In New Zealand? Visit quarter.nz for body corporates.
Most buildings are running on the by-laws they were handed at registration, plus whatever has been bolted on since. Some of those are unenforceable, some were never registered, and a few are the reason an otherwise sensible owners corporation is in a dispute it cannot win. This is the cheapest legal work a building can do, and the work that most often prevents the expensive kind.
New South Wales is the jurisdiction where the registration step catches the most buildings out. A change to your by-laws is passed by special resolution at a general meeting — and then has no legal effect at all until it is registered with NSW Land Registry Services, using the consolidation form, within six months. Plenty of schemes are enforcing by-laws that were never registered and are therefore not by-laws.
Governed by the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, administered by NSW Fair Trading.
Order the registered by-laws from the land registry rather than working from the copy in the building's files. The two are different more often than anyone expects.
In Quarter: Your registered rules, the amendments and the minutes that passed them sit together with dates on them. Ask the Manager what they say about a pet, a renovation or a short-stay letting and it quotes the rule back rather than making you read the set.
A few hours. What you want is a list: what is unenforceable, what is missing, and what has been overtaken by the 2025 reforms.
In Quarter: Put the agreement in your documents register and ask the Manager to summarise it — when it expires, how much notice it needs, what leaving early costs, and what they have to hand back. It reads the forty pages so the committee does not have to, and will turn the answer into a task with a date on it.
A consent requirement with reasonable conditions survives challenge. A blanket prohibition frequently does not.
The exact wording of the by-law goes on the notice, because that is what owners are voting on and what will be registered.
In Quarter: Build the motion from the quotes and the budget, send the notice to every owner off the ownership register on the statutory clock, and record the vote as it is cast — a decision carries its majority automatically and emails the outcome to whoever raised it.
This is the step that gets missed. Diary it the day the resolution passes, and treat the by-law as unenforceable until the registration comes back.
In Quarter: The ownership register, financial records, insurance, contracts and documents sit in one searchable place, so a handover is an export rather than an archaeology project — and they are still there when the committee turns over.
One current document, where residents and buyers can find it.
In Quarter: Announce it to every owner and resident in a single send — email, and posted to the residents' portal at the same time.
The single most common New South Wales failure, and it makes the by-law a nullity rather than merely late.
Pets are the well-known example, but the same reasoning reaches short-stay letting, renovations and vehicle charging. Consent-with-conditions is the enforceable shape.
If the registered set does not say it, it is not enforceable no matter how long the building has treated it as a rule.
A by-law is the only thing standing between a shared building and an argument about what people may do in it. It is worth having ones that are current, that are enforceable, and that a court or tribunal would actually uphold.
Quarter does not give legal advice — that is what the lawyer is for. What it does is make the lawyer's job short, and make the outcome stick.
The registered set, the amendments, the minutes that passed them and the correspondence about them, together — so the first thing a lawyer asks for takes a minute rather than a fortnight.
Ask the Manager what your current rules say about a pet, a renovation or a short-stay letting. It will quote the rule back to you, which is often the whole answer.
A change to your by-laws usually needs a particular resolution type and a particular notice period. Quarter puts it as that motion, on that clock, and records the vote.
The resolution, its date and its wording, held against the building — which is exactly what registration and any later dispute both need.
Rules published where residents and buyers can find them, rather than in an attachment to an email from 2019.
General information about New South Wales, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with NSW Fair Trading or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in New South Wales and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
