The starting rule
Under the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997, the body corporate must maintain the common property in good condition, and each owner must maintain their own lot. If the common property is structural, it must be kept structurally sound.
That rule settles the easy cases — the driveway, the shared gardens, the pool. Everything contested lives at the boundary between a lot and common property, and where that boundary sits is decided by the scheme's registered survey plan. There are two common types, and they split maintenance responsibility very differently.
First, find out which plan your scheme is on
Your scheme is registered under either:
- a building format plan (BFP — formerly called a building units plan), or
- a standard format plan (SFP — formerly called a group titles plan).
Most apartment buildings sit on a building format plan. Most townhouse complexes, where each lot has its own building and yard, sit on a standard format plan. The plan type is shown on the scheme's survey plans, available through Titles Queensland — and if your committee doesn't know which type applies, that is the first thing to resolve, because every maintenance question downstream depends on it.
Building format plan: the body corporate carries more than the common property
On a building format plan, lots are defined by the building's structure — where one lot is separated from another lot or from common property by a floor, wall or ceiling, the lot boundary runs through the centre of that floor, wall or ceiling.
Here is the part that surprises owners: on a BFP, the body corporate must maintain the common property and certain parts of the building that are not common property at all, including:
- the essential structural elements of the building — foundation structures, roofing structures that provide protection, and load-bearing walls — even where they sit inside a lot
- railings and balustrades on or near the boundary between a lot and common property, including the balustrade on a private balcony
- doors and windows (and their fittings) in a boundary wall between a lot and common property, including garage doors
- utility infrastructure — equipment, pipes and wiring — that is on common property, inside a boundary structure, or services more than one lot.
The owner in a BFP scheme is generally responsible for the inside of the lot: internal walls, fixtures and fittings, and utility infrastructure that sits wholly inside the lot and services only that lot.
The practical consequence: in an apartment building, most of the building envelope — roof, structure, external walls, balcony balustrades, boundary windows and doors — is the body corporate's job, even where an owner assumes "my balcony, my problem."
Standard format plan: most of the building is the owner's job
On a standard format plan, lots are defined horizontally by survey marks on the ground or the edges of structures — think of a townhouse lot that includes the building and its yard.
Here the responsibility flips. The owner is generally responsible for:
- the inside of the building, including fixtures and fittings
- the outside of the building within the lot boundary — exterior walls, doors, windows and the roof
- utility infrastructure inside the lot boundary that services only that lot.
The body corporate maintains the common property itself and utility infrastructure that is on common property, in a boundary structure, or services more than one lot.
Committees in townhouse schemes get caught here constantly, in both directions: paying for roof repairs that were legally the owner's responsibility, or refusing gutter work that genuinely was the body corporate's because the infrastructure serviced multiple lots.
The classic grey areas
Termite damage. On a building format plan, the body corporate will almost always be responsible for termite damage, because the structural elements are its responsibility wherever they sit. On a standard format plan, damage inside a lot is generally the owner's problem — unless the owner can show the body corporate failed in its duty to maintain common property and the termites came from it.
Exclusive use areas. An owner who has the benefit of an exclusive use area — a courtyard, a car space — is generally responsible for maintaining it, unless the exclusive use by-law says otherwise. Read the by-law before assuming.
Occupier-installed fixtures. Anything an occupier installed for their own benefit is theirs to maintain, even if it sits on common property — the air-conditioning condenser on the common wall being the standard example.
Why getting this right matters beyond the argument
Maintenance responsibility disputes are among the most common matters before the Commissioner's office, and adjudicators decide them on exactly the analysis above: plan type, boundary location, and the statutory allocation — not on what the committee assumed or what previous committees always did.
And the moment responsibility lands with the body corporate, a second set of rules switches on: the spending has to be properly authorised, and above the scheme's major spending limit, at least two quotations must be obtained and considered before the decision is made. Working out who is responsible is only half the job — how the work then gets quoted, decided and recorded is what protects the committee when the decision is questioned later.
That second half is what StrataTrade is built for. Once the body corporate owns the repair, the job gets scoped properly once, quotes come back in a comparable structure, and the quotes, the decision and the reasoning stay permanently on the building's record — so when an owner, an adjudicator or a buyer's solicitor asks how the balustrade contract was let, the answer is a record, not a recollection.
This article is general information about Queensland body corporate law, not legal advice. Maintenance responsibilities depend on your scheme's registered survey plan, its by-laws, and the applicable regulation module — always confirm your scheme's position, and obtain advice for contested or high-value matters.