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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 company 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.
Western Australia splits its by-laws in two: governance by-laws about how the strata company runs itself, and conduct by-laws about what people may do in the building. The two are amended differently, and the 2020 reforms changed both the process and what a by-law may lawfully cover. Amendments are lodged with Landgate, and until they are, the old set is still the one that binds.
Governed by the Strata Titles Act 1985, administered by Landgate.
Both schedules. The building's own copy is frequently out of date.
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 pre-2020 set will contain provisions that no longer work the way the building thinks they do.
Governance or conduct. It decides the resolution you need.
Fifty per cent of lots is the country's highest threshold, and it is what usually defeats a good amendment here.
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.
And treat the change as ineffective until it is registered.
Somewhere every owner and tenant can reach 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.
A conduct rule passed as a governance by-law is a procedural failure that invalidates the change.
The reforms were substantial. Assume a review is needed rather than assuming it is not.
The recurring WA problem, and nothing to do with whether owners agree.
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 Western Australia, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with Landgate or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in Western Australia and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
