General information. This page describes strata, community and unit title rules in general terms, not legal advice about any scheme or purchase. A scheme’s own registered plan and by-laws decide how it runs. The official places to check are the Queensland Government’s body corporate pages, Landgate in Western Australia, SA.GOV.AU, Tasmania’s Land Titles Office and ACT Planning.
A dual-key home with a title for each side under one of these schemes is a scheme of two lots: each owner holds one lot, and what lies outside the lots is usually common property the two share. Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT each have a form of scheme that fits, and Queensland and Western Australia lighten the management rules when there are only two lots.
Lots and common property
Most of these schemes split land into lots and common property, though in Western Australia a survey-strata scheme may have none. Tasmania’s Land Titles Office describes a strata scheme as a development that splits a parcel of land into lots and common property, with a system for managing it. In Western Australia, Landgate explains common property as land in the scheme that is not inside any lot and is owned by all the owners as tenants in common, each in proportion to their lot’s unit entitlement.
A small scheme is still a scheme. Queensland’s body corporate guidance lists a duplex among the kinds of body corporate property, and Tasmania’s Land Titles Office says a body corporate can have just two members, where a strata scheme has two lots; a pair of villa units is its example.
Queensland: the Specified Two-lot Schemes Module
In Queensland, the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 (the BCCM Act) sets out what people involved with a body corporate are entitled to and responsible for, and regulation modules sit beside it, each made for a different type of community titles scheme. One of them is written for schemes of two lots. For a scheme registered under the Specified Two-lot Schemes Module, the Queensland Government’s pages say:
- there is no committee
- there are no general meetings: the scheme decides by lot owner agreements
- no formal budgets are needed, though the owners can agree on body corporate expenses
- each lot owner, or someone acting for them, can have reasonable access to the body corporate’s records, and an owner’s first request is free
- the scheme cannot engage a caretaking service contractor or authorise a letting agent
The same pages send owners to find out which module applies to their own body corporate, since the rules above hold only for a scheme registered under this one.
Western Australia: the two-lot scheme
Landgate’s pages deal with two kinds of scheme, strata and survey-strata. A strata plan can create lots inside a building, on more than one level, so that one lot can be above or below another. In a survey-strata scheme, each piece of common property is drawn on the scheme plan with its own number starting “CP”. The two count shares differently: a strata lot’s unit entitlement is worked out from the lots’ capital value, and a survey-strata lot’s from the unimproved value of the land, leaving buildings out.
For a scheme of two lots, the Strata Titles Act 1985 and Landgate’s WA Strata Living Guide change the ordinary rules:
| Matter | Most strata companies | A two-lot scheme |
|---|---|---|
| Annual general meeting | Held every 12 months, no later than 15 months after the last one | Not required |
| Quorum at a general meeting | People entitled to vote for half the lots | Someone entitled to vote for each of the two lots |
| Special resolution | Rules vary with the size of the scheme | Passes only as a unanimous resolution |
| Structural change to a lot in a strata scheme | Prior approval by resolution without dissent, or the prior written approval of the owner of each lot, given on the same terms and served on the strata company; in a leasehold scheme, the leasehold scheme’s owner must approve too | The prior written approval of the other lot’s owner (and, in a leasehold scheme, the owner of the leasehold scheme), who may refuse only on grounds the Act allows |
Landgate’s guide also says a two-lot scheme is exempt from keeping minutes and records of resolutions, having a separate letter box in the strata company’s name, keeping a roll of owners (each owner gives the other an address for notices instead) and setting up an administrative fund, and that the owners can take any of these on again by making a scheme by-law. It adds that an owner in a scheme of two to five lots can apply to the State Administrative Tribunal to have the strata company carry out an exempted function.
South Australia: community strata or community scheme
SA.GOV.AU calls it a community plan when land is split into two or more lots with an area of common property, and gives driveways as an example of the shared land. There are two types, community strata and community scheme.
The difference matters to a two-part building. In a community strata, the buildings form part of the common property, so the community corporation has to maintain and insure them. In a community scheme, lot boundaries come from surveyed land measurements, and each owner maintains and insures the buildings on their own lot.
Tasmania: the body corporate
Tasmania’s Land Titles Office says no one has to register a body corporate with the corporate regulator: it comes into existence by itself when the Recorder of Titles registers the strata scheme. Nor does an owner apply to join. Each lot owner becomes a member automatically once the transfer of their strata lot is registered.
The ACT: unit title or community title
ACT Planning describes a unit title as owning a defined part of a Units Plan, with an apartment or unit as the example. The owners corporation holds a lease of the common property. A community title is the other form: two or more separately owned lots sharing a communal space, which the owners usually manage through a body corporate.
Where a home cannot be split
Separate titles are not open to every two-part home. In Victoria, a home read as a main home with a small second home stays one property: the planning department says a small second home cannot be subdivided or sold separately from the main home. How each reading works is in the guide before this one.