In New Zealand? Visit quarter.nz for body corporates.
Nothing in South Australia law says a strata 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.
South Australia runs two regimes side by side. Older buildings are usually strata corporations under the Strata Titles Act 1988; newer and mixed developments are usually community corporations under the Community Titles Act 1996. Neither requires you to appoint a manager, and South Australia leaves more of the running of a scheme to the corporation itself than most states do — which makes self-management common and good records essential.
Governed by the Strata Titles Act 1988 and Community Titles Act 1996, administered by Consumer and Business Services.
Strata Titles or Community Titles. The certificate of title and the plan will tell you, and every subsequent answer depends on it.
Management appointments in SA vary widely in scope. Some are full service, many are bookkeeping and an AGM. Knowing which you have tells you how much you are actually taking on.
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.
Put the termination and the new arrangements as clear motions, and minute the vote.
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.
The corporation's records, insurance details, financial records and both funds. Ask in writing with a date.
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.
SA does not require a 10-year plan, which means nothing stops a corporation from under- collecting for a decade. Building one anyway is the single highest-value thing a self-managing SA corporation can do.
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, insurance renewal and valuation. Four dates in a calendar owners can see.
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 absence of a statutory 10-year plan is not the absence of a 10-year problem. The roof ages on the same schedule either way.
Community and strata corporations differ on meetings, by-laws and common property. Advice for one is regularly wrong for the other.
These are different numbers, and the gap between them has widened sharply since 2020.
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 Consumer and Business Services 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 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.
