20 June 2026
Once a year, your strata scheme holds its Annual General Meeting (AGM). It’s where the budget is set, your levies are decided, the committee is elected, and the bigger calls about your building get made. For most owners, it’s the single most important hour of the strata year.
It’s also the one a lot of owners quietly dread, skip, or sit through nodding along, hoping nobody asks them anything.
If that’s you, this is for you. A few minutes reading this beforehand and you’ll walk in knowing roughly what’s coming and what’s expected of you, which is most of the battle.
First, the thing nobody tells you: you don’t need to be an expert
You are not expected to know strata law. You don’t need an accounting background. You don’t need to have read every page of the papers.
Most owners feel a bit unsure walking into an AGM, even the composed-looking ones. The room can feel formal and the language can feel technical. That’s normal, and it is not a reason to stay home. Your job in that room isn’t to be the smartest person there. It’s to understand what you’re being asked to decide, and to say so when you don’t.
What actually happens on the day
An AGM follows a set agenda, sent to you beforehand. Broadly, you can expect to cover the financial statements for the year just gone, the budget and levies for the year ahead, the election of the committee, insurance, and any specific motions owners or the committee have put forward.
Two practical things worth knowing so they don’t catch you off guard.
A meeting needs a quorum to make decisions. In plain terms, enough owners have to be there, in person or by proxy, for the votes to count. That’s at least a quarter of the owners entitled to vote, or owners holding at least a quarter of the unit entitlements. If not enough people show up, the chairperson can still get things moving after 30 minutes. It’s one of the quiet reasons turning up matters. No quorum, no decisions.
And if you can’t attend, you’re not locked out. You can appoint a proxy, someone who attends and votes on your behalf, in writing before the meeting. One person can only hold so many proxies though, one in a scheme of 20 lots or fewer, or up to 5% of lots in a larger scheme, so it’s worth sorting early rather than on the day.
The money: where most people feel out of their depth
If one part makes owners go quiet, it’s the financials. So here’s the plain version.
Your scheme runs two funds. The administrative fund covers the everyday running costs: insurance, cleaning, power, routine repairs. The capital works fund (you may hear it called the old name, the sinking fund) is the long-term savings for the big stuff down the track: painting, roofing, replacing things at the end of their life. Your levies are simply your share of keeping both topped up.
There’s a long-term plan that’s meant to sit behind that capital works fund, mapping out the big costs over the coming years. I’ll be honest with you here. In my experience, a lot of those plans are templates that aren’t worth much. The good ones are built properly, with a committee and manager who actually engaged with the building. A well-funded, well-planned capital works fund is genuinely one of the things a smart buyer checks before purchasing into a scheme, because it’s the difference between steady levies and a nasty surprise special levy later.
One current thing worth knowing: from April 2026, these plans have to be prepared on a new standard form. Done properly, the new form tends to cost things more honestly, so some schemes are finding their levies need to rise to match what the building actually needs. If your levies go up and it’s tied to a revised plan, that’s usually the building being costed truthfully, not money disappearing somewhere.
You don’t need to memorise any of this. You just need to know the budget is a set of decisions, not a fixed fact handed down, and you’re allowed to understand it before you approve it.
The most important thing I can tell you: ask the question
Here’s the part I want you to take into the room more than anything else.
There are no silly questions at a strata AGM. None. “Can you explain that before we vote?” is not a dumb thing to say. It is the single most useful sentence in the room, and the people quietly grateful you asked it usually outnumber the ones who already knew.
You are being asked to make decisions about your own money and your own biggest asset. If a motion doesn’t make sense, if a number isn’t clear, if something’s moving too fast, say so. A good meeting is run so that everyone understands what they’re voting on before they vote on it. Not rushed. Not waved through. If yours isn’t being run that way, asking the question is exactly how you slow it down to a sensible pace.
The best meetings I’m part of aren’t the quickest ones. They’re the ones where people leave actually understanding what they decided. Those are the decisions that stick, and those are the buildings that stay well run.
So, turn up
Skim the papers. Note anything you don’t understand and bring the list. Show up, in person or by proxy. And when something isn’t clear, ask, because you’re allowed to, and because it’s your building and your hour.
Do that, and you’ll never sit through an AGM feeling like a duck out of water again.
John Martin (JM) | Founder & Managing Director | Bettr Strata
General information only, not legal or financial advice. Strata rules can vary, so check your own scheme’s situation or seek advice for your circumstances.