Educating for Resilience: An Opportunity
Our 2025 CHU Strata Index findings reveal a significant opportunity for strata professionals to play a stronger role as educators, particularly around attitudes towards property maintenance.
What did we uncover?
Conducted by independent research agency Fuller, on behalf of CHU Group, our Strata Index explores the attitudes of strata lot owners across three key domains: property maintenance, strata management, and strata insurance.
Based on a survey of 1,000 strata lot owners across a broad cross-section of strata schemes, we found that 28% of properties aren’t being checked for maintenance at least once a year. That means about one in four buildings is missing the most basic step in resilience. And this isn’t just in self-managed schemes – it’s across the board.
These findings reveal the value of strata professionals who can educate, build trust, and guide decision-making, especially when it comes to communicating the long-term value of property maintenance.
As strata living becomes more common and building stock ages, strata professionals will play an increasingly important role in encouraging maintenance investment and communicating the importance of maintenance checks.
Property maintenance perceptions
Figure 1.1: Perceptions of property maintenance
Perceptions of property maintenance demonstrate that most lot owners see opportunities for improvement, highlighting the need for strata professionals to play a stronger role in education.
For many homeowners, their property is their most significant asset. Effective property maintenance is crucial to protecting this investment. However, our research shows that up to 56% of owners are unsatisfied or want to see improvements with their building’s maintenance.
This is an opportunity for Strata Managers to emphasise the impact they have on improving maintenance, compliance and safety – one of the most powerful ways strata professionals can foster long-term resilience and create trust.
Maintenance action plans
Figure 1.4: Presence of Maintenance Action Plans
Presence of Maintenance Action Plans reveals the opportunity for strata managers to clearly demonstrate their value.
A Maintenance Action Plan (MAP) is a proactive roadmap for looking after a strata building – without it, owners can fall into reactive mode by waiting for things to break and then scrambling to repair them.
At CHU, we see firsthand the benefits Strata Managers can provide in supporting effective maintenance with 45% of respondents citing their Strata Manager as the trigger for implementing a MAP.
Our research also shows that owners understand that MAPs link to more-frequent maintenance checks and better-maintained properties. Importantly, strata-managed properties are also more likely to have MAPs, indicating that these plans are a clear opportunity for Strata Managers to demonstrate the difference they make.
What does this mean for strata professionals?
Finding #1: Perceptions of property maintenance
There is a range of views on whether properties are well maintained, with smaller schemes and lower value properties more likely to be seen as poorly maintained.
Implication: Strata Managers can play a role in regularly sharing maintenance updates to highlight the role that effective management plays in building maintenance.
Finding #2: Property maintenance behaviours
Over 1/4 of owners say they believe their strata building is not regularly checked for maintenance. This is similar across all types of schemes and properties, even those that are strata managed.
Implication: Owners would benefit from simple tools that reinforce the value of regular maintenance checks. It’s also important for strata professionals to communicate the work they do to support maintenance, so owners develop a better understanding.
Finding #3: Maintenance action plans
Only 2/3 of owners claim to have a formal MAP for their building, and this is lower for self-managed schemes, properties perceived as less well-maintained, and properties that do not undergo regular maintenance checks.
Implication: MAPs can often be perceived as an administrative exercise – but they are clearly linked to better maintenance overall.
We’ve created a suite of practical guides and checklists to support strata professionals to educate and take action on property maintenance and articulate the difference they make to strata living.
You can download them now, along with the 2025 CHU Strata Index, at: chu.com.au/2025chustrataindex1
DISCLAIMER: CHU Underwriting Agencies Pty Ltd (ABN 18 001 580 070, AFS Licence No: 243261) acts under a binding authority as agent of the insurer QBE Insurance (Australia) Limited (ABN 78 003 191 035, AFS Licence No: 239545).
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