Strata plumbing: who pays, you or the owners corporation?

In a strata building the question is never really "who owns the ceiling that is dripping". It is "where does the water start, and whose pipe is that". The answer is written down, item by item, in a New South Wales rulebook that most owners never read until something leaks. In Parramatta, where 85.6% of homes are flats or apartments, that rulebook decides who pays for a lot of the plumbing work done in the suburb.

Here is what to do when something goes wrong in a unit or townhouse, in the order it actually needs doing, followed by what the rules say about who pays. If water is coming through a ceiling right now, read step 1, do it, and come back. If you cannot stop it, call the leak and burst pipe team and your building manager at the same time.

The short answer

It depends on where the fault is. The owners corporation must maintain and repair common property, which normally includes pipes inside common walls, floors and ceilings, shared drains and the main stopcock to your unit. You are responsible for pipes that serve only your lot and sit outside common walls, plus your own taps, toilet, basin, sink and bath. Report it to strata in writing first, get a plumber's written finding on the source, and check your by-laws before anyone pays.

1. Turn off your own isolation valve if water is running
2. Report it to the strata or building manager in writing, with photos
3. Get the source found and written down by a licensed plumber
4. Check your by-laws and strata plan for who owns that pipe
5. Let the owners corporation book common property repairs
6. Claim the damage through the right insurer

On this page

1. Stop the water you can stop
2. Report it in writing
3. Find where it starts
4. Check the by-laws and plan
5. Let the right people book it
6. Claim the damage properly
7. The memorandum, item by item
8. Why this matters so much here
9. Renovating a strata bathroom
10. Five things that make it worse
11. Emergency, or can it wait?

1. Stop the water you are allowed to stop

If water is running, find the isolation valve that serves only your unit and turn it off. It is usually under the kitchen sink, in the laundry, or in a small cupboard near the front door. That valve, and everything downstream of it that serves only your lot, is yours to operate.

The main stopcock to your unit is a different matter. The NSW common property memorandum lists the "main stopcock to unit" as the owners corporation's responsibility, so if the only shut-off you can find is in a shared riser cupboard or a service corridor rather than inside the apartment, that is a call to the building manager or the after-hours number on the noticeboard, not a job for a shifter.

If water is near power points, light fittings or the switchboard, turn the power off at your own board before you go near it. Our burst pipe guide covers the first ten minutes in more detail.

2. Report it to the strata or building manager in writing

Ring the building manager if you have one, then put it in writing to the strata managing agent the same day, even if you have already spoken to someone. An email with the time, the unit number, what you can see and a few photos is enough.

Writing it down matters for two reasons. First, the owners corporation has a legal duty to keep common property in good and serviceable repair, and a dated written report is how you prove when it knew. Second, if the water has come from another unit, the strata manager is the one who can contact that owner and, if needed, arrange access. Knock on the door upstairs as well if you can; a running tap or an overflowing bath is fixed in thirty seconds by the person who left it on.

Take photos and a short video before you mop up: the leak, the stain, and anything that has been damaged. Insurers and the owners corporation will both ask for them.

3. Find out where the water is actually coming from

In strata, the pipe decides the bill, not the ceiling. A damp patch in your bathroom ceiling can be your upstairs neighbour's shower, a pipe in the slab between you, or a riser in a common wall three floors up. Each of those has a different owner.

This is the part where a plumber earns their fee, and it is worth asking for the finding in writing. A good report says what was leaking, where it sits (inside your lot, in a common wall, in the slab, in a shared riser) and whether it serves one unit or several. That single sentence is usually what settles the argument with strata, the neighbour and the insurer.

Look out for the easy misreads. Water that appears below a shower is often failed waterproofing or grout rather than a pipe. A stain that grows only when the unit above uses its bathroom points up, not sideways. A leak that runs all day regardless of anyone's water use points to a pressurised supply pipe. Our guides to a leaking shower head and a blocked shower drain cover two of the most common strata versions of this in detail.

4. Check your by-laws and your strata plan

Before anyone argues about who pays, find out which rulebook applies. NSW publishes a common property memorandum that splits repairs item by item between lot owners and the owners corporation, but a scheme only uses it if its by-laws adopt it, and only where the by-laws do not already define common property.

The memorandum only applies where a scheme's by-laws adopt it, and a scheme can only modify it to drop items that are not common property for that building or are covered by a common property rights by-law. Your strata manager can send you the registered by-laws, and they are usually in the strata report if you bought recently.

The strata plan matters too, because it shows where your lot actually ends. Several items in the memorandum carry a note for plans registered before 1 July 1974: for balcony walls and the slab between two storeys of the same lot, older plans are to be read on their own terms. If your building is one of the older walk-up blocks, do not assume the modern rule fits.

5. Let the right people book the repair

Once you know which side of the line the fault is on, the booking follows. Common property is the owners corporation's to repair, and it will usually send its own plumber through the strata manager. If the fault is in your own fixtures or your own lot pipes, you book and pay, and it has to be a licensed plumber.

The owners corporation can send its contractors into your unit to do that work. Under section 122 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 it can enter any part of the scheme at any time in an emergency. Outside an emergency it needs the occupier's consent or an order from the Tribunal, and it is liable for damage to your lot or contents caused by the work unless the damage happened because someone obstructed it. Letting the plumber in promptly is in your interest.

Two things to avoid. Do not have your own plumber open up a common wall or the slab on the assumption that strata will reimburse you: a lot owner must not carry out work on common property without authority under the Act, a by-law or an owners corporation approval. And if you rent, do not call strata's plumber directly; your agent or landlord is your contact, and they deal with the owners corporation.

6. Claim for the damage the right way

Keep the repair and the damage separate in your head. Who fixes the pipe is one question; who pays for the ruined floorboards, plaster and furniture is another, and it usually runs through insurance.

The NSW Government's own strata guidance puts it bluntly: individuals are responsible for insuring their own personal property, such as contents. The owners corporation's building policy is the one that responds to damage to the building itself. Which policy pays, and who carries the excess, depends on the policies and your by-laws, so ask the strata manager early rather than assuming.

If the damage happened because the owners corporation failed to maintain or repair common property, the Act lets you recover any reasonably foreseeable loss from it as damages. You have 6 years from when you first became aware of the loss to bring that action. The owners corporation can delay a repair while it pursues whoever caused the damage, but only if the delay does not affect safety or anyone's access to their lot or the common property. If it stalls, NSW Fair Trading runs a free strata mediation service.

7. What the common property memorandum says, item by item

Here is the plumbing that matters, straight from the NSW memorandum, with a plain-English note on each. It only binds your building if your by-laws adopt it.

The owners corporation looks after:

• "Floor drain or sewer in common property". The shared drainage that carries every unit's waste away, including the stacks inside the building.
• "Pipes within common property wall, floor or ceiling". In a concrete apartment block that is often most of the supply and waste pipe you cannot see, because it runs in the slab and the boundary walls.
• "Main stopcock to unit". The valve that shuts off your whole apartment.
• "Storm water and on-site detention systems below ground". The pits, pipes and tanks under the driveway or car park.
• A hot water service located outside any lot's boundary, or one that serves more than one lot. A central hot water plant, for example.
• Ducting that carries pipes serving more than one lot.
• Original tiles and waterproofing fixed to common property walls and floors at the time the strata plan was registered.

The lot owner looks after:

• Pipes downstream of any stopcock that serve only that lot and are not inside a common property wall.
• The pipes and S-bend under a sink, laundry tub or hand basin, and the sink, tub and basin themselves.
• The toilet bowl and cistern, the bath, the shower screen, and taps and any associated hardware.
• A hot water service exclusive to a single lot, whether it is inside the unit or outside it.
• Tiles and waterproofing an owner added after the plan was registered, and tiles and waterproofing on non-common walls.
• In-sink food waste disposal units and water filtration systems, the dishwasher and the washing machine.

Notice what is missing from the owner's list: the shower waste and the floor waste. In most apartments those drain into the slab, so a blocked or leaking floor waste is at least arguably the owners corporation's. That is worth raising before you pay for it.

8. Why this question comes up so often in Parramatta

Parramatta is one of the most strata-heavy places in the state. At the 2021 Census, 85.6% of occupied homes in the suburb of Parramatta were flats or apartments, against 21.7% across New South Wales. Harris Park was 85.0% and Westmead 75.9%. Only 903 were separate houses. For most people reading this, "call a plumber" really does mean "call a plumber, and then work out whose bill it is".

Most of them are renting. 70.2% of Parramatta's occupied homes were rented in 2021, and 71.5% in Harris Park, more than double the NSW figure of 32.6%. So a large share of the plumbing problems in a Parramatta block are reported by someone who is neither the lot owner nor the owners corporation. Renters have their own path, covered in the FAQ below, and it runs through the agent.

The towers stack everything. In the high-rise belt through the CBD and Westmead, every bathroom on a given line usually drains into the same stack, and every unit's supply comes off shared risers. A fault on one floor shows up on another, which is why the source is so often in dispute and why the written finding in step 3 matters so much.

Townhouse complexes carry stormwater tanks. This one is peculiar to this part of Sydney. From late 1991, the four councils then covering the upper Parramatta River catchment, Parramatta, Holroyd, Blacktown and Baulkham Hills, applied a common on-site detention policy, and subdivisions approved after that generally had to include stormwater detention. The handbook City of Parramatta still publishes says any existing obligation to maintain one is found in the development consent or on the title, and a positive covenant on the title is the legal tool that requires the owners to repair and maintain it. In a strata complex using the memorandum, a detention system below ground is the owners corporation's. If the tank under the driveway silts up and the courtyards flood, that is a strata job.

The ground under the common lines moves. The shared sewer running under a villa or townhouse complex sits in the same Wianamatta shale clay as every other pipe in Parramatta, which swells when it is wet and shrinks when it dries. Over years that works old joints open, and a shared line under a common driveway is common property. When the whole complex's drains start gurgling at once, it is the owners corporation's problem, and our blocked drain team will say so in writing.

9. Renovating a bathroom in a strata unit

This is where owners get caught out most. The Act lets you do "minor renovations" with a simple approval at a general meeting, and it lists renovating a kitchen as one of them. But the same section says it does not cover work involving waterproofing or structural changes. A bathroom renovation almost always touches the waterproofing, so it needs the heavier approval route: a special resolution under section 108, which should also say who maintains the new work afterwards. If a resolution does not say, the owners corporation keeps the maintenance.

Once it is done, the memorandum treats tiles and waterproofing you added after registration as yours. So if your new shower leaks into the unit below in five years, that is likely your repair, not the building's. Keep the waterproofing certificate and your plumber's paperwork with the approval.

Swapping a tap, a toilet suite or a basin for a like-for-like one is a different job. Those fixtures are already on the owner's side of the list, though the work still has to be done by a licensed plumber in NSW.

10. Five things that make a strata leak worse

• Only telling strata over the phone. The owners corporation's duty is to keep common property in repair, and your claim for loss runs from when you knew. A dated email is the record both sides will need.
• Letting your own plumber cut into a common wall. Working on common property without authority is not allowed, and it hands the owners corporation a reason to argue about the damage.
• Refusing or delaying access. If the owners corporation is obstructed from doing a repair, it is no longer liable for the damage its work causes to your unit.
• Leaving a slow leak because it is "strata's problem". The NSW Government notes that a major insurer found more than half of residential strata insurance claims related to water damage, and that insurers impose higher excesses for water damage and often will not cover problems caused by a lack of maintenance. A drip left for months costs everyone, including you.
• Renovating first and asking later. Waterproofing work without the right approval leaves you owning a problem you may have to undo.

11. When it is a real emergency, and when it can wait

Treat it as urgent, day or night, if water is coming through a ceiling or light fitting, if it is near electrics, if you cannot stop it at your own valve, or if sewage is coming up through a floor waste. Call the building manager or the after-hours strata number and a plumber at the same time. For a renter, a burst water service, a blocked or broken toilet and a serious roof leak are all urgent repairs under NSW tenancy rules.

If what you have is a small stain that is not growing, a slow drip at a tap, or a toilet that runs on, you have time. Report it to strata in writing, book a plumber for business hours if it is on your side of the line, and let the owners corporation arrange its own if it is not. That is an appointment, not an after-hours call-out, and we will tell you honestly which one you are looking at.

The short version

• In strata, the pipe decides the bill: common walls, slabs, shared drains and the main stopcock are usually the owners corporation's; your fixtures and lot-only pipes are yours.
• Stop what you can, report it to strata in writing with photos, and get the source found and written down.
• The NSW common property memorandum only applies if your by-laws adopt it, so check them and your strata plan.
• With 85.6% of Parramatta homes in flats and about 70% rented, most local leaks run through a strata manager or an agent.
• You have 6 years from becoming aware of a loss to claim against the owners corporation for failing to maintain common property.