Body Corporate
Can body corporate committee members be held personally liable?
Article by Frank Higginson
Current as at October 7, 2026
New seller disclosure rules for Queensland property pose particular challenges for people in small-lot strata schemes where by-laws have not been reviewed for many years.
When it comes time to sell a lot, the seller must provide the buyer with a copy of the scheme’s Community Management Statement as part of the new disclosure rules.
For tens of thousands of small-lot schemes across the state, that task represents a potential paperwork headache in the middle of the sales process – a time when stress levels are already running high.
The uncomfortable truth is that the records of many small-lot schemes are in disarray.
How did we finish here?
Modules didn’t exist under the former strata title legislation. When the BCCM Act arrived in 1997, all bodies corporate were given a window of 3 years to choose to adopt a specific Module by ordinary resolution. After that it was special resolution, and any body corporate that hadn’t changed Modules was deemed to have adopted the Standard Module.
Queensland has more than 50,000 strata schemes and 70% or more of those are 6 lots or fewer – that’s around 35,000 small schemes.
Given the opportunity, it would without doubt make sense for those small schemes to move to the Small Schemes or Specified Two-Lot Module to regulate their affairs.
They are far less prescriptive and would make it easier to manage body corporate affairs in the future.
More than 60% of bodies corporate are still governed by the Standard Module which means that there are thousands of bodies corporate that have not looked at their by-laws, entitlements or adopted a CMS for nearly 30 years!
While a large scheme will likely have a professional body corporate manager and an active committee to assist it in complying with legislative and disclosure requirements, many of the 35,000 smaller schemes are self-managed.
It is these bodies corporate that face a record-keeping headache under the new disclosure requirements.
If an updated CMS is not available, the seller will need to delve into the common property title and compile all the by-laws that have been registered over time along with the survey plan that created the lot to be able to give the required disclosure to a proposed buyer. It would obviously be much easier to just provide a copy of a CMS.
It is in the interest of all lot owners in smaller schemes to ensure their CMS is up to date and reflects recent law changes regarding smoking, pet ownership and towing of cars, among other aspects of strata life.
That way the records will be clean and ready-to-go when the for-sale sign goes up.
The CMS should be reviewed by a strata law specialist – this is not a task for AI and its tendency to make things up on the fly.
🛑 Are your by-laws legally valid and enforceable?
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