Apartment buyers in New South Wales can't check a building's record of serious defects before they buy.
Apartment buyers and owners' corporations
Where it stands
- Sourced (done)
- Kit (done)
- Wanted (next)
- Building
- Solved
How this problem came to be
- Found2 sourcesnsw.gov.au
- Quoted4 claimseach checked against its page
- BriefWrittenand what solved looks like
- Market2 signals$45 million
- Kit5 steps22 tools · 6 routes
- People0 want0 live it · 0 would test
The problem, broken down
- Who it hurts
- People buying units in apartment buildings completed in the last few years, and the owners' corporations who inherit the repair bills.
- The moment
- Making an offer on a unit, before learning about waterproofing failures and rising insurance costs in the building.
- What people do today
- Buyers rely on strata reports and inspections arranged at short notice; defect disputes sit in owners' corporation records and with the regulator.
- Why it's unsolved
- Defect information is spread across strata records, builders and the regulator, and research is published as totals, not per building.
- What solved looks like
- Before buying, a person looks up an address and sees whether serious defects have been reported for that building, what type, whether they were fixed, and the effect on levies and insurance, drawn from owners' corporations that opt in and from regulator orders.
Evidence
Every claim is tied to the source it comes from- 153% of apartment buildings registered from July 2018 to June 2024 reported serious defects in common property.
- 2Waterproofing defects were found in 44% of buildings and fire safety system defects in 28%.
- 3For 74% of buildings with serious defects, insurance had been affected, and 60% faced higher premiums.
- 4Owners' corporations reported spending $45 million on serious defects, an average of $215,400 per building to date.
Builders still need to know
Written from the cited sources. Anything they don't say is left as a question, not a guess.
Sources
From a public page with a citation.
- [1]Building Commission NSW: 2025 Strata Defects Report (PDF, Nov 2025)
- [2]Building Commission NSW: 2025 strata defects research report (page)
What the source says, in short
53% of apartment buildings registered from July 2018 to June 2024 reported serious defects in common property. Waterproofing defects were found in 44% of buildings and fire safety system defects in 28%. For 74% of buildings with serious defects, insurance had been affected, and 60% faced higher premiums. Owners' corporations reported spending $45 million on serious defects, an average of $215,400 per building to date.
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Market read
How big this is, from the evidence
- Building Commission NSW: 2025 Strata Defects Report (PDF, Nov 2025) ↗What it costs · High confidence$45 million“Owners' corporations reported spending $45 million on serious defects, an average of $215,400 per building to date.”
- Building Commission NSW: 2025 Strata Defects Report (PDF, Nov 2025) ↗What it costs · High confidence$215,400“Owners' corporations reported spending $45 million on serious defects, an average of $215,400 per building to date.”
How these were measured: A cost quoted in the problem's evidence, checked against its source when the brief was written.
For whoever takes this up
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