Every strata building has areas that belong to everyone and to nobody in particular. The foyer, the lift car, the fire stairs, the basement car park, the bin room, the pool deck. They are used constantly, but no single resident is responsible for them, and their condition is the first thing a prospective buyer or tenant judges the property on.
Keeping those areas clean is what strata cleaning means. For a committee, it is usually one of the larger recurring lines in the budget and one of the few that residents notice immediately when it slips.
Key Takeaways
- Strata cleaning is common property cleaning: it covers lobbies, lifts, stairwells, corridors, car parks, bin rooms and shared amenities, and stops at the door of each individual lot.
- It is how a maintenance duty gets discharged: owners corporations and bodies corporate carry a statutory duty to keep common property in good repair, and routine cleaning is the cheapest part of meeting it.
- Scope matters more than price: most disputes come from an unclear scope of works rather than a poor cleaner. Frequency, exclusions and the common property boundary belong in writing before you tender.
- Cleaning is an administrative fund cost: it is a recurring operating expense budgeted annually, separate from the capital works or sinking fund.
What Is Strata Cleaning?
Strata cleaning is the routine and periodic cleaning of the common property in a strata or community titles scheme. It applies to residential apartment blocks, townhouse and villa complexes, mixed-use developments, retirement living and commercial strata such as office suites and industrial estates.
The defining feature is the boundary. A strata cleaner works on shared areas only. Whatever sits inside a lot, whether that is an apartment, an office suite or a shop, remains the owner or occupier’s responsibility. A contract might therefore cover the corridor outside forty apartment doors and none of the forty apartments.
The second defining feature is the client. Decisions are made by a committee, usually on a strata manager’s recommendation, and the work is paid for from levies contributed by every owner. That changes how the service should be specified, reported and defended at a general meeting.
Body corporate or owners corporation?
The terminology shifts by state, and the same building type carries a different label depending on where it sits.
- Queensland: body corporate, under the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997.
- Victoria: owners corporation, under the Owners Corporations Act 2006.
- New South Wales: owners corporation, under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015.
Committees in Victoria and New South Wales still say “body corporate” in everyday conversation. For cleaning purposes, the label does not change the work, but it does change which Act sets the maintenance duty sitting behind it.
Why Strata Cleaning Is an Obligation, Not a Cosmetic Extra
Every state places a standing duty on the scheme to maintain common property. In New South Wales, section 106 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 requires an owners corporation to properly maintain the common property and keep it in a state of good and serviceable repair. Victoria’s Owners Corporations Act 2006 requires an owners corporation to repair and maintain common property along with its fixtures, fittings and related services. Queensland’s Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 places equivalent obligations on the body corporate for the common property it controls.
Cleaning is not the whole of that duty, but it is the part that runs every week and the part that protects the rest of it. Grease left on a car park ramp becomes a slip claim. Standing water in a bin room becomes an odour complaint, then a pest problem. Leaf litter in a drainage pit becomes water ingress. The cleaner attending site regularly is often the only person who sees these conditions early, which is why observation and reporting belong in the scope alongside the cleaning itself.
There is a work health and safety dimension too. The scheme owes duties to everyone who enters common property, contractors included. Slip and trip hazards, chemical storage, wet floor management and safe access for cleaning at height all sit inside that.
What Does Strata Cleaning Include?
Scope varies with the building. A twelve-unit walk-up needs a fraction of what a two-hundred-apartment tower with a pool, gym and two basement levels requires. Most contracts are built from four groups of work.
1. Routine common area cleaning
The recurring visit work, typically scheduled daily to weekly:
- Entry doors, glazing, intercom panels and letterbox banks
- Foyers and lobbies: vacuuming, mopping and spot cleaning
- Lift cars: floors, mirrors, stainless panels, buttons and door tracks
- Corridors and landings, including skirtings and reachable light fittings
- Fire stairs, landings and handrails
- Common toilets, laundries and shared kitchen or barbecue areas
- Rubbish chute openings, bin rooms and bin washing
- Sweeping of car park entries, ramps and pedestrian paths
- Emptying common bins and replacing liners
2. Periodic and specialised cleaning
Scheduled monthly, quarterly or annually, and usually quoted as separate lines:
- Carpet steam cleaning through corridors and lobbies
- Hard floor stripping, sealing and polishing
- Pressure washing of car parks, ramps, paths and bin areas
- External and high-level window cleaning, which requires height-safety qualifications
- Garage degreasing and oil stain treatment
- Rubbish chute cleaning and sanitising
- Facade, awning and balcony soffit washing
- Pre- and post-event cleaning of function or common rooms
3. Waste and bin room management
Bin rooms generate more complaints than any other common area. The work covers presenting and returning bins on collection day, keeping chutes clear, correcting contamination between recycling and general waste, and washing down bin room floors and walls. Increasing bin room service frequency is almost always cheaper than the pest treatment, odour remediation and resident escalation that follow when it is under-serviced.
4. Condition observation and reporting
A capable contractor logs what they see: blown lights, graffiti, cracked tiles, dripping taps, blocked drains, illegally dumped items, security doors failing to latch. This adds nothing to the price and gives the committee a running record of common property condition between formal inspections.
What Strata Cleaning Does Not Include
Being explicit about exclusions prevents most contract disputes. Unless separately scoped and priced, strata cleaning does not cover:
- The interior of individual lots, including balconies and courtyards on title
- Pool and spa water chemistry or plant servicing, which is licensed pool work
- Landscaping, mowing and garden maintenance
- Pest control treatments
- Repairs, handyman work or globe replacement outside safe reach
- Removal of bulky illegally dumped items, normally handled as a variation
- Biohazard, needle or flood remediation, which is specialist work at an emergency rate
Common Property or Lot Property? The Line That Decides Who Pays
The registered plan defines the boundary, and it is not always intuitive. A courtyard can be common property with exclusive use granted to one lot. A window can be common property while the internal glass surface is not. Balcony tiles, garage doors and air-conditioning condensers are all regularly disputed.
Before a cleaning contract is signed, mark up a site plan showing exactly which areas the contractor attends and at what frequency. It removes the two arguments that consume the most committee time: a resident insisting their area should be cleaned, and a contractor charging for area that was never in the agreed scope.
How Often Should Common Areas Be Cleaned?
Frequency should follow traffic and risk, not floor area alone. As a starting point for discussion with your contractor:
- Small walk-up, under twenty lots, no lift: one visit per week
- Mid-rise, twenty to sixty lots with a lift: two to three visits per week
- High-rise, sixty lots or more with amenities: daily, sometimes twice daily in the lobby
- Mixed-use with ground-floor retail: daily, with extra attention at the retail interface and bin area
- Car parks: sweep weekly, pressure wash quarterly to half-yearly
- Corridor carpets: steam clean every six to twelve months
- Bin rooms: wash down weekly at minimum, more often through summer
Adjust for context. Coastal buildings need more frequent glazing and facade attention because of salt. Buildings with a high proportion of short-stay occupancy need more of everything, because turnover drives traffic through lobbies and lifts at all hours.
How Strata Cleaning Is Budgeted
Routine cleaning is an operating expense. It is budgeted annually and paid from the administrative fund, the levy pool covering recurring costs such as insurance, utilities, management fees and grounds maintenance. It should not be drawn from the capital works or sinking fund, which is reserved for replacing and majorly repairing common property assets.
Periodic work sits closer to the line. Annual carpet steam cleaning is an administrative fund cost because it recurs on a predictable cycle; replacing that carpet is a capital works item. Splitting the two correctly keeps the annual budget honest and reduces the chance of a special levy arriving as a surprise.
If the figure looks high at budget time, the comparison worth making is against the alternative. Employing cleaners directly makes the scheme an employer, with payroll, superannuation, workers compensation, equipment, consumables, chemical compliance and cover for leave and absence. For most schemes a contracted service is both the lower total cost and the lower risk.
Writing a Scope of Works Worth Tendering
Start by mapping the site. Mark every area on the plan and state whether it is in or out of scope, including any exclusive-use areas, then set the frequency per area rather than per building, since the lobby and the fire stairs don’t need the same attention.
List tasks, not outcomes alone. “Clean lift” is unmeasurable. “Vacuum lift floor, clean mirrors and stainless, wipe buttons and clear door tracks” can be audited, and that difference is what lets a committee hold a contractor to account later. Separate routine work from periodic work and price them as distinct lines, so the committee can adjust one without retendering both.
The scope should also cover the practical detail that disputes tend to hinge on: access, hours and security, including key and fob handling, after-hours restrictions, noise limits and resident notification, and what evidence the committee will actually receive, whether that’s attendance records, digital checklists, photographs or a monthly report against the task list. Finally, define the variation process. State up front what happens with dumped rubbish, a flooded car park or broken glass, and at what rate, so it isn’t negotiated after the fact.
What to Check Before Appointing a Strata Cleaner
- Public liability cover at a level your strata manager accepts, plus workers compensation for everyone attending site
- Safe work method statements for height work, chemical use and wet floor management, with current safety data sheets for every product brought on site
- Whether any work is subcontracted, and how those personnel are inducted, insured and supervised
- Police checks and visible identification for staff working in residential buildings after hours
- Licensing or qualification for specialised work such as height access, confined space entry or pressure washing near stormwater
- Reporting: what the committee receives each month, and whether it stands up to scrutiny at a general meeting
- Continuity: who attends when the regular cleaner is unavailable, and how site knowledge is retained
- Reference sites of comparable size, age and building type
Getting Strata Cleaning Right
Strata cleaning is rarely the largest item in a scheme’s budget, but it is the one residents assess every day and the one that quietly protects the condition of common property. The schemes that get it right are not the ones paying the most. They are the ones with a scope written to the registered plan, a frequency matched to actual traffic, and reporting good enough that the committee knows what happened without walking the building.
Next Steps:
- Book a free on-site assessment and have a scope of works built around your building’s plan, traffic and access constraints.
- Review Namoli’s cleaning standards and specialist commercial cleaning services.
Strata Cleaning FAQs
What is strata cleaning and maintenance?
Strata cleaning is the recurring cleaning of shared areas. Strata maintenance is the wider upkeep of common property: repairs, replacements, grounds, plant servicing and compliance work. Cleaning is often the first line of maintenance because the contractor is on site most frequently and sees defects first, but the two are normally contracted and budgeted separately.
What does strata cleaning include in Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne?
The scope is consistent across the capital cities: common property only, split between routine visit work and scheduled periodic work. What changes is the building stock and the legislation behind the maintenance duty. Sydney’s density and older mid-rise stock tend to drive higher lift, lobby and bin room frequency. Brisbane buildings with pools, barbecue areas and open car parks need more outdoor work and pressure washing. Melbourne’s mixed-use and warehouse conversions more often need hard floor programmes than carpet programmes.
Who arranges and manages the strata cleaner?
The committee approves the appointment, usually on the strata manager’s recommendation, and the contract is held by the owners corporation or body corporate rather than by any individual owner. Residents should raise cleaning issues with the strata manager rather than directing the cleaner on site.
How should cleaning quality be measured?
Through documented inspections against the scope of works. A monthly audit scoring each area against the task list, supported by photographs and recorded corrective actions, gives the committee something defensible when the contract is questioned at a general meeting.
