In New Zealand? Visit quarter.nz for body corporates.
Most committees are short of members, and most owners who consider joining talk themselves out of it — because they assume it means unpaid property management, evening meetings and being the person everybody complains to. It does not have to. The role is governance: deciding, on behalf of the owners, what the building does with its money. The admin around it is a tooling problem, and that part is solved.
An ACT owners corporation is run by its executive committee, elected at the AGM with named office-holders. The Territory's statutory sinking fund plan means an ACT executive committee has a clearer job description than most: keep the plan current, set the levies against it, and record the decisions. It is a good committee to join precisely because the target is legible.
Governed by the Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011, administered by Access Canberra.
It is the clearest statement of what the committee's next few years look like.
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.
Nominations close before the notice is issued.
In Quarter: Committee roles and who holds them are recorded against the building, so notices, voting rights and permissions follow the position rather than one person's inbox.
The duties are attached to the roles, and the roles are what buildings struggle to fill.
If the answer is vague, that is your first project.
In Quarter: Upload the plan you already have and Quarter reads it into a costed schedule of items, lifecycles and due years. From there it projects the fund thirty years out and tells you the annual contribution that actually funds it.
It protects the committee more than it protects anybody else.
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.
Part of the owners corporation's insurance.
In Quarter: Upload the policy and Quarter reads the insurer, policy number, dates, premium and broker straight off it, then puts the renewal on the calendar far enough ahead that you can go to market rather than accept a rollover.
The most common ACT gap, and one the committee owns.
Not a recorded decision.
The plan exists to prevent exactly this.
A executive committee makes decisions between general meetings, within the authority the owners corporation has given it. It is not a landlord, not a caretaker and not a manager. Understanding that boundary is most of what makes the job sustainable.
The reason people will not join a committee is almost never the decisions. It is the admin nobody else is doing. Quarter takes that away, which is the difference between a committee that turns over every year and one that keeps its people.
Finances, documents, maintenance, decisions and correspondence — so you can answer a question without a two-hour search.
Proposals, discussion and votes captured as they happen, so a decision made in March is still explicable in November.
Owners ask Quarter about balances, documents and decisions and get an answer immediately, instead of adding to the committee's inbox.
Insurance renewals, the AGM, the sinking fund review — visible in advance rather than remembered late.
When your term ends, the next person inherits a system, not a folder of email attachments.
General information about Australian Capital Territory, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with Access Canberra or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in Australian Capital Territory and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
