Strata common property inspection app
A strata manager walks the common property to see what the owners corporation is responsible for: the driveway gate that sticks, the lift lobby lighting, the pool fence latch, the gutters above the top floor. The report feeds the committee meeting and the maintenance plan, and it needs to say clearly which items are urgent, which are routine, and which belong to an individual lot instead. SurveyThanks keeps each building’s common areas as a register you inspect against every visit.
Built for strata managers running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Common property report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Common property report
Common property inspection — SP 00000 (fictional)
- Visit
- Quarterly common property walk
- Date
- 15 September 2026
- Committee meeting
- 29 September 2026
| Area | Observation | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Pool enclosure | Gate latch not self-closing | Priority: Urgent |
| Basement car park | Two light fittings not working | Priority: Routine |
| Front garden | Irrigation leaking at the north bed | Priority: Routine |
| Lot 6 balcony screen | Damaged; lot owner’s responsibility under by-laws | Priority: Refer to owner |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the common property report where your template puts it.
Common area register
- Area name
- Area type (pool, car park, lift, garden …)
- Contractor responsible
Per observation
- Linked area
- Description
- Priority (urgent / routine / monitor)
- Common property or lot responsibility
- Photo
Meeting
- Items for committee decision
- Quotes requested
- Items closed since last visit
Standards the report works to
- Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW)Owners corporation duty to maintain common property
- The duty the inspection exists to discharge, and the basis for referring lot items back to owners.
- Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 (Qld)Body corporate maintenance obligations
- The Queensland equivalent, used where the scheme is in Queensland.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the common property report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the strata common property inspection form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your rooms and external areas
Enter rooms and external areas once, as a register. Every one of your defects, photos and timber pest findings then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The common property report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a common property report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The summary says no major defects were found; the form carries a major structural defect on the rear wall.
Checks a residential property framework usually carries
- The standard’s required wording, limitations and exclusions are all present
- Every area is either reported on or listed as not accessed, with a reason
- Each defect in the summary appears in the body at the same severity
- Timber pest findings carry the risk statement the standard requires
Questions
- Can we see whether last quarter’s items were fixed?
- Observations are linked to the area register, so the next visit can show the open items for each area and record them closed or still outstanding.
- Can the report go straight to the committee?
- It renders into your template and goes out as a file or a password-protected link. There is no committee portal.
- Can we run the same walk across many schemes?
- Yes. The form is reused across every scheme; each building has its own area register, and recurring jobs can schedule the quarterly visit for each.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other residential property work we cover
- Property photography ordersPhoto floorplan package
- Rental entry condition reportsEntry condition report
- Rental exit and bond inspectionsExit condition report
- Residential dilapidation surveysDilapidation report
- Retaining wall assessmentsWall condition report
- Routine rental inspectionsRoutine inspection report
- Senior home safety auditsFalls risk audit
- Short-stay property auditsListing readiness report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your common property report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.