Why I built LevyCheck

I was 30 when I first persuaded a bank to lend me enough money to buy an apartment. Ten years into a career, committing myself to a frightening amount of debt, and discovering strata levies.

Nothing about it was clear, except for the sizeable, quarterly, non-negotiable bill. I knew nothing about maintaining a large apartment block. What that strata levy paid for, how it was being spent, whether it was enough — or more — than needed to keep the building maintained… how would I know?

I dug into it, with all my professional get-stuff-done energy. I got a strata report, which was generic and vague, with no decipherable plan and committee meeting minutes that told me little. I called the strata manager and got voicemail. I asked my new neighbours whether the strata manager was any good and received general, weary shrugs. So I attended the next committee meeting — some months later — asked questions, and got… not much. Lots of slow talk to say very little and explain nothing.

And the whole drawn out, bureaucratic process wore me down, as it's designed to. It sucked all my energy until I gave up and filed strata under “things I couldn't change”.

Which is exactly what everyone does. Every apartment and townhouse owner I speak to has a story about a frustrating experience with their strata. It's not malice (mostly) — it's structure. The whole system is setup for ineffectiveness. Information is entirely one-sided and decisions are disastrously opaque. Good actions by strata committees and strata managers are just as likely to be punished as bad ones, so it's safest to take no action at all.

The very first step to an efficient market is always transparency, so I created LevyCheck. Real benchmarks based on actual data — not vague handwaving from agents and managers that “it depends”. Every person who checks their fees on LevyCheck adds a data point. As the dataset grows, we'll all have more understanding of how strata fees compare across buildings, suburbs and regions. We'll get real data on how much it's reasonable to pay for different amenities (pools, lifts, gyms etc). And the power for strata owners to ask better questions and drive out bad operators.

Strata levy checks are free, anonymous, and require just two fields. We already have over 4000 data points — enough for useful benchmarks in most suburbs. Check yours now.

— Stuart