The Strata Repair That Is Actually Two Jobs

A leak appears in a unit. The cause is in the common property. The damage is inside the lot.

That single situation is responsible for a large share of the delay in apartment maintenance, and almost none of it is the actual repair.

Why it stalls

The building is responsible for one part. The owner is responsible for the other. Neither can authorise the whole job.

So the owner books someone to fix the damage, that person finds the cause is outside their scope, and nothing happens. Or the building fixes the cause and the damage inside the lot sits unrepaired for months because it is a separate approval from a different budget.

Meanwhile the tenant is living with it, and the agent is fielding the calls.

The order that actually works

Find the cause before anyone commits. An inspection that establishes where the fault originates costs very little and settles the question of who is responsible before either party spends money.

Get the cause fixed first. Repairing damage before the source is stopped guarantees repeating the work. Fresh paint over a wall that is still getting wet fails within months.

Then repair the damage inside the lot. Once the source is dealt with and the area has dried properly, the make good can be done once and stay done.

Trying to run those in parallel to save time is how the same wall gets repaired twice.

The drying step everyone skips

Between stopping the cause and repairing the damage there is a wait. Building materials that have been wet hold moisture for longer than they look wet.

Painting or re-sheeting too early traps that moisture, and the repair fails from behind. It is the most common reason a "fixed" water damage job comes back.

One contractor across both halves

Where it helps to have the same team on both sides is that nobody has to re-diagnose anything.

The person who found the cause knows exactly what the damage is, what got wet, and how long it needs. The building and the owner are dealing with one set of information rather than two contractors with different accounts of the same fault.

That is the same argument as any job that turns out to be more than one trade. The coordination is the work.

What to record

Photographs at the point the fault is found, before anything is touched. Where the water is coming from and where it is going. The date the cause was fixed and the date the area was confirmed dry.

That record is what makes the two approvals straightforward instead of contested, and it is worth ten minutes at the start.

For agents

The practical version: get the cause identified independently before either side books a repair. It converts an argument about responsibility into a fact, and facts move faster than opinions.

We do that inspection as its own job for exactly this reason. Tell us what is happening and we will tell you which side it sits on.