Simplified is the one-minute version of this issue. Detailed shows the documents, the options and the questions in full.
For the documents, the quotes, the full set of options and the questions owners have asked, switch to Detailed above.
Every owner bought into a building whose registered Strata Plan records the car stackers as common property – maintained by the strata company, with the costs shared, as they have been for six years. In March 2026, a legal opinion commissioned with owners’ funds concluded that the Plan’s statement is defective and that each stacker belongs to the owner of the bay it sits in. We paid to inspect ourselves, and the outcome is not only seeking to reallocate common costs to a select-few, is it seeking to make a statement that all the professionals (including the developer) reviewed and approved faulty documentation.
That opinion is now guiding decisions before it has reasonably been accepted (by the population that would need to all vote on it should changes be made based on it): the strata company has stopped arranging servicing, and new charging arrangements are proposed. Yet in June 2026, Landgate (the WA authority that examined and registered the Plan) confirmed in writing that in its view the stackers are common property.
Whichever way this resolves, the cost of the path chosen falls on the same budget – every owner’s. This page sets out, in plain language, what the documents say, what each route would cost, and the questions owners have asked to have answered in writing before more is spent. The history of the related SAT matter is on the charge allocation dispute page. That matter concerned how induction charges came to be imposed, while this one concerns what the registered Plan says – related history, but a different question, and the first does not decide the second.
This page was prepared by owners from the documents themselves – the Strata Titles Act, the registered Strata Plan, Landgate’s published guidance and correspondence, and the strata company’s legal advice. It is owner research shared in the interest of transparency, not legal advice. Where documents are quoted, they are quoted exactly.
Sheet 6 of Strata Plan 67688 (the registered title document every purchase in this building was made against) states:
“The car stacker (CS) and the related working parts are common property.”
For six years the building ran on exactly that basis: the strata company arranged the annual servicing and the building’s insurance covered the stackers. The Plan passed Landgate examination when it was registered, and again through each later amendment (the registration and amendment dates are stamped on the Plan’s own sheets). Changing the registered position would be a substantial exercise – a plan amendment involves a licensed surveyor, government approvals and Landgate lodgement across 255 lots, with estimates discussed among owners of $25,000 or more.
The law itself has also moved since the Plan was registered: the Act was substantially rewritten with effect from 1 May 2020, and the scheme is governed by the current Act today. None of that rewrite reclassified anything on a registered plan – existing schemes carried across intact, the boundary rule in both versions lets a plan show otherwise, and the reforms’ main addition for owners was the seller-disclosure regime described further down this page. If Parliament had wanted to change what registered plans mean, the remedy would still be a plan amendment, not a decision to read the registered documents as wrong.
The design also has an obvious commercial logic. Bays drawn as part lots, with the stacker machinery kept as scheme-maintained common property, is the approach Landgate’s Practice Manual publishes for exactly this situation – and it is what lets a developer sell two-bay lots that buyers can rely on. Secure parking adds resale value to a lot, and a machine the scheme maintains is a bay that keeps working for every owner who comes after. The notation reads as intended, not as a drafting slip.
The way costs are shared is part of the same purchase. Every lot’s levies are set by its unit entitlement, a figure fixed when the scheme was created from the capital value of each lot (as the strata company’s lawyer confirmed at the 16 July owner discussion). Prices were paid, and levies have been paid since, on that registered basis, with the stackers inside it as common property. The practical effect of the change now proposed is that a cost comes off the building’s shared budget and lands on 25 owners – a re-division of the scheme’s costs that the registered documents never made. The Council of Owners’ own update letter to owners confirms the entitlement position in terms: “lots with car stackers carry no identifiable premium in their entitlements”.
The March 2026 advice reasons that each car bay is a box of airspace, the stacker sits inside it, and therefore the Plan’s statement is “defective and ought to be ignored”. Owners reviewing the same documents have noted five things:
None of this means the advice is certainly wrong. It does mean the building is being asked to spend money on its least certain reading while the authority that registered the Plan reads it the other way, and the advice has not yet been asked to respond to any of these points.
The order of authority matters here. The registered Plan is not one opinion among several – it is the instrument every purchase was made against, examined at registration and on every amendment by the authority that keeps the register. The March advice is a reading commissioned against it, and seeking that reading was itself a choice rather than anything the documents required. A second opinion is now agreed in principle, and when it was asked at the 16 July discussion what would happen if that opinion came back confirming common property, the answer given – lightly, but on the record – was “get a third”. Owners are entitled to ask whether advice is being collected to settle the question, or until one reading supports the change.
Whichever view you take on ownership, the March advice and the 16 July owner discussion between them settled several things the building can use right now.
The servicing agreement on file is unsigned, undated, and made with a different strata management company – on the advice’s reading it does not bind any owner, and arguably does not bind the strata company either. The last six years of servicing have run on that paperwork.
Under the registered Plan, servicing simply continues as it has for six years – the strata company’s duty under s 91. It stops being arranged only if the March advice is treated as settled, and treating it as settled is a choice – made with Landgate’s written view pointing the other way still available to be considered.
Even on the advice’s own terms, it notes the strata company may contract with owners to keep servicing running [s 116(g)] – “a commercial decision for the council”. There is no reading of the documents under which the machines need to sit unserviced. At the 16 July discussion the strata manager also undertook to arrange a one-off bulk service, with stacker owners paying the contractor directly, described as a goodwill arrangement outside the strata company. Servicing runs twice a year and was falling due at the time, so owners are entitled to ask whether that service has since happened.
Stackers installed in banks of three share support legs – the middle unit stands on half a leg from each neighbour. Owners raised this twice at the 16 July discussion: it decides how repair costs could ever be split fairly should costs be split, and what happens to your machine, and your insurance, if the owner next to you stops servicing theirs. The strata manager agreed the point needed answers from the servicing contractor and the insurer. Until those answers exist, a lot-by-lot reading has no workable way to divide the hardware between owners.
The advice confirms there is no registered by-law that allows the strata company to require inductions and charge owners for them individually. That can be fixed properly and cheaply whatever else happens.
The strata management company’s own portfolio, as described at the 16 July discussion, includes a Subiaco building where the stackers are lot property and owners have arranged their own servicing since day one, and a Perth building where the stackers are common property and the strata company maintains them. A strata company maintaining car stackers is neither unusual nor unlawful. Which arrangement applies in any given building comes down to what its registered documents say – and here, they say common property. Why a change is wanted in this building, when both arrangements run lawfully elsewhere in the same portfolio, has not been explained (other than some 'genie' is out of some 'bag').
At the 16 July discussion one path was presented: accept that the stackers are lot property, then vote on a new by-law. That is one available choice rather than a necessity – nothing in the Act or the documents requires the building to change anything. The full set of options looks like this.
The stackers remain common property as the registered Plan states, the strata company maintains them under s 91, and the costs stay shared – exactly as the building has operated for six years. It needs no vote, no drafting, no tribunal and no plan amendment, and it costs nothing. This is the arrangement every owner bought, and it remains lawful and workable unless and until the classification is properly determined otherwise.
The position put at the 16 July discussion was that this option no longer exists – that continuing is against the Act, and that six years of practice sets no precedent. Both statements depend on the advice being right: they hold only if the stackers are lot property. Under the Plan as registered, and as Landgate reads it, s 91 requires exactly what the building has been doing.
The assertion made at the 16 July discussion was that if things didn't go a particular way, then an SAT course of action would be pursued, and this only serves to raise the question – why?
Either a genuinely independent further opinion briefed with the complete material, or a targeted SAT declaration [s 199] on whether the stackers are common or lot property. The cost is modest and bounded, and it would settle the ownership question before any money is spent implementing either reading.
The routes below only arise if owners separately choose to move stacker costs onto stacker owners. Routes A, B and C all require the same vote – a resolution without dissent, where a single “no” anywhere in the scheme defeats it. The difference between them is cost, time, and what happens if the vote fails.
Every stage is funded by all owners. If the process stalls at any point the stackers sit unserviced (the servicing contractor does not deal with individual owners) while, as confirmed at the owner discussion, the building’s insurance still carries responsibility for the stackers and injuries in that area.
This route is the cheapest and most light-weight as individual carparks are still lot property, it is only the car stacker and its working parts that is common property, requiring trespass through lot property to utilise effectively.
If the vote fails, nothing changes. The stackers remain common property – serviced, insured and cost-shared exactly as the registered Plan has provided for six years – with no plan amendment, no tribunal case, and no gap in servicing or insurance. One more protection worth knowing: an exclusive use by-law also requires the written consent of every stacker owner [s 43], and SAT cannot override that consent. Nothing gets imposed on the 25 without their signatures.
What the 16 July discussion recommended is a paper exercise to shift costs rather than shift of ownership: a by-law under which the stackers’ maintenance, repairs and insurance are paid by stacker owners through a separate, equal levy schedule, with the strata company administering the servicing and holding the records. Inductions, alterations for a new car and keys would stay with the individual owner, as now, and notably there would be no ownership rights transferred to the owners.
Worth noting: none of this needs the Plan declared defective. Attached to Route B’s exclusive use grant it works with the Plan exactly as registered, while attached to Route A it rides on the advice’s reading and everything that comes with it. It is a governance by-law either way – a resolution without dissent, drafted at the whole building’s cost – and if it travels with exclusive use, the written consent of every stacker owner as well [s 43].
Near the end of the 16 July discussion, the strata company’s lawyer floated a fallback for when the by-law fails: a template service agreement every stacker owner must sign, adopted by special resolution (described at the discussion as at least 50% in favour with no more than 25% against) and put up “subject to the other one failing”. Even its proposer wanted a couple of days to consider whether it could be done at all.
Owners should look at this one closely. It reaches the same destination as the by-law while lowering the vote needed to get there, so an objection that would defeat Route A, B or C counts for less. Costs would be recovered by invoice, backed by “debt recovery action”, rather than through the levy system – any dispute becomes a debt-collection matter between the strata company and an individual owner. It rebuilds the very structure the March advice criticised: a contract that has to be re-signed every time a stacker lot changes hands, when an unsigned, undated agreement with the wrong company is a large part of how the building got here. And the ownership question would remain undetermined throughout.
The practical difference is what a failed vote leaves behind: Route A leaves the building mid-process with unserviced machines, while Route B upholds the arrangement every owner bought and simply contains a 'nice to have' exclusive-use by-law which is arguably very cheap and boiletplate. There is also a point of simple logic. If the advice is right that the stackers sit inside lot boundaries, then what is missing is a by-law – the mechanism the Act already provides – not a rewrite of the Plan. On the advice’s own reading, the declare-and-amend path is the most expensive remedy on offer. Owners can reasonably ask why the building would fund any of these routes (let alone Route A, whose own proposers expect its vote to fail) before the default and declaration options have even been put to them. The drafting itself is a whole-of-building cost, confirmed in so many words at the discussion: “Not the car stacker owners – everybody will pay for that one.” That is fitting, because a by-law changes the rules of the scheme for every owner, not just the 25 with stackers – which is also why every owner is entitled to a say in whether the exercise happens at all.
The sequence of 16 July also deserves a note. The proposal arrived at the discussion fully formed. The requirement that it pass without a single dissenting vote surfaced mid-meeting, as a question asked and answered on the spot – “What’s the other bylaw type?” – and within minutes the conversation had moved on to how the tribunal could carry the by-law through once the vote failed. For a threshold identified in the advice itself back in March, that ordering is difficult to put down to chance.
It was said more than once at the 16 July discussion that things cannot stay as they are – that the genie is out of the bottle. But nothing in the registered documents has changed: no tribunal ruling, no Landgate correction, no plan amendment, no new by-law. The only new thing is an opinion the building chose to commission, and treating it as settled is also a choice. If the building nevertheless makes that its position, it carries a bill that has nothing to do with servicing.
Every sale in the scheme is made against the registered documents. WA law requires a seller to give the buyer a pre-contractual disclosure statement about the scheme and the lot [s 156], and to notify certain changes that happen between contract and settlement – including changes to by-laws and dealings with common property – with buyers able to delay settlement or, where they are materially prejudiced, walk away from the purchase [ss 157–159; see Landgate’s guidance for strata sellers].
So if the strata company’s settled position becomes “the registered Plan is wrong”, there are only two honest ways this ends. Either the Plan is amended so the documents match the position (the surveyor, approvals and lodgement exercise across 255 lots, with its estimates of $25,000 or more), or every future seller in the building hands over disclosure documents recording the stackers as common property while the scheme operates on the opposite footing – a mismatch a careful seller would have to explain to their buyer on every future sale. And a building that treats one line of its own registered Plan as wrong invites the next question: what else on the same certified document can be doubted? Neither of those paths comes free, and the only position without such a bill attached is the one the building has held for six years: the registered documents mean what they say.
Ownership is not only a bill. If the stackers really are each owner’s property, the rights of ownership transfer with the costs – and so far, only the costs have been mentioned. A reclassification honestly carried through would hand each stacker owner:
Reclassification also creates a problem the registered Plan never had. Stackers in banks share support legs, so a machine that is “yours” stands partly inside your neighbour’s bay. Landgate’s Practice Manual pairs its part-lot approach with mutual easements precisely because machinery and access cross lot lines – and no such easements exist here, because the registered Plan never needed them: the machinery was common property. Read the stackers as lot property and every shared leg becomes an encroachment nobody has papered.
The proposal so far transfers the obligations of ownership while the strata company keeps the control: arranging the servicing, holding the records, administering the machinery. Owners are entitled to ask why the burdens would arrive without the rights.
A legal opinion is a risk assessment purchased by the strata company (which is all owners collectively). It is not a court ruling, and the Act gives owners direct ways to decide what happens next.
A note on the tribunal, because it has been described two ways. At the 16 July discussion, an owner’s earlier SAT application was recalled as an expensive exercise for the building, while in the same hour SAT was offered as the routine next step for carrying the by-law past a failed vote. It is the same forum in both directions, provided by the Act to the strata company and to any owner alike, and taking a genuine question there is what it exists for.
The council performs the strata company’s functions “subject to… any restriction imposed or direction given by ordinary resolution”. A simple majority at a general meeting (not a resolution without dissent) can direct the next steps, including maintaining the status quo while the question is properly resolved.
The State Administrative Tribunal can make a binding declaration on whether a decision of the strata company is valid, decided by a legally qualified member. A targeted declaration application would resolve the ownership question permanently, at a fraction of the cost of a failed by-law followed by a contested case.
Any owner with a proper interest can inspect the strata company’s records – including the surveyor correspondence and the insurance documents referenced in recent discussions, neither of which has yet been shared with owners.
These questions cost nothing to answer. If they are only answered after the money is spent, the building risks paying tens of thousands of dollars to arrive back where it started.
Every claim on this page traces to one of the documents below. Where a document is public it is linked directly; where it is not, this is where to see it.
If you would like to know more about this matter, or have information that should be reflected on this page, please get in touch.