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Nothing in Western Australia law says a strata company 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.
In Western Australia the body is a strata company and the committee is a council of owners, and the Strata Titles Act 1985 gives the council the running of the scheme. Engaging a strata manager is a choice. The 2020 reforms did two things that matter here: they set out what a strata manager owes the scheme, and they made a ten-year maintenance plan compulsory for larger schemes — which is the piece a self-managing council most often has to go and build.
Governed by the Strata Titles Act 1985, administered by Landgate.
Since 2020 a strata manager owes the scheme defined duties and disclosure. Read what you are currently entitled to receive before you decide what you will have to replace.
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.
Elected at the AGM, with the office-holders named. A council that exists on paper but has never met is the usual starting point, and the first thing to fix.
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.
Fourteen days' notice with the papers. Watch the quorum: WA's 50% threshold is higher than the eastern states', so plan proxies before the day rather than on it.
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 strata roll, financial records, insurance, the maintenance plan if one exists, and the administrative and reserve fund balances.
In Quarter: Bank accounts, levy invoices and payments reconcile in one place, with arrears, the budget and both funds visible to owners rather than reported to them once a year.
If your scheme is over the threshold and no plan exists, this is the gap that matters most. It also tells you whether your reserve fund contributions are anywhere near right.
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, valuation. Four dates, booked, is most of WA compliance.
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.
Fifty per cent of lots is a real hurdle in a building with absentee owners. Collect proxies in advance for any meeting whose outcome you actually need.
Larger WA schemes must have one. Many do not, and only discover it when a buyer's solicitor asks for it.
They fund different things and cannot be quietly swapped. Buildings that borrow from the reserve fund to cover day-to-day costs run out of both.
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 reserve fund, and the reporting Landgate 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 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.
