Victoria's Owners Corporation Reforms: What the 2026 Changes Mean

If you own a lot in Victoria, you have probably received some version of the same message this year: a newsletter from your owners corporation manager, or a paragraph in the property pages, saying that manager licensing is coming, that hardship protections are coming, that an OC Hub is coming, and that owners should "watch this space". The word "sweeping" usually appears at least once. What these summaries almost never say is which of those things are actually law, which are sitting in a bill that has not passed, and which the government has already decided not to do.

The question that matters to an owner is narrower: does any of it change what you should be doing at your next committee meeting? That is harder to answer than it should be. Victoria's Owners Corporations Act 2006 is being reworked following an independent expert panel review that produced 51 recommendations. The government responded in June 2026 and backed most of them. Some pieces are already law. One bill is before Parliament. A large chunk is accepted in principle but years from commencing. And one significant recommendation was deferred outright.

So rather than another list of "changes", here is the same material sorted by how real it is.

Already Law: Mandatory Training for Managers

The one piece that has genuinely passed is the smallest. In May 2026, regulations were made requiring owners corporation managers to complete five hours of continuing professional education each year.

The commencement date is the catch. It is expected to take effect around 2028, which means the manager running your AGM this year and next is under no new training obligation at all. It is a real reform with a long runway.

It also sits alongside a national trend rather than leading it. New South Wales has moved further and faster on the same problem, as covered in our piece on mandatory strata committee training in NSW, and the broader tightening of strata manager qualifications across Australia has been underway for a couple of years.

Before Parliament: The Consumer Legislation Amendment Bill 2026

This is the first tranche, and it is the part most likely to affect owners in the near term. Two elements matter.

A financial hardship framework

The bill establishes a payment plan framework for owners who cannot meet their fees, including the suspension of penalty interest while a hardship application is being considered.

Victoria has done something here that no other state has, and it is worth pausing on. Owners on an approved payment plan will not be classified as unfinancial, which means they keep their vote. Everywhere else in the country, falling behind on levies costs you your say at exactly the moment you most need one, usually including your say on the special levy that put you behind in the first place. The panel called this out and the government agreed.

If you are in this position now, our guide on what to do when you cannot pay your body corporate fees sets out the options that exist today, in Victoria and elsewhere.

A fix to section 18(2)

The second element is technical and easy to skip, but it removes a genuine obstacle. The amendment allows an owners corporation to bring proceedings for non-monetary rule breaches by ordinary resolution rather than the higher threshold that previously applied.

In practice this is about enforcement. A committee dealing with a persistent rule breach that costs the owners corporation nothing in dollars, say a parking or noise or short stay issue, has had to clear a bar that made action impractical in most buildings. Lowering it makes rules that already exist enforceable in reality rather than just on paper. Our guide to by-laws and rules explains how those obligations work in the first place.

Accepted, But Not Yet Legislated

This is the largest category and the one most likely to be misreported as done. The government has said yes to these. The legislation to deliver them has not been drafted, and the panel's own estimate for the bigger structural items was twelve to eighteen months of consultation and more.

A full licensing regime for OC managers. Administered through Consumer Affairs Victoria and the Business Licensing Authority. Dishonest or bad faith conduct could result in a licence being suspended or cancelled, and there would be a publicly accessible discipline register. That register is the part owners should care about, because it is the first time anyone choosing a manager in Victoria would be able to check a track record rather than a brochure. Until it exists, our guide on how to choose a body corporate manager remains the practical fallback.

A centralised OC Hub. Modelled on the NSW Strata Hub, this would create a single register of scheme information. Whether it becomes genuinely useful to owners or just another compliance form for committees depends entirely on what data it captures and who can see it, and none of that is settled yet.

Mandatory maintenance plans for Tier 3 and above. That is buildings with 10 or more lots, which covers most Victorian apartment stock. A required maintenance plan is a levy story as much as a compliance one, because plans of this kind almost always reveal that the maintenance fund is short. Owners in buildings that have been running lean should expect the first plan to be uncomfortable. Our guide to how much a capital works fund should actually hold is a reasonable preview of what that conversation looks like.

Extended ballot timeframes and explicit support for hybrid and online meetings. Sensible, overdue, and largely a codification of what many buildings already do.

An officer in effective control requirement, commencing June 2027, making a named person accountable within each management business.

Deferred: The Commission Ban

Here is the one that got away.

The expert panel recommended a full ban on financial incentives and rewards outside of contracted fees. In plain terms: your manager should be paid what your building agreed to pay them, and nothing else, with no side payments from insurers, contractors or maintenance firms.

The government deferred it. The stated reason is that it needs more analysis, and that a ban could push management fees up as businesses recover revenue they currently earn from commissions.

That reasoning deserves scrutiny, because it is an argument that the current arrangement is functioning as a hidden subsidy. If banning undisclosed commissions would force management fees higher, then owners are already paying those fees, just through a channel they cannot see and did not vote on. That is the whole complaint.

It also puts Victoria out of step with a national direction of travel. Insurance commissions have already been addressed at the industry level, as covered in what the fee for service model means for owners, and the broader problem of strata managers taking secret commissions is one of the most consistent complaints we see. Victoria has decided to keep looking at it.

For now, the practical answer for a Victorian committee is unchanged: ask for full written disclosure of every commission, rebate and incentive your manager receives, and treat reluctance as information.

Rejected or Left Alone

Two panel recommendations did not survive, and both matter more than their brevity suggests.

Consent thresholds for large schemes stay as they are. Around a quarter of Victorian owners corporations have 100 or more lots, and getting high thresholds met in a building that size is genuinely difficult. The government's answer is education and better meeting technology rather than a lower bar. That leaves the underlying problem, which is that a large building can be effectively unable to make decisions requiring strong majorities, unresolved.

Proxy caps remain rather than an outright ban. The panel looked at abolishing proxies and the government chose to keep the existing caps. Proxy concentration is one of the quieter ways control of a building changes hands, and we cover how the mechanics work across the country in our guide to how strata voting actually works.

What This Means for Your Levies

Strip out the governance language and there are three lines that touch money.

1. Maintenance plans for buildings of 10 or more lots will expose underfunding. If your building has been keeping levies low by deferring maintenance, a mandated plan makes that visible and creates pressure to correct it. That usually means higher contributions, sooner, and fewer surprise special levies later. Whether that reads as a cost or a benefit depends on how long you plan to stay.

2. Licensing will not lower management fees. More compliance obligation on managers tends to firm up pricing, not soften it. What licensing buys is accountability and a public record, which is worth having, but do not budget for a discount.

3. The commission deferral means the money keeps flowing the way it currently does. No change here, which for most buildings means an unknown amount of revenue continues to move between your manager and the suppliers your building uses.

If you want to know whether your building is already paying above the odds while all of this settles, start with our guide on whether your body corporate fees are too high and compare against the Victorian fee data.

What a Victorian Committee Should Do Now

• Do not act on the licensing regime yet. It is accepted, not enacted, and it is a year or more away from any obligation landing on a manager.
• Watch the Consumer Legislation Amendment Bill. The hardship framework is the first thing that will change how your building treats an owner in arrears. Have a policy ready rather than improvising when the first application arrives.
• Start the maintenance plan early if you have 10 or more lots. Doing it voluntarily, on your own timetable, is considerably cheaper than doing it under a deadline alongside every other building in the state chasing the same consultants.
• Ask your manager about commissions in writing, this year. The deferral means nothing forces disclosure. Asking still works, and the answer belongs in your minutes.
• Do not wait for the OC Hub to organise your records. It may be years away and its scope is undecided.

Key Takeaways

• Only one thing has actually passed: five hours of annual continuing education for OC managers, and it does not commence until around 2028.
• The Consumer Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 is the near-term change, bringing a hardship payment plan framework and an easier path to enforce non-monetary rule breaches.
• Victoria's hardship approach is a genuine national first: owners on an approved payment plan keep their vote instead of being classified unfinancial.
• Licensing, the OC Hub and mandatory maintenance plans for 10+ lot buildings are accepted but not yet law, with the larger structural items twelve to eighteen months away at best.
• The recommended commission ban was deferred, on the reasoning that banning it would push management fees up, which is itself an admission of how much owners currently pay through that channel.
• For committees, the actionable items are the maintenance plan and a written commissions question. Everything else is a watching brief.

Compare body corporate and owners corporation fees across Australia at BodyCorporateFees.com.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice. Victoria's owners corporation reforms are progressing in stages and the status of individual measures may have changed since publication. Always confirm the current position with Consumer Affairs Victoria or a qualified strata lawyer before acting.