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 strata 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.
South Australia's answer depends on which Act created your scheme. Strata corporations under the Strata Titles Act 1988 have by-laws; community corporations under the Community Titles Act 1996 have articles that do the same job under a different name. Both are changed by special resolution and both are lodged with Land Services SA — and in both cases the corporation itself has to prompt the review, because nothing external will.
Governed by the Strata Titles Act 1988 and Community Titles Act 1996, administered by Consumer and Business Services.
Strata or community titles. Everything after this depends on it.
From Land Services SA rather than from the corporation's own files.
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 by-law drafted at subdivision decades ago is the most likely to be unenforceable now.
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.
With 14 days' notice and the exact wording on the agenda.
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.
Unlodged amendments do not bind anybody.
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.
Every few years. Nothing statutory will prompt it in South Australia, so the corporation has to prompt itself.
The most common South Australian error on rule changes.
Which is the default here, because nothing forces it.
A resolution is not a rule until it is on the register.
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 South Australia, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with Consumer and Business Services or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in South Australia and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
