Strata Management Software: Build vs Buy (Australia and BC)

Most strata managers should buy: established platforms already handle levies, trust accounting, meetings and records. Build only when your workflows keep fighting the product, or you are a PropTech founder selling to managers. Either way, the software must follow each jurisdiction's rules: in British Columbia, for example, owners can demand most records within 2 weeks, and NSW, Victoria and Queensland each have separate acts.

This guide is for strata and owners corporation managers outgrowing their current tool, and for PropTech founders deciding whether a strata product is worth building. RAITHub builds property software, so we have an interest in the "build" answer; that is why the table below is honest about when buying wins. The legal points are general information, not legal advice. Strata law changes often and differs by state and province; confirm every rule with your adviser and the regulator linked in each row.

Should we build or buy strata management software?

Buy if you manage schemes the way most managers do and the pain is price or a few missing features. Build if the software is your product, or if your operation has a workflow no product supports and it costs you hours every week. The deciding factor is usually not features; it is who keeps up with the law. When a state changes its strata rules, a vendor updates one product for all its customers. With a custom build, that work is yours, forever.

Factor	Buy an established platform	Build custom
Time to first use	Weeks: data migration and training	Months: spec, build, test, migrate
Cost profile	Ongoing subscription; model it over 3 years	Up-front build plus ongoing maintenance
Keeping up with law changes	The vendor's job	Your job, per jurisdiction, every time the rules change
Trust accounting and audit	Usually built in and familiar to auditors	High risk; integrate with an accounting system instead
Owner and committee portals	Standard, with limited control over the experience	Fully yours: branding, workflows, integrations
Unusual workflows	Workarounds and spreadsheets	Modelled directly
Data ownership and exports	Check export formats before you sign	Yours by default
Selling it to other managers	Not possible	The whole point, for a PropTech founder

A useful middle path: keep the platform for the regulated core (levies, trust accounts, statutory records) and build only the layer that differentiates you, such as a resident app experience, a maintenance workflow or a reporting portal, on top of its exports or API.

How do strata rules differ across NSW, Victoria, Queensland and BC?

Each has its own act, its own terms and its own reporting duties. A product serving more than one jurisdiction has to treat them as separate rulebooks, not as settings on one.

Jurisdiction	Main legislation	Governing body	A detail that affects software
New South Wales	Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 and the Strata Schemes Management Regulation 2016	Owners corporation, strata committee	Every scheme files an annual report through Strata Hub within 3 months of its AGM (NSW Government: Strata Hub). The NSW Government says its latest strata changes started on 1 April 2026, with a training requirement for committee members to follow (NSW Government: strata).
Victoria	Owners Corporations Act 2006	Owners corporation	Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes guidance on meetings, finance, insurance and record keeping (Consumer Affairs Victoria). Confirm fund and record rules with your adviser before modelling them.
Queensland	Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 and its regulation modules	Body corporate, committee	The Queensland Government notes that the older Building Units and Group Titles Act applies to some bodies corporate, and points them to the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management (Queensland Government). One scheme, possibly two rulebooks, depending on its age.
British Columbia	Strata Property Act and regulations (BC Government: strata housing)	Strata corporation, strata council	Since 1 November 2023, strata corporations must contribute at least 10% of the annual operating fund to the contingency reserve fund each year (BC Government: CRF). Strata disputes go to the Civil Resolution Tribunal.

The practical consequence: a custom product needs a jurisdiction attribute on every scheme, and every rule that depends on law, such as retention periods, notice periods, meeting and voting rules or fund structures, reads from that attribute. Hard-coding one state's rules is the most expensive mistake a strata build can make, because it surfaces only when you sign your first client in another state.

What records does strata software have to keep in BC?

BC's guidance is specific enough to show what "records" means in software terms. Owners must receive the bylaws and rules within one week of a request and all other records within two weeks, and copies can cost up to 25 cents a page (BC Government: information and record keeping). The same page sets retention periods: correspondence for two years; minutes, financial records and budgets for six; and some records, including depreciation reports and legal opinions, permanently.

Put those rules in data, not in scattered code paths, so a second jurisdiction is a new row rather than a rewrite:

// Retention per jurisdiction, from the regulator's published guidance.
// BC figures: gov.bc.ca, information and record keeping.
type Retention = { years: number } | { permanent: true }

export const RETENTION: Record<string, Record<string, Retention>> = {
  BC: {
    correspondence: { years: 2 },
    minutes: { years: 6 },
    financialRecords: { years: 6 },
    budgets: { years: 6 },
    depreciationReports: { permanent: true },
    legalOpinions: { permanent: true },
  },
  // NSW, VIC, QLD: add only after your adviser confirms each rule.
}

A records portal that meets a 2-week deadline also needs a request log: who asked, when, what was supplied and when. That is an audit trail, and how to design an audit log covers the pattern.

How should strata software split levies by unit entitlement?

Levies are commonly apportioned by each lot's unit or lot entitlement; BC's guidance, for example, has a page on unit entitlement. The exact rules and exceptions depend on the jurisdiction and the scheme, so confirm yours with your adviser. The engineering trap is rounding: split A$100,000 across 37 lots by entitlement and the cents rarely add back to the total. Work in integer cents and hand out the remainder deterministically:

type Lot = { id: string; entitlement: number }

// Split a levy (in cents) across lots by entitlement.
// Largest-remainder rounding: the shares always sum to the total.
export function apportionLevy(totalCents: number, lots: Lot[]): Map<string, number> {
  const totalEntitlement = lots.reduce((sum, l) => sum + l.entitlement, 0)
  const shares = lots.map((l) => {
    const exact = (totalCents * l.entitlement) / totalEntitlement
    return { id: l.id, cents: Math.floor(exact), remainder: exact - Math.floor(exact) }
  })
  let left = totalCents - shares.reduce((sum, s) => sum + s.cents, 0)
  for (const s of [...shares].sort((a, b) => b.remainder - a.remainder)) {
    if (left === 0) break
    s.cents += 1
    left -= 1
  }
  return new Map(shares.map((s) => [s.id, s.cents]))
}

Test it with a property that must always hold: the sum of the shares equals the total, for any set of entitlements. A levy run that is out by a few cents is a reconciliation problem every quarter for every scheme.

Which user roles and portals does a strata platform need?

More than a rental product. A strata platform serves people with different rights over the same building, and some people hold several roles at once: an owner who sits on the committee and also rents out a second lot.

• Strata or owners corporation manager: runs levies, meetings, records and contractors across many schemes.
• Committee or council member: approves spending, sees financials, votes on committee matters.
• Owner: pays levies, sees notices and minutes, requests records, votes at general meetings.
• Resident or tenant: reports maintenance, books common facilities, receives notices, but sees no owner financials.
• Contractor: sees only the jobs assigned to them.

Permissions must be checked per scheme and per role on the server, never only in the interface, and one person's roles in scheme A must never leak into scheme B. How to design SaaS authorisation covers role and permission models, and building a maintenance request system covers the contractor workflow.

This is where RAITHub's proof applies, with a caveat. PropDesk, the property management platform RAITHub built, has 4 roles (landlord, tenant, contractor and admin), each with its own portal from one codebase and server-side permission checks, plus Stripe rent collection, maintenance routing, 5 daily automation jobs and 1,024 automated tests (PropDesk case study). It is not a strata product; RAITHub has not shipped strata software, levy runs or general-meeting voting. The role, permission and money-flow patterns carry over; the strata rules would be new work.

Which parts of strata software should you never build yourself?

• Trust accounting. Money a strata manager holds for owners corporations is typically subject to state or provincial licensing and trust-account rules, and auditors expect familiar reports. Integrate with a proven accounting system; confirm your obligations with your adviser. RAITHub has not built a trust-accounting system.
• Payment rails from scratch. In Australia, over 95,000 businesses offer BPAY, which works through a biller code and a customer reference number and is available in the online banking of over 140 institutions (Australian Payments Plus: BPAY). Use your bank's or payment provider's integration. RAITHub has shipped Stripe, not BPAY, so treat this as engineering guidance.
• Your own e-signature or identity verification. Buy these as services.

What does a custom strata platform cost to build?

A first release with multi-role portals, levy notices, maintenance, documents and meeting notices is a multi-month project, similar in scale to the property platforms in the real estate platform cost guide. Voting, jurisdiction-specific rules and data migration from your current system push it up. The MVP cost estimator gives a first range for your feature list. Compare it with three years of subscription for your lot count, plus the staff time your current workarounds cost; if the build does not win clearly on that comparison, buy.

How does working with a Dhaka team fit Australian and BC hours?

Dhaka is on UTC+6 with no daylight saving. Sydney shares about 5 working hours with Dhaka, 4 during Australian daylight saving, and Perth about 7. For Canada, RAITHub offers a daily 2-hour evening overlap, Dhaka 19:00 to 21:00; in Vancouver that is 05:00 to 07:00 in winter and 06:00 to 08:00 in summer, so most BC collaboration runs async with written daily handoffs. The working week is agreed per client.

Why RAITHub for this

• Multi-role property software, tested. PropDesk's 4 portals, server-side permissions and 1,024 tests are the same patterns a strata product needs.
• Multi-tenant from day one. BlockEstate, a multi-tenant listing and inquiry platform, reached its MVP in 6 weeks; Sundor Skin enforces row-level security across 146 PostgreSQL tables. Scheme-level data isolation is the same problem. The real estate industry page summarises this work.
• Honest scoping. Jurisdiction rules are listed as assumptions in the quote, to be confirmed with your adviser, not guessed at in code.
• Clear terms. A free 15-minute technical audit, then a fixed written quote; fixed scope or a dedicated monthly team. You own the IP. See SaaS development for what a build includes, and the property management software guide for the feature set.

When you don't need us

• You manage schemes in one jurisdiction the standard way. Buy a platform built for it; it will track law changes for you.
• Your main pain is trust accounting or audit. That is an accounting-system decision, not a custom build.
• You need a native mobile app for residents. RAITHub builds web applications only.
• You need someone on site, or a vendor certified to SOC 2 or ISO 27001. RAITHub has no office in Australia or Canada and holds neither.
• You want developers placed in your team. RAITHub does not offer staff augmentation.

Sources checked on 30 September 2026. General information only; strata law differs by jurisdiction and changes often, so confirm with your adviser.

If you are building a strata product or a layer on top of your platform, book the free 15-minute technical audit. Bring your jurisdictions, your lot count and the workflow your current tool cannot handle.

Frequently asked questions

Should a strata manager build their own software?

Usually not. Established strata platforms handle levies, trust accounting, meetings and statutory records, and they track law changes for every customer. Building makes sense when the software is your product, or when a workflow no product supports costs you hours every week.

Which laws govern strata schemes in Australia?

Each state has its own: the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 in NSW, the Owners Corporations Act 2006 in Victoria and the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 in Queensland, among others. Software serving several states has to model each separately. Confirm the details with your adviser.

What does BC's Strata Property Act mean for strata software?

It shapes funds and records. BC strata corporations must contribute at least 10% of the annual operating fund to the contingency reserve fund, and owners can obtain most records within two weeks of a request. Software needs retention rules, a request log and fund tracking that match.

How much does custom strata management software cost?

A first release with multi-role portals, levies, maintenance and documents is a multi-month project; voting, jurisdiction rules and data migration add to it. Use an estimator for a first range, then compare it with three years of subscription fees before deciding.

Has RAITHub built strata management software?

No. RAITHub built PropDesk, a property management platform with 4 role-based portals, Stripe rent collection and 1,024 tests, and BlockEstate, a multi-tenant listing platform. Those patterns carry over to strata, but strata rules, levy runs and voting would be new work.

Can strata software integrate BPAY for levies?

Yes, usually through your bank or payment provider, using a biller code and a customer reference number for each lot. RAITHub has shipped Stripe payments but not BPAY, so it scopes BPAY as a separate line item with its own reconciliation tests.