Strata owners cannot move their building or change what it is made from. What they can change is how it performs when weather arrives and CHU is now working to put a number on what that is worth.
Kimberley Jonsson (pictured), chief executive of CHU Group in Sydney, said maintenance is the only variable in the premium equation that sits with the owners themselves.
"They can't change where their building is, they can't change what their building's made from, but they can affect what happens when it rains and how their building stands up to an event," she said.
The 2026 CHU Strata Index, a national survey of 1,000 strata lot owners conducted by independent research agency Fuller, found 64% of owners report having a regular maintenance action plan for their building, leaving roughly a third of schemes without one. Schemes using strata professionals were significantly more likely to have a plan, at 66%, against 51% among those with no professional input.
Frequency varies underneath that headline. One in three owners check for maintenance issues at least quarterly, while 16% are not checking their property at least annually and 7% cannot say.
Jonsson was direct about the consequence and about the fact that it compounds.
"If they're not maintaining the building, we know the building doesn't hold water," she said. "And therefore their premiums are going to increase over time compared to people who do maintain their building."
The Index's argument is that insurance sits at the end of the chain rather than the beginning, and that the losses shaping a claim are largely determined by decisions made long before one is lodged. Maintenance is where that abstraction becomes visible - the report calls it the gateway to a broader risk-management mindset and the most practical bridge from passive cover to active control.
What is new is the direction of the pitch. Jonsson said CHU is shifting from warning about consequences to quantifying benefits.
"Instead of showing people, which we probably have spent the last five years showing people, look what happens if you don't do it - now we're trying to use the carrot and say, look what happens if you do do it, and this can be the benefit to you," she said.
For brokers, that is a material development. A quantified premium benefit attached to demonstrable maintenance discipline converts a general risk conversation into a costed one, and gives an intermediary something concrete to take to a committee weighing a levy against a deferral.
The barriers the Index identifies are not technical. Cost is the largest, cited by 45% of owners, followed by gaining agreement among strata committee members at 37%. Finding a contractor, managing the quotes process and access to individual units all rank well behind.
That second barrier is the one with an owner-side remedy.
"The strata manager's role is to keep it on the agenda and to help the Owners Corporation understand the impact of good maintenance," said Jonsson. "But in terms of the responsibility, it always comes down to the committee as far as what action they want to take."
The accountability gap is the opening. A strata manager can table the item; only the committee can fund it. A broker who can articulate what deferral costs in premium terms is supplying the missing input to that vote - not competing with the strata manager's role, but arming it.
In New South Wales, that vote is about to be taken by better-briefed committees. From October 1 2026, new and returning strata committee members must complete free online training delivered by NSW Fair Trading within three months of appointment or be automatically removed from the committee. The course covers managing repairs and maintenance, risk, and keeping a scheme financially healthy – the exact vocabulary a maintenance-and-premium conversation requires.
Jonsson framed the broader financial connection in terms committees already recognise.
"Do we have adequate sinking funds? How likely are you to have a special levy sneak up on you? All of these things actually correlate to insurance in some way," she said.
