The short answer: a strata manager handles the administration of your scheme — money, meetings, insurance, correspondence and legal compliance. A building manager handles the building itself — contractors, maintenance, repairs, residents and the physical condition of the asset. They are different roles with different skills, and most schemes of any size need both.
The confusion is understandable. The titles sound similar, both are appointed by the owners corporation, and in smaller schemes one of them often ends up absorbing parts of the other’s job. But knowing which does what is the difference between a problem being handled and a problem being passed around.
What a strata manager does
A strata managing agent is your scheme’s administrator. Their work is largely paperwork, money and process:
Collecting levies and managing the administrative and capital works funds
Preparing budgets and financial statements
Arranging and running general meetings and committee meetings, and recording minutes
Maintaining the strata roll and scheme records
Arranging insurance and handling claims paperwork
Issuing notices, correspondence and by-law breach notices
Keeping the scheme compliant with its legal obligations
A strata manager typically holds a licence, works across a portfolio of schemes, and is rarely at your building. That is not a criticism — it is the nature of the role. Their work happens at a desk because that is where the work is.
What a building manager does
A building manager — sometimes called a facilities manager, caretaker or, in older agreements, a caretaker-manager — looks after the physical building and the people in it:
Engaging, supervising and signing off contractors across cleaning, landscaping, security, electrical, plumbing, fire and more
Running planned maintenance against the asset register
Identifying defects and tracking them to close-out
Managing compliance on the physical side: fire safety, essential services, anchor points, backflow, pool certification
Dealing with residents and tenants — move-ins, access, noise, damage, complaints
Responding to emergencies and after-hours incidents
Reporting the building’s actual condition to the committee and the strata manager
A building manager is on site, or close to it. The job is physical, operational and immediate.
Let’s have a look at the two, side by side
| Strata manager | Building manager | |
|---|---|---|
| Looks after | The scheme | The building |
| Main focus | Administration, finance, compliance, meetings | Maintenance, contractors, residents, condition |
| Usually based | Off site, across a portfolio | On site, or local to it |
| Levies and budgets | Handles them | Contributes to the forecast |
| Contractors | Arranges some | Engages, supervises and signs off |
| Meetings and records | Runs and keeps them | Attends and reports |
| Burst pipe at 9pm | Not their call | Their call |
| Insurance claims | Lodges and administers | Holds the maintenance records |
Who appoints each, and how
Both are appointed by the owners corporation, but through different instruments. A strata managing agent is appointed under an agency agreement, which delegates specified functions of the owners corporation to them. A building manager is appointed under a building management or caretaker agreement that sets out duties, hours, term and fee.
In new schemes, both arrangements are frequently put in place by the developer before the owners corporation has any owners in it. That matters: those agreements can run for years, and reviewing them is one of the more useful things a new committee can do.
Does your scheme need both?
Almost every scheme needs a strata manager. Whether you need a building manager depends on the building rather than its size alone.
You probably need one if: you have significant common property, plant or lifts; residents expect same-day response; contractors need genuine supervision; or your strata manager is spending time on operational matters they aren’t resourced to handle.
You may not need a full-time one if: the scheme is small, the common property is minimal, and the committee is willing and able to coordinate trades itself. Even then, there’s a middle option — virtual or part-time building management gives smaller schemes professional oversight without a full-time cost.
Where things fall through the gap
The most common failure in strata isn’t either role doing its job badly. It’s the space between them.
A defect gets reported to the strata manager, who passes it to a contractor, who attends, and nobody checks the work. A compliance certificate lapses because each party assumed the other was tracking it. A maintenance history that would have supported an insurance claim was never recorded anywhere.
None of that is anyone’s fault in particular, which is exactly why it keeps happening. The fix is clarity about who owns what, and a record that both parties can see.
If you’re not sure what your scheme has
Check your scheme’s records for a building management or caretaker agreement. If there is one, look at what it actually requires and when it expires. If there isn’t, and your committee is coordinating trades itself, it’s worth understanding what that’s costing in time and in deferred maintenance.
Or if you would like to see the areas we service, and would like assistance, get in contact today.
