If you own, manage, or sit on a strata committee in New South Wales, 2026 is not the year to run your building the old way.
The NSW Government rolled out major strata reforms in three stages, starting on 1 July 2025, then 27 October 2025, and most recently on 1 April 2026. Together, these changes are designed to improve transparency, repairs and maintenance, financial planning, developer accountability, and day-to-day confidence in how strata schemes are run.
For owners corporations, the message is clear. Good intentions are no longer enough. Committees need better systems, clearer records, stronger contractor oversight, and a more disciplined approach to planning and compliance. For building managers, the role has become more structured, more accountable, and more important than ever.
At BMA, we see these reforms as more than legal changes. They are a shift in expectations. Buildings now need to be managed proactively, not reactively.
Why these changes matter
A strata building is not just a shared address. It is a living operation with assets, risks, budgets, contractors, compliance obligations, and people relying on it every day.
The latest NSW reforms aim to make strata schemes better prepared, better governed, and more transparent. The government has said the April 2026 changes are specifically intended to improve planning for repairs and maintenance, strengthen developer accountability, and better support people buying into strata.
That means committees can no longer afford to leave things until they break, defer difficult maintenance decisions, or rely on informal processes that live only in someone’s inbox or memory.
Stage one: what changed on 1 July 2025
The first round of reforms, which started on 1 July 2025, focused on broader protections and better governance across strata schemes. NSW lists the key changes as encouraging sustainability, protecting owners from unfair contract terms, improving strata management services, imposing stricter rules on developers, making accessibility infrastructure easier to install, supporting owners with assistance animals, making minor renovations easier to approve, improving repairs and maintenance, improving protections for owners entering utility contracts including embedded networks, adding new duties for strata committee members, and strengthening transparency around legal services costs.
In practical terms, several of these changes matter immediately for owners corporations.
One of the biggest is unfair contract terms. From 1 July 2025, unfair contract terms are banned in standard form contracts for the supply of goods or services to an owners corporation, including building management, strata management, cleaning, and gardening contracts.
That matters because many schemes sign service agreements on a “take it or leave it” basis. Committees should now review contracts far more carefully, especially termination rights, renewal clauses, one-sided variation rights, and penalty clauses.
The July 2025 reforms also pushed sustainability higher up the agenda. Owners corporations must consider sustainability at each AGM, and the AGM agenda must include environmental sustainability in the scheme, including common property energy and water consumption and expenditure. NSW also says owners corporations must consider the cost of sustainability infrastructure when preparing capital works fund estimates each year.
For committees, that means sustainability is no longer a “nice to have” discussion for later. It now belongs in annual planning. For building managers, it means better asset data, better utility tracking, and better advice around future works such as solar, meters, lighting, EV charging, and water efficiency.
Stage two: what changed on 27 October 2025
The second stage of reforms, starting on 27 October 2025, moved much more directly into management accountability.
According to NSW Fair Trading, the October reforms included new rules defining who is not a building manager, additional building manager duties relating to safety, repair and maintenance, disclosure and acting in the scheme’s best interests, building manager candidate declarations about benefits that may affect fees, new grounds to seek Tribunal orders to change or end management agreements, standard forms for payment plans for overdue levies, mandatory Financial Hardship Information Statements on levy notices, and increased Fair Trading investigation and enforcement powers.
This is a major shift.
For a long time, many buildings operated in a grey area where people assumed the building manager would “handle it,” but without enough structure around what that really meant. These reforms make it much clearer that the role comes with defined responsibilities and disclosure expectations.
They also increase pressure on owners corporations to keep up with repairs and maintenance. NSW guidance now states that the new strata laws strengthen enforcement of owners’ obligations to repair and maintain common property, with Fair Trading given new powers to order repair and maintenance work in certain circumstances.
In plain English, if a scheme keeps putting off obvious maintenance, the risk is no longer just resident frustration or tribunal action. The regulator now has stronger tools.
From a BMA perspective, this is where professional building management becomes most valuable. A good building manager should not just wait for complaints. They should be identifying maintenance issues early, documenting them properly, escalating them in a structured way, and helping the committee prioritise works before problems become defects, disputes, or emergencies.
Stage three: what changed on 1 April 2026
The most recent reforms started on 1 April 2026, and these go straight to the heart of long-term building planning.
NSW says that from 1 April 2026, 10-year capital works fund plans must be prepared using a standard form. NSW also says initial maintenance schedules must be prepared using a standard form as part of the developer handover process, and that in multi-storey schemes the IMS and initial levy estimates must be reviewed and certified by independent surveyors, with evidence of that review to be given 14 days before the first AGM. Details of embedded networks must also now be included in strata information certificates.
This is a very important change because many strata problems begin early. Buildings are handed over with incomplete maintenance planning, unrealistic budgets, or poor visibility over what assets exist and what they will cost to maintain. The April 2026 reforms are designed to reduce that problem.
NSW’s strata guidance now says all new and revised 10-year capital works fund plans must be in the standard form, and that the first 10-year plan for a new scheme starts from the first AGM and must consider the initial maintenance schedule provided by the developer. NSW also provides a Strata Hub capital works planner to help schemes comply.
This means owners corporations in 2026 need to treat capital planning as a live management tool, not a once-every-few-years document put together just to tick a box.
What owners corporations now need to do differently
The biggest mistake a committee can make in 2026 is to think these changes are just for lawyers or strata managers.
They are not. They affect how the building is actually run.
Owners corporations should now focus on five things.
First, review your contracts. If your building management, strata management, cleaning, or contractor agreements have not been reviewed since the July 2025 changes, do it now. Unfair terms, weak KPIs, vague scopes, and poor exit provisions create risk.
Second, tighten repairs and maintenance processes. Committees need clear logs, work-order systems, inspection routines, contractor verification, and proper records of what was identified, what was approved, and what was completed. The days of loose, informal maintenance oversight are fading fast.
Third, take capital works planning seriously. The 10-year plan now sits at the centre of responsible building ownership. If the plan is outdated, unrealistic, or disconnected from actual building conditions, levies will eventually rise under pressure rather than through planning.
Fourth, be more disciplined at handover in new buildings. If you are in a newer scheme, ask what maintenance schedule was handed over, whether it was properly reviewed, and whether your current capital planning reflects it.
Fifth, treat sustainability and utility infrastructure as operational issues. These are no longer side conversations. They are part of annual governance, budgeting, and future-proofing.
What building managers now need to do differently
The reforms also change the practical standard expected of building managers.
A building manager in 2026 needs to be more than visible onsite. They need to be systematic.
That means better inspections, more reliable reporting, stronger maintenance coordination, clearer contractor compliance checks, better communication with the strata committee, and a sharper understanding of where the role begins and ends.
It also means being careful with disclosure, procurement integrity, and decisions that affect owners corporation spending. The October 2025 reforms made transparency and best-interest obligations more explicit, especially around benefits that may affect fees and around the ability to challenge management agreements that are not serving the scheme properly.
From BMA’s point of view, the modern building manager must operate with process. Every building needs structured reporting, asset awareness, contractor verification, issue tracking, and a clear path from inspection to action. Without that, committees cannot govern properly and residents lose confidence.
The BMA view: this is the era of proactive management
At BMA, we believe these reforms reward the schemes that run their buildings properly.
Not perfectly. Properly.
That means knowing your assets, knowing your obligations, using proper systems, documenting issues before they become disputes, and planning for works before they become financial shocks.
The reality is simple. A building that is well managed is easier to maintain, easier to budget, safer to live in, and better protected over time.
The 2025 and 2026 reforms are pushing the whole NSW strata sector in that direction. For owners corporations, that is a challenge, but it is also an opportunity.
Buildings that adapt early will make better decisions, reduce avoidable risk, and protect both resident experience and long-term asset value.
Final word
NSW strata law has changed in stages, but the direction is consistent: more transparency, more accountability, better planning, and stronger repair and maintenance expectations. The reforms that started on 1 July 2025, 27 October 2025, and 1 April 2026 are now part of the operating environment for every serious owners corporation in NSW.
For committees, the question is no longer whether the sector has changed.
It has.
The real question is whether your building’s systems, contracts, reporting, maintenance planning, and management approach have changed with it.
If not, now is the time.
