What are body corporate or strata fees, and how do they affect your budget?

If you’re buying a unit, townhouse or apartment that shares common property with other owners — a car park, foyer, garden, lift or roof — you’ll almost always pay a recurring fee to help fund the upkeep of that shared property. In everyday conversation it’s usually called a strata fee; the more formal term is a body corporate fee or owners corporation fee, and which name applies technically depends on the state you’re buying in. For your budget, what matters is simpler: it’s an ongoing cost that sits alongside your mortgage repayment, council rates and home insurance — not a one-off you pay at settlement and then forget about.

A body corporate (also called an owners corporation, strata company or similar, depending on the state) is the legal entity made up of every owner in a strata scheme. It’s responsible for managing, insuring and maintaining the building’s common property. The fee you pay — usually called a levy — is how that entity funds those responsibilities. You don’t pay a contractor directly for common-area repairs or building insurance; you pay into the scheme, and the body corporate arranges the work on behalf of all owners.

Strata title covers a large share of higher-density housing in Australia — most units, apartments and many townhouses — and it’s increasingly common in some house-and-land communities too. The ABS does not publish a strata-title tenure category in Census data, and no single land titles registry publishes a national figure — check the ABS dwelling-structure data or your state’s land titles registry for the share that applies to your area. means this article can’t give you an exact share, but if the property you’re looking at has shared common areas, assume a levy applies until you’ve confirmed otherwise.

What do body corporate or strata levies actually fund?

Most Australian strata and community title schemes split the levy across two broad purposes, even though the exact names and legislative detail differ by state:

Fund	What it covers
Administrative (or general) fund	Day-to-day running costs
Capital works (or sinking) fund	Longer-term repairs and renewals

The administrative fund typically pays for things like building insurance, cleaning and gardening of common areas, minor repairs and the managing agent’s fee. The capital works (or sinking) fund builds up over time to cover bigger jobs — repainting the exterior, replacing a lift, repairing the roof — so owners aren’t hit with the full cost in the year the work happens.

There’s no single national rule for how often levies are billed, either — each state leaves the payment schedule to the scheme itself rather than legislating one interval. As at July 2026, NSW guidance confirms the owners corporation decides how often lot owners pay, though levy notices are typically issued quarterly (NSW); Victoria’s owners corporations typically collect their annual fees quarterly too, as set out in the scheme’s own budget (Victoria). Either way, levies are charged periodically rather than as one lump sum, and the specific schedule and amount for any property you’re considering will be in the body corporate’s own records.

There’s also no single verified figure for what a “typical” levy costs. Schemes vary enormously by building age, size, amenities — a lift or pool generally pushes the cost up — and how much has already been set aside in the capital works fund. That’s a confirmed absence, not an unresearched one: no state or territory fair trading, consumer affairs or land titles regulator publishes a standard or typical levy dollar figure or percentage, and every jurisdiction treats the levy as scheme-specific, set from that scheme’s own budget (NSW, Queensland, Victoria). Rather than relying on an average that may not apply to the property in front of you, the reliable figure is the actual levy shown in the seller’s disclosure documents and the body corporate’s financial records, including any special levies already planned.

How lenders and your own budget treat the fee

A body corporate levy is a certain, recurring cost — closer to council rates than to a one-off — so it belongs in the same part of your budget as your mortgage repayment, not treated as an afterthought. Lenders take a broadly similar view when assessing what you can service. Under ASIC’s responsible lending guidance, a lender must make reasonable inquiries into a borrower’s likely expenses before approving a loan; expense benchmarks like HEM exist to sanity-check what’s declared, not to replace it (see our guide to how banks assess living expenses against the HEM benchmark). A declared strata levy is one of the ongoing costs that inquiry can pick up.

APRA’s prudential guidance for lenders (APG 223, current as at July 2026) goes further for investment purchases specifically: it describes prudent practice as also accounting for “a borrower’s investment property-related fees and expenses (e.g. strata requirements)” when a lender estimates what rental income actually nets a borrower. That’s regulator guidance about investment lending, not a rule about owner-occupier budgeting — but the practical takeaway holds either way. Treat the levy as a fixed, ongoing line item in your own numbers, the same way you’d treat electricity or your phone plan, and factor it in before you work out how a mortgage repayment fits your income (see our guide to how banks calculate borrowing capacity).

How body corporate/strata schemes differ by state

The entity, the fee and the law behind them don’t go by one name across Australia — the terminology and the legislation both differ state to state, and each jurisdiction sets its own rules for how levies are set, when special levies can be raised, how arrears are treated and what a seller must disclose before you exchange contracts. Here’s how the name of the entity and the governing legislation compare, current as at July 2026:

State/territory	What the entity is called	Governing legislation
NSW	Strata scheme, run by an owners corporation	Strata Schemes Management Act 2015
QLD	Community titles scheme, run by a body corporate	Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997
VIC	Owners corporation (formerly called body corporate)	Owners Corporations Act 2006
WA	Strata company	Strata Titles Act 1985
TAS	Body corporate	Strata Titles Act 1998
ACT	Owners corporation (units plan)	Unit Titles Act 2001; Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011
SA	Strata corporation, or community corporation on community-titled land	Strata Titles Act 1988; Community Titles Act 1996
NT	Body corporate	Unit Title Schemes Act 2009 (new schemes); Unit Titles Act 1975 (older schemes)

Sources: NSW · QLD · VIC · WA · TAS · ACT · SA · NT.

Because the detail genuinely differs by state, treat any blanket claim about “the” strata rules with caution — a Victorian buyer talking about a “body corporate” and a NSW buyer talking about an “owners corporation” are each using the wrong term for their own state, so check the specific scheme’s records plus your own state’s regulator rather than assume experience from one state carries over to another.

Beyond the regular levy, a body corporate can also raise a one-off special levy to cover an unexpected cost — storm damage, a defect rectification, a lift failure. How much notice owners get, and what happens if a levy isn’t paid, is set by state legislation rather than being uniform nationally, and the gap between states is real. In NSW, both standard and special levies need at least 30 days’ written notice to pay (cut to 14 days for a special levy raised for emergency repairs), and interest of 10% a year (simple interest, as at July 2026) applies to a levy still unpaid a month after its due date, though the owners corporation can vote to waive it (NSW). In Victoria, a fee notice gives owners 28 days to pay, and the maximum penalty interest rate for late payment is set under the Penalty Interest Rates Act 1983 rather than by the scheme itself (Victoria). In Queensland, unpaid levies can attract interest of up to 30% a year (as at July 2026) (Queensland). Because both the notice period and the interest treatment depend on where the property is, check the relevant state legislation — and the scheme’s own by-laws — rather than assume one state’s rule carries over to another.

What else to check before you rely on the number

A body corporate fee isn’t the only extra, ongoing figure that comes with a strata purchase, and it isn’t something a listing price tells you. Before you rely on any quoted levy, a conveyancer or solicitor can order a strata search (the exact name for this document also varies by state) that shows the scheme’s current levies, any special levies already planned, outstanding disputes and the condition of its funds. That sits alongside the other costs first home buyers budget for around a purchase — stamp duty, conveyancing and building/pest inspections among them (see our guide to the hidden costs of buying a home).

Conveyancing fees themselves don’t have one published figure either, for the same reason strata levies don’t — costs vary by property and by provider (see our guide to conveyancing fees). Getting a quote beats assuming a number, for both.

What to weigh, rather than a figure to chase

A lower advertised levy isn’t automatically the better outcome, and a higher one isn’t automatically a warning sign. A few things worth weighing instead of a single number:

• How well-funded is the capital works fund? A scheme with a low levy but a thin capital works fund may be heading toward a special levy once major work falls due.
• What does the levy actually include? Some schemes bundle building insurance, or even amenities like a pool or gym, into the fee; others charge separately for extras.
• The building’s age and complexity. Lifts, pools and shared plant generally cost more to insure and maintain than a small, low-rise walk-up.
• The alternative isn’t free. A freestanding house has no body corporate fee, but you carry all of its maintenance, insurance and repair costs individually rather than sharing them across a group of owners — a different cost, not a lower one by default.

None of that points to a single right answer. Which trade-off matters more depends on the specific property, the building’s age and condition, and how you weigh a predictable shared cost against full individual responsibility for upkeep.

Where to get the actual numbers for your property

There’s no way to answer “how much will my levy be” or “is this a good fee” in the abstract — it depends entirely on the specific scheme, its records and its plans, none of which a general article can see. Before you rely on a figure from a listing, ask for the body corporate’s latest financial statements and levy notices, and have your conveyancer review the strata search as part of your due diligence before you exchange contracts. A mortgage broker can also help you work through how the levy sits alongside your likely mortgage repayment and other outgoings when you’re working out your buying budget (see our guide to how much deposit you need for a first home in Australia for the rest of that picture, and our guide to the stages of buying a house in Australia for where this check fits in the process).