Strata Plumbing: Who Pays for What?

In strata plumbing, who pays is the question every strata manager, owner and tenant asks the moment a pipe fails. Until someone can point to where the fault sits, that is unclear whether the repair comes out of the strata levy or the lot owner’s own pocket. The short answer follows the boundary between common property and your lot, not the ceiling stain or the unit where the water shows up.

That boundary is set out in the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, and it holds up in most cases. It gets harder where a pipe crosses from common property into a lot, or where the strata scheme has adopted its own rules for specific items.

Strata Plumbing Who Pays for What: The Common Property Rule

Under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, an owners corporation “must properly maintain and keep in a state of good and serviceable repair the common property and any personal property vested in the owners corporation.” It must also “renew or replace any fixtures or fittings comprised in the common property.” That is the general rule behind section 106 of the Act, and it is why the owners corporation, not an individual owner, is the one who normally pays for common property plumbing.

So it comes down to one line: does the pipe sit inside your lot and serve only your lot, or is it part of the shared building? The table below is the starting point for most disputes we see on site.

That last row catches committees out. A containment backflow device sits on the building’s shared connection to the water main, so the annual test is an owners corporation cost even though every lot benefits from it. Our guide on why backflow prevention protects your drinking water explains what the device is doing.

What Counts as Common Property in a Strata Building?

The registered strata plan is the real test. If your unit is not shown as part of a lot on that plan, it is common property, full stop. NSW Government guidance on strata repairs and maintenance states that the owners corporation is responsible for items including roofs, gutters, boundary walls, common area lighting and plumbing in boundary walls and under the floor, while owners are responsible for plumbing fixtures inside their own unit such as baths, toilets, sinks and showers.

In practice, common property plumbing usually includes:

• Water, gas and sewer risers serving more than one lot.
• Shared plant such as hot water systems, pumps and backflow prevention devices on the building’s water connection.
• Roof, box gutter and downpipe drainage.
• Structural walls, floors and ceilings that sit outside a lot boundary.
• Common laundries, plant rooms and car park drainage.

In NSW, that line is where the owners corporation’s responsibility starts and stops. If the strata plan shows an item as part of your lot, it is your responsibility, whatever the plumbing is doing.

What Is the Common Property Memorandum?

The general rule in section 106 is not the end of it. A strata scheme’s by-laws can adopt a common property memorandum under section 107, a document prescribed by the regulations that sets out, item by item, whether the owner or the owners corporation is responsible for maintaining, repairing or replacing a specific part of the common property.

Where a scheme has adopted one, the memorandum can shift responsibility for something like an air conditioning condenser or a hot water unit onto the lot owner, even though it would normally sit with the owners corporation as common property. It can also be modified by the by-laws to exclude specific items altogether. Before assuming the general rule applies to your building, ask your strata manager whether a common property memorandum has been adopted and what it says about plumbing, because it can quietly change who pays for a specific fixture.

Who Pays When a Water Leak Crosses Between Two Units?

This is the most common strata water leak dispute we see on site, and who pays is rarely as obvious as it looks from the ceiling.

When a leak shows up as a stain on the ceiling of the unit below, the stain is almost never directly under the source. Water tracks sideways along the top of a concrete slab, or down the inside of a stud wall, before it finds a gap to drip through, sometimes a metre or two from where the pipe failed. We do not guess from the stain. We isolate services floor by floor, run a moisture meter along the slab, and where that is inconclusive, a dye test or a thermal camera on the suspect pipe run. Only once the source is confirmed does the who-pays question become answerable, because guessing wrong means one owner pays for another owner’s repair.

Once the plumber has traced it, the split follows the usual rule: a pipe serving only the upstairs lot puts the cost on that owner, and a shared stack or common property pipe puts it on the owners corporation. Our guide on how to find a water leak and get it fixed covers the detection methods in more detail, and our water leak detection service is built around exactly this kind of tracing work.

Who Is Responsible for a Blocked Shared Stack?

A blocked shared stack behaves differently to a blocked single-lot drain, and the pattern itself is a useful clue. Every unit plumbed into that riser backs up at roughly the same time, not just the lot where the blockage sits. If three apartments on the same stack call about slow drainage on the same afternoon, that is usually the sign that the problem is common property, not three separate lot issues.

Tree root intrusion, grease build-up in a shared kitchen stack and collapsed sewer branches are the usual causes, and they sit with the owners corporation to fix because they affect more than one lot. Our article on sewer repairs covers what a collapsed or root-affected pipe looks like underground.

What About Repairs Inside Your Own Bathroom or Kitchen?

Apartment plumbing repairs inside your own walls, such as a dripping tap, a running toilet or a failed shower mixer, are the lot owner’s responsibility. These are fixtures, not common property, even though the pipe feeding them may run through a common property wall on its way in.

The exception is damage caused by something outside your control, such as a common property pipe failing inside your ceiling and ruining your bathroom fit-out below. In that case the source of the fault decides who pays, not the location of the damage.

Owners Corporation or Body Corporate? Same Job, Different Name

If you searched for body corporate plumbing repairs and landed here, the short version is that NSW does not use the term body corporate. Queensland and some other states use it for the same entity that NSW calls the owners corporation. The legal duties are broadly similar across the country, but this guide, and the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, applies to NSW schemes specifically.

What If the Owners Corporation Won’t Fix a Plumbing Problem?

Section 106 does not leave the duty optional. An owner can recover damages from the owners corporation for a breach of that statutory duty, and can bring a claim for up to six years after first becoming aware of the loss.

If a repair keeps stalling, the usual path is to escalate in stages rather than go straight to a tribunal:

• Raise it in writing with the strata manager or committee, and ask for it on the agenda at the next general meeting.
• Apply for mediation through NSW Fair Trading’s strata dispute service, which is free and compulsory for most strata disputes, including repairs, maintenance and water damage, before a matter can go to a tribunal.
• If mediation fails, apply to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, NCAT, for a binding order. NCAT decisions typically take at least six weeks once both sides have finished presenting their evidence.

Best for: owners and strata managers with a genuine common property repair that is being delayed or refused. Not for lot owners chasing repairs inside their own bathroom or kitchen, because that expense sits with the owner regardless of how the dispute is escalated.

Who Pays for Plumbing Repairs in a Strata Scheme?

The owners corporation pays for common property, which includes shared risers, roof and balcony drainage, and any pipe serving more than one lot. A lot owner pays for plumbing and fixtures that sit inside their own lot and serve only that lot. Section 106 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 sets the owners corporation’s general duty to maintain and repair common property.

What Counts as Common Property in a NSW Strata Building?

Common property is generally anything not shown as part of a lot on the registered strata plan. NSW Government guidance lists plumbing in boundary walls and under the floor as common property, while internal fixtures such as baths, toilets and sinks are the lot owner’s responsibility. A common property memorandum under section 107 can set a different split for specific items.

It depends on where the leak starts. If it starts in a pipe serving only the lot above, that owner is generally responsible for the damage it causes below. If it starts in a shared stack or a common property pipe, the owners corporation is responsible. A plumber needs to trace the source before responsibility can be worked out, because the damage rarely sits directly under the failed pipe.

Can the Owners Corporation Refuse to Fix a Plumbing Problem?

Not indefinitely. Section 106 places a statutory duty on the owners corporation to maintain and repair common property, and an owner can recover damages for a breach of that duty for up to six years after becoming aware of the loss. If a repair stalls, the next steps are a motion at a general meeting, then mediation through NSW Fair Trading, and finally an application to NCAT.

Where EKORP Plumbing Fits

We settle these disputes on site for strata managers, owners corporations and facilities managers across St George and the Sutherland Shire. We put the source of a fault in writing before any invoice goes out, so committees and owners are working from the same report rather than a guess. For scheme-wide plumbing, see our strata plumbing services, also available for strata buildings in St George. For committees managing multiple buildings, our property management and facilities management services cover scheduled maintenance as well as callouts.

As a plumber in southern Sydney holding NSW Plumbing Lic 322223C, we handle common property plumbing from a single blocked stack to a full riser replacement.

To get a written assessment of a plumbing fault before your next committee meeting, contact EKORP Plumbing.

EKORP Plumbing · Bayside Plaza, Brighton-Le-Sands NSW 2216 · 02 8667 5354 · Mon–Fri 7AM–5PM, 24/7 emergency · NSW Plumbing Lic 322223C