In New Zealand? Visit quarter.nz for body corporates.
Nothing in Australian Capital Territory law says a owners corporation must pay somebody else to run it. Plenty of buildings already run themselves, and they are not heroic — they are organised. The work is real: meetings, minutes, levies, insurance, maintenance, and a set of records that has to stand up when somebody sells. Quarter does the part that used to require a manager, so what is left is the part owners were always best placed to do.
The Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011 gives the running of an ACT owners corporation to its executive committee, and appointing a manager is optional. The ACT is unusual in how prescriptive it is about the sinking fund plan — it is written into the Act rather than left to guidance — so a self-managing executive committee has a clearer target to hit here than in most jurisdictions, and less room to quietly drift.
Governed by the Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011, administered by Access Canberra.
Notice period, term and any rollover. This governs your timing far more than the Act does.
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.
Not just members — office-holders who have agreed what each of them will do.
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.
Clear motions, proper notice, a recorded vote. This is the document you will be asked for.
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.
The unit titles register, financial records, insurance policies, contracts, the sinking fund plan and both fund balances.
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 ACT expects a plan that runs at least ten years forward and is reviewed. If the plan you inherit is stale, refreshing it is the first substantive job.
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.
AGM, budget, levies, insurance renewal, valuation, plan review.
In Quarter: Book the year's meetings once — the AGM and the committee meetings around it — and Quarter carries the notice periods, the agendas and the invitations from there. The insurance renewal and the plan review sit on the same calendar, so the year is visible rather than remembered.
The ACT requires the plan; keeping it current is where schemes fall down. An unreviewed plan understates every cost by however many years of inflation have passed.
The committee's authority comes with a record-keeping obligation. Undocumented decisions are the ones that get challenged.
Rolling last year's number forward is how a fund that looked adequate becomes a special levy.
A self-managed building is run by the people who live in it. That changes the texture of the place: decisions get made by neighbours who will live with them, and a question about your own home gets answered by somebody who already knows the building.
Self-management fails on admin, not on goodwill. Quarter is built to carry the admin so a volunteer committee is doing the judgement, not the data entry.
Agendas built from your open items, notices sent on the statutory clock, motions and votes recorded as they happen, and minutes drafted from the meeting rather than from memory.
Strike a budget and Quarter raises the levies from it, invoices owners, chases arrears and reconciles what lands in the bank account.
Every decision, document, invoice and piece of correspondence in one place, searchable, and still there when the committee turns over.
Insurance renewals, the sinking fund, and the reporting Access Canberra expects, tracked with dates rather than remembered in somebody's calendar.
Owners ask Quarter about their building — balances, decisions, documents — and get an answer immediately, instead of adding a question to the committee's pile.
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.
