Joined a Body Corporate Committee? Your First 90 Days

You’ve just been voted onto the body corporate committee. Nobody handed you a manual, until now.

Maybe you put your hand up because nobody else would. Maybe you’re the owner who has always asked good questions at the AGM and finally got asked to help answer them. Either way, you’re now one of a small group of volunteers legally responsible for decisions that affect every owner in your building, and most new committee members are given a login to a portal, a pile of PDFs, and not much else.

That gap between “you’re on the committee now” and “here’s how this actually works” is where a lot of avoidable stress comes from. The good news is that the first 90 days follow a fairly predictable shape once you know what to look for. This guide sets out exactly that: what your committee controls, which documents to chase down first, how to make sense of the Long-Term Maintenance Plan, and how to walk into your first AGM prepared rather than anxious.

Key Takeaways: Your First 90 Days at a Glance

Understand your remit first. Your committee has real authority over shared decisions and finances, but it doesn’t control what owners do inside their own units, and every member carries a duty to act in good faith for the body corporate as a whole.
Request the core documents in week one. The Unit Title Plan, operational rules, financial statements, insurance schedules, active contracts, and the compliance schedule/Building Warrant of Fitness (BWOF) should all be on your desk before your first meeting.
Read the Long-Term Maintenance Plan (LTMP) early. It’s the single document that tells you whether the building’s levies are keeping pace with its future maintenance liabilities, or falling behind.
Prepare for your first AGM deliberately. Clear agendas, transparent levy explanations, and early owner communication prevent most of the disputes that derail meetings.
Know when to call in professional support. Deferred maintenance, compliance exposure, and levy arrears are signs a self-managed setup may have outgrown volunteer capacity, and that’s a normal, common turning point, not a failure.

What the Committee Actually Controls (and What It Doesn’t)

It helps to start with the boundaries of the job, because most new-committee anxiety comes from an unclear sense of where your authority actually begins and ends.

Under the Unit Titles Act 2010, a body corporate committee is elected to manage the affairs of the body corporate on behalf of all owners. In practice, that means the committee typically makes decisions about common property, such as shared driveways, lobbies, lifts, roofs, and external walls, along with the body’s finances, contracts, insurance, and compliance obligations. What the committee does not control is what happens inside a principal unit: an owner’s internal fit-out, how they use their own space, or decisions that the Act or your operational rules reserve for a full general meeting rather than the committee alone. If you’re not certain where a specific issue sits, your building’s unit title plan and the governance obligations set out under the Unit Titles Act are the starting point, not a guess.

The other boundary worth understanding early is that committee membership carries a fiduciary duty. You’re not there to represent your own unit’s interests above everyone else’s; you’re there to exercise reasonable care and act in good faith for the body corporate as a collective. That includes financial stewardship: signing off on spending, reviewing budgets, and making sure levies are being used for what owners were told they’d be used for.

“Most new committee members come in expecting to fight fires. The first shift we try to help them make is realising the job is actually governance: setting direction, reading the numbers, and making steady decisions, rather than reacting to whatever complaint arrived that week. Once that clicks, the anxiety usually drops away fairly quickly.” -Tim Taylor, Managing Director, Hallmark and Stone

Key Documents to Request on Day One

You cannot make informed decisions about a building you don’t have visibility into. Before your first proper committee meeting, request access to the following:

The Unit Title Plan and building plans – confirms exactly what is common property versus what sits within individual units.
Current operational rules – the building-specific rules that sit alongside the Unit Titles Act and govern day-to-day conduct, from parking to pets to noise.
Financial statements and the current year’s budget – you should be able to see where every dollar of levy income is currently allocated.
Insurance valuation and policy schedules – including when the building was last revalued and what the policy actually covers.
Active contracts – facilities management, lift servicing, cleaning, and security agreements, along with their renewal dates and notice periods.
The compliance schedule and Building Warrant of Fitness (BWOF) – confirmation that the building’s specified systems are inspected, maintained, and currently warranted. MBIE’s Building Warrant of Fitness (BWOF) guidelines set out what building owners are required to keep on file.

If any of these documents are missing, out of date, or difficult to obtain from the outgoing committee or current manager, treat that as useful information in itself. It’s usually the first sign of where the gaps in your building’s governance actually are.

Deciphering and Understanding the LTMP

Of everything on that list, the Long-Term Maintenance Plan (LTMP) is worth the most attention early on, because it is the document that connects today’s levy to tomorrow’s building condition.

The LTMP sets out the capital works your building is expected to need over the coming years, things like roof replacement, repainting, structural repairs, and lift or plant replacement, along with an estimated cost and timeframe for each. It’s funded through the Long-Term Maintenance Fund (LTMF), a ring-fenced pool of levy contributions that, in most cases, can only be spent on LTMP items unless owners agree otherwise by resolution.

When you’re reading an LTMP for the first time, focus on three questions:

Is it current? Plans are meant to be reviewed periodically, not written once and forgotten. A plan that hasn’t been revisited in several years is a red flag, particularly if building costs have moved since it was last costed.
Is the fund actually keeping pace with the plan? Compare the LTMF balance and current contribution rate against the plan’s near-term cost estimates. A shortfall here is exactly what leads to a surprise special levy later.
What’s coming in the next one to three years? These are the items your committee needs to be actively budgeting and communicating for now, not discovering when a contractor’s quote lands on your desk.

“The LTMP is the document that protects a building’s long-term value, and it’s the one new committees are most likely to skim past. I’d encourage every new member to sit down with it properly in their first month, ask what’s actually funded versus what’s assumed, and not wait until a major item is due before checking whether the numbers still add up.” – Sam Taylor, Director, Hallmark and Stone

Preparing for Your First AGM and Ongoing Governance

Your first Annual General Meeting (AGM) will set the tone for how owners see the committee, so it’s worth preparing for deliberately rather than treating it as a formality.

A few habits make a genuine difference:

Set a clear, published agenda well ahead of time, so owners know what will be discussed and can raise questions before the meeting rather than during it.
Explain levy decisions in plain language, ideally tied back to the operating budget and the LTMP, rather than presenting a single number and hoping nobody asks why it changed.
Keep owners informed between meetings, not just at AGM time. A short update after a committee meeting, even a brief one, reduces the sense that decisions are happening behind closed doors.
Minute decisions properly. Clear records protect the committee as much as they inform owners, particularly if a decision is ever questioned later.
Know your quorum and resolution requirements before the meeting starts, since some decisions (larger capital spending or rule changes, for example) require more than an ordinary majority.

Handled this way, an AGM becomes a routine check-in rather than the one evening a year where every frustration owners have been sitting on comes out at once.

When to Bring in Professional Support

Most committees start out self-managed, and for smaller, newer, or lower-complexity buildings, that can work perfectly well for a long time. The point worth watching for is when the building’s complexity has outgrown what a volunteer committee can reasonably keep on top of.

Common warning signs include:

A deferred maintenance backlog that keeps growing because nobody has the time to chase quotes and coordinate contractors.
Compliance exposure, such as an expired BWOF, an outdated LTMP, or uncertainty about what the building is actually required to have in place.
Recurring owner disputes that the committee doesn’t have the time, distance, or authority to resolve cleanly.
Levy arrears building up without a consistent recovery process.
Committee members feeling they’re constantly firefighting rather than planning ahead.

None of these signs means the committee has failed. They usually mean the building has reached a stage of scale or age where professional support pays for itself in avoided risk and reclaimed time. A professional Body Corporate Manager handles the administrative, financial, and governance load of running the body corporate, while a Facilities Manager looks after the physical building and its contractors day to day. Some buildings need one, others benefit from both working together, and a good provider will tell you honestly which applies to yours rather than selling you more than you need.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are body corporate committee members personally liable for decisions?

Committee members generally act on behalf of the body corporate rather than in a personal capacity, provided they act reasonably, in good faith, and within the powers set out in the Unit Titles Act 2010 and the body’s operational rules.

How often is a Body Corporate required to update its Long-Term Maintenance Plan (LTMP)?

LTMPs are generally expected to be reviewed on a periodic cycle rather than left unchanged for the life of the building, with the exact review interval depending on the plan’s original term and your body corporate’s own practice. We would recommend checking the current requirement against the Unit Titles Regulations or with your body corporate manager, since review requirements can be easy to get slightly wrong from memory and it’s worth confirming against the current text.

Can a committee change operational rules without a full general meeting vote?

This depends on what the rule change actually involves. Some operational rule changes can be made by the committee itself, while others, particularly rules that materially affect an owner’s rights, typically require a resolution at a general meeting. Because this varies by situation, it’s worth checking your specific proposed change against the Unit Titles Act 2010 and your body corporate’s operational rules, or asking your body corporate manager, before assuming the committee can act alone.

What is the difference between a Body Corporate Manager and a Facilities Manager?

A Body Corporate Manager handles the governance, financial, and administrative side of running the body corporate: budgeting, levy collection, meeting administration, and compliance record-keeping. A Facilities Manager focuses on the physical building itself: coordinating contractors, overseeing day-to-day maintenance, and managing building systems and services. The two roles are complementary rather than interchangeable, and some buildings engage one provider for both under a single relationship.

From Reactive to Proactive: Your Next Step

Your first 90 days on a body corporate committee don’t need to be spent guessing. Once you understand what the committee actually controls, have the right documents in hand, know how to read the LTMP, and walk into your first AGM prepared, the job shifts from reactive troubleshooting to genuine, confident stewardship of the building and its owners’ investment.

If your committee is finding the workload heavier than expected, or simply wants an experienced hand alongside you as you settle in, get in touch with the team at Hallmark and Stone for expert body corporate management and committee guidance.