchmarking exercise based on data collected by strata property managers in order to estimate the types of information available on maintenance and major repairs at the block level, to identify the form in which this information is recorded and to assess how easily the data can be accessed electronically and how easily it can be analysed for trends. Based on these findings, the research team will recommend improvements to management data collection to enable future policy development in this area.

The research is essentially customer focused, with the primary fieldwork being a survey of unit owners. The results, expected to be released in mid-2009, will be published in public domain reports and a short “key findings” summary and disseminated through a major seminar (involving key stakeholders) and through the media.

If you are an owner of a residential strata unit in NSW and would like to participate in the survey, please follow the link on the City Futures main web page to the online survey. The survey will be available on-line from early September 2008.

The research will commence in early September 2008