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Finer Property Services

Name: Finer Property Services
Address: 44 View Street, Chatswood, NSW, 2067, AU
Telephone: +61437151983

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Finer Property Services

Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Finer Property Services, Property management company, 44 View Street, Chatswood.

Boutique strata building care on Sydney’s North Shore
Based in Chatswood, Finer Property helps smaller strata schemes stay well-maintained through proactive inspections, fast onsite coordination, and clear reporting.

12/09/2026

Thinking about solar for your strata building before the NSW grant closes on 4 December?

Check the roof first.

We're an 18-lot walk-up in Chatswood putting shared solar to an EGM. The panels were the easy part. Before anything can be bolted to a 54-year-old tile roof, we need compliant roof anchors, repointing, and a reseal — roughly $40,000 of roofing that our ten-year plan had scheduled for years away.

None of it was avoidable, and none of it was budgeted.

Grant-funded projects have to be finished by 30 April 2027. If you find the roofing after you apply, you're doing all of it inside seven months.

Get the roof assessed before the application, not after.

03/09/2026

We're looking at solar for the building I chair. Before the committee approves anything, I asked our roofer for a written report — you don't bolt $100,000 of gear onto a roof nobody has assessed.

He's been cleaning that roof and replacing cracked tiles twice a year for years, and never raised a concern. The report came back with tiles going porous, a hip ridge starting to slip and worn flashings. Nothing has failed. It's all just ageing at once.

He was doing exactly what we asked him to do. We had never asked the bigger question: how long before this needs real money?

If you have trades attending your building, ask them that one. Write the answer down with a date on it. It costs nothing, and it's the cheapest condition check your building will ever get.

26/08/2026

A strata finance adviser friend of mine wrote this week about an owners corporation that knew it had about $2 million of building work to do, and spent four years unable to agree on how to pay for it. By the time the numbers were revisited the estimate had roughly doubled, the special levy was out of reach for some owners, and around ten properties in the building were on the market at once.

The same thing happens in small blocks, for smaller money. Our shared water main blew, the cheaper patch won, and three years later we replaced the whole line anyway - for more than twice what doing it once would have cost.

Deferring maintenance is rarely about not knowing. It is about not agreeing.

And from 1 April 2026, a NSW strata information certificate has to disclose orders and certain compliance action against an owners corporation - so a deferral starts becoming visible to buyers earlier than it used to.

Worth knowing what your building actually needs before the numbers get decided for you.

18/08/2026

LookUpStrata magazine ran a good question this month: Are committees legally required to have a planned maintenance schedule?

No. But you should still have one.

Here's why. An annual walkaround gives you a list of what someone noticed is currently wrong. It doesn't give you a list of what's actually in your building.

Anything with a visible symptom makes the list — a cracked render, a blocked gutter. Anything sitting on a service interval with no symptom doesn't. Safety switches. Emergency and exit lighting. Roof anchor points. An irrigation system that works fine right now. None of it looks like anything on the day. It just falls out of currency.

I've been going through this on my own building. Ten years chairing it, and we keep two documents — a job list ranked by priority, and an annual maintenance calendar telling us which trade is needed each month. I'm in the middle of combining them into one register.

If nobody has ever written down what's in your building and how often it needs attention, that's where to start.

12/08/2026

Search "how much should our strata levies be" and you'll get a percentage: about half a per cent of what your unit is worth, one per cent if there's a lift or a pool.

It isn't government advice. Fair Trading's position is that the number is different for every scheme, and depends on your building's age and condition. But it's what comes up first, so it's the number that ends up in the room.

Run it on the North Shore. A two-bedder in a sixties or seventies walk-up is around a million dollars. Half a per cent is $5,000 a year. The capital works fund is usually about a third of that, so call it $1,650 a lot. Twelve lots, and the building is setting aside roughly $20,000 a year for its entire future. Then go and price a roof.

The problem isn't the percentage. It's what it's a percentage of. Your unit's price is mostly land and postcode. The roof costs the same to replace in Penrith as it does in Chatswood.

There's a better rule of thumb, and you already own the number it needs. Your owners corporation insures the building for what it would cost to rebuild. Find the certificate of currency, take half a per cent of the sum insured, and compare it to what you're contributing this year.

It's a smell test, not a plan. But it'll tell you whether the conversation is overdue.

05/08/2026

We bought a 3D scanner. Here's why your building still gets a person.

Finer Property now uses LiDAR scanning on an iPad during capital works plan inspections. For measuring, it's genuinely good — paint areas off a corridor in a couple of minutes, door and window counts, lengths of fencing. More accurate measurements mean more accurate costings in your building's 10-year plan.

Now the honest half.

It's slower than it looks, and an area you could cover with four photographs and a laser measure often takes longer to scan and tells you less. The scanner reaches about five metres, so from the ground it can't see a gutter four storeys up, and it struggles on thin things like handrails and balustrades. The output looks very impressive, but it isn't a diagnostic tool. It has no idea that the rust stain under a balcony matters. It just renders it beautifully and holds no opinion about it.

So the technology comes along for the ride. It doesn't do the inspection.

That part is still a person walking your building, noticing the thing that wasn't in anyone's brief, putting a cost against it, and then sitting down with your committee to explain why the levies need to go up and why the balconies come before the lobby.

Every 10-Year Capital Works Fund Plan we prepare is built on a personal on-site inspection, on the NSW 2026 standard form.

Book a free 15-minute discovery call.

27/07/2026

Finer Property has delivered its first 10-year capital works fund plan on the new NSW 2026 standard form.

Three documents go to the committee, and each has a different job.

The plan itself: the completed 2026 standard form, with every major element costed across its life cycle and ten years of expenditure phased into a levy schedule. That's what the law requires.

A plain-English report: the same numbers written for the committee rather than for a file — what we found, what it means, what it costs to defer, and what we're honestly unsure about.

And a funding tool you can open and change. Raise the levy, lower it, model a special levy, see what each version does per lot. Our recommendation sits inside it as one option among the ones you can build yourself.

Most plans arrive as a locked PDF you're invited to trust. We'd rather hand over the arithmetic and let your committee push on it — because a plan nobody can interrogate is a plan nobody adopts.

Pricing is published up front, tiered by building size, alongside an honest look at the cheaper routes — including NSW Fair Trading's free DIY planner, which is a legitimate option for some schemes.

https://www.finerproperty.com.au/10-year-capital-works-fund-plan/

21/07/2026

Ask most owners in a small block who looks after their building and the answer is "the strata manager." It's an understandable answer, and it quietly merges two different jobs.

A strata manager runs the scheme — levies, budgets, insurance, meetings, records, compliance. It's a licensed profession and it's mostly done from an office.

A building manager runs the building — walking the common property, noticing what's changed, coordinating and checking trades, keeping the maintenance and condition records. Large complexes fund both roles. Boutique blocks almost never do, because a full-time on-site manager doesn't make economic sense across fourteen units.

But the work doesn't disappear with the role. It falls to the committee, in their own time, usually after something has already gone wrong.

Since October 2025, NSW law has required building managers to exercise due care and diligence and to promptly tell the committee about maintenance, repair or safety issues on common property. A sensible duty — and one most small buildings have nobody to carry, because they've never had the role.

Finer Property provides that building-care function for boutique strata schemes across Sydney's North Shore — regular on-site inspections, maintenance coordination, and committee-ready records. We're not a strata manager and we don't replace one.

Full Article: https://www.finerproperty.com.au/blog/strata-manager-vs-building-manager/

12/07/2026

Last week Finer Property completed its first on-site inspection for a 10-year capital works fund plan on the new NSW 2026 standard form — a small coastal scheme on Sydney's Northern Beaches.

Two hours on site: every common-property element walked, photographed, measured and condition-rated, with the owners alongside to settle what's common property and what's not before the inspection began.

One thing stood out: proactive owners make better plans. This committee already had current quotes for its two biggest upcoming items — and a live quote beats any estimate as the basis for a 10-year plan. Good building care pays off when planning time comes.

The site visit is only half the job. The other half is the paperwork: condition notes worked into life-cycle costings, and ten years of expenditure phased into a levy schedule owners can vote on with confidence. That's the work on our desk this week.

Finer Property prepares 10-Year Capital Works Fund Plans across the North Shore and Northern Beaches — personal on-site inspection, 2026 standard form, pricing published up front (from $1,295+GST). https://www.finerproperty.com.au/10-year-capital-works-fund-plan/

06/07/2026

What does it take to prepare a 10-year capital works fund plan properly?

This week our director James prepared for Finer Property's first two plan inspections, booked over the coming fortnight on Sydney's North Shore. That meant rebuilding our inspection forms around the new NSW 2026 standard form (mandatory for any plan prepared or reviewed from 1 April this year), rehearsing the site process end to end, and testing new measurement tools — so that when we walk a building, everything the plan needs is captured on the day.

Why does that matter to your committee? Because a 10-year plan is only as good as the site visit behind it. Plans built from templates and old paperwork are how buildings end up with six-figure surprises. Plans built from what's actually at the building are the ones owners can adopt with confidence.

Finer Property prepares 10-Year Capital Works Fund Plans across the North Shore — personal on-site inspection, 2026 standard form, pricing published up front (from $1,295+GST).

Book a free 15-minute discovery call to find out where your building's plan stands. https://www.finerproperty.com.au/10-year-capital-works-fund-plan/

Address

44 View Street
Chatswood, NSW
2067

Telephone

+61437151983

Website

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