The overlooked asset in strata

In the USA, technology dominates every business conversation. In Sydney recently, meeting with people responsible for some of the most complex residential assets in the country, the gap that kept surfacing isn't the one between strata and the frontier. It's the gap between what technology quietly solved decades ago and what is meaningfully available to strata.

How do a building's records transfer to a new managing agent?

When an agent is appointed to manage a strata plan for a building, it is common practice to receive a USB stick, in the post, from the outgoing agent, containing a download of all records relating to the building. I don't know where to start with the problems of this approach. It's quite literally the definition of offline.

The USB stick could get lost, but a bigger problem is continuity.

What does an incomplete record actually cost owners?

An owner notices water ingress, the committee suspects an original construction defect, but a claim against the developer relies on documents: an engineer's report from ten years ago, the scope of remedial works performed, correspondence with the builder while guarantees remained valid. Some of this is on the USB stick, which the new agent has dutifully uploaded to an "owner portal", some of it isn't, yet nobody knows which. The window to make a claim narrows as volunteers go digging through byzantine folder layouts.

And it's not only defect claims. Levies get set, premiums get priced, and capital works get planned on whatever fraction of the record could be found.

A building's records are its second most valuable asset, after the building itself. But if ten years of a building's memory can fit on a USB stick in the post, it was never an asset. It was storage.

What working records deliver

When records are well managed and that memory is available to those who rely on it, something beautiful happens. Communication improves, decision making becomes more consistent, confidence grows in the managers and governors of the building, and owners become aligned on the challenges that need resolving. None of which requires Silicon Valley. It requires records that work.

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If you've ever received one of these USB sticks in the post, or inherited a process in strata that made you wonder how it survived to 2026, email me and tell me about it. I'm collecting stories from the trenches, and with your permission I'll share the best of them here, anonymised, no names, no buildings.