Whose balcony is it? In a New Farm unit block, the survey plan answers it for $27.56

Where the plan comes from

The body corporate's own survey plans are the first place to look, so ask the secretary or strata manager. If nobody can find them, Titles Queensland sells an image of a survey plan, showing the location, dimensions and area of each parcel, for $27.56 (excl. GST) through its online search service, or by phone or post. The Queensland Government page that lists the price warns that images can take several days to arrive, and that some older paper records image poorly.

An older block's plan may carry an older name. The guidance says a building format plan is also known as a building unit plan, or BUP, for schemes established before July 1997. Ask Titles Queensland for the community management statement at the same time, because it holds the by-laws.

Reading the lines

The Queensland Government's webinar on building format plans gives a working rule: the darker or thicker lines are the boundaries of a lot, and paler, thinner, grey, dotted or dashed lines may mark walls or parts of the building that are not boundaries. A balcony drawn inside the thick line around a unit is part of that lot. Some plans also give the floor area of the inside and the balcony separately, which helps when an older plan's lines are hard to read.

Where a balcony is part of a lot, the boundary is the face of the balcony, and the guidance says the boundary is usually the outer face of the balustrading or railing. If the drawing still does not settle it, the same guidance says the body corporate may need a surveyor to interpret the plan.

What the answer changes about the repair

A balcony outside the lot boundaries is common property, and the whole of it would usually be the body corporate's to maintain. A balcony inside the lot splits in two. The body corporate keeps the balustrades or railings on the boundary, the roofing membrane where the balcony protects a lot or common property below, and the structure of the slab. The owner keeps the tiles and other non-structural work, the painting inside the balcony, and the doors and windows that open onto it.

That is why a leak through a balcony above another unit can land with the body corporate even when the balcony belongs to the lot. The one thing that can move these lines is an exclusive use by-law, whose wording can change who maintains a piece of common property. That is the reason to read the community management statement alongside the plan. These are the rules for schemes under the Body Corporate and Community Management Act; the same page gives a shorter list for schemes under the older Building Units and Group Titles Act.

In what order

The plan and the by-laws come first, then the inspection, then the quote. An owner who commissions a repair on a membrane the body corporate maintains has paid for work that was never theirs, and a committee that lifts an owner's tiles to reach its membrane needs to know whose tiles they are before the first one comes up.