Three Fields Left the Public Strata Register in May. Now You Can Only See the Buildings You Already Manage.
On 26 May 2026, NSW Fair Trading withdrew the managing agent's name, the agent's licence number and the date of the last annual general meeting from public strata search. The industry has barely noticed. Here is what changed, and who it costs.
What was there, and what is there now
Until 26 May, anyone could search the NSW strata register by street address or strata plan number and see who managed the building. The record returned the managing agent's name and licence number, the date of the scheme's last annual general meeting, and the plan number, address, registration date and lot count.
Three of those fields are now gone.
The page's own description of itself changed with them. It previously listed "strata managing agent name and licence number" and "date of the last Annual General Meeting" among what a search returns. Both phrases are gone; the rest of the sentence is untouched.
The plan number, the address and the lot count describe the building. The three items withdrawn were the ones recording who is responsible for it, and when they last accounted for it.
A notice added below the search reads: "AGM and strata managing agent details have now been moved into the Strata Hub to ensure fair and ongoing access to the information."
The two withdrawals are not the same kind of decision
Clause 43C of the Strata Schemes Management Regulation 2016 sorts scheme information into tiers. The managing agent's details sit in a restricted tier, disclosable only to people connected with the scheme. The date of the most recent annual general meeting sits in the tier the Secretary may publicly disclose. So the agent withdrawal aligned the service with a restriction already in the Regulation; the AGM withdrawal removed an item the Regulation expressly permits to be published, and which was published for roughly four years. Same date, same page, two different decisions.
What the replacement actually offers
The Strata Hub is operated by the Department of Customer Service on behalf of the Commissioner for Fair Trading. Access is by account. You supply your name, contact number and email address, and nominate a building. Your details may then be disclosed to that building's owners corporation and managing agent. Access may be revoked at any time and for any reason. Eligibility runs to people on the strata roll, the owners corporation, the strata committee, the managing agent and the building manager — each in respect of one nominated building.
Nobody can see this market now
Under the old register, everyone saw the same market. Now what you can see is the portfolio you already hold. That sounds like a small-firm problem. It is much broader.
At the register's last observable state, NSW had 88,210 active strata schemes and 466 distinct managing agent names, resolving to 436 corporate groups. The largest, PICA, held 5,850 schemes — 6.63 per cent of the active market.
That is not a large firm's advantage. It is the ceiling.
Only 16 of the 436 groups hold more than 650 schemes; seven hold more than a thousand. Put all 16 together and they account for 24.5 per cent of NSW between them. So a serious, well-run business with 650 schemes now sees about three quarters of one per cent of its own industry — and the largest operator in the state is blind to more than ninety-three per cent of it.
Scale still buys a bigger window. The median agent held 43 schemes, about five hundredths of one per cent of the market: a ratio of roughly 136 to one against PICA, and that is now the ratio of what each firm is permitted to see. Of the 466 names on the register, 243 hold fewer than 50 schemes each — 3.35 per cent of active NSW strata between them.
So the change is regressive. It is not sectional. There is no firm in New South Wales large enough to be unaffected, and the firms with the most sophisticated market-analysis functions are the ones now missing the most inputs. The withdrawal did not move market knowledge from small firms to large ones. It left every firm with a private view of its own book and no view of anything else.
What this costs in practice
Agents of every size. The register was the only affordable way to see where to compete and which firms were growing. That view cannot be assembled one building at a time, however many buildings you may look at — which is why a 650-scheme firm loses it as surely as a 40-scheme one. Acquisition activity depends on it especially: you cannot assess a portfolio you are not permitted to observe.
Owners. A lot owner can see their own building. What they cannot see is the rest of their manager's portfolio — whether the service they pay for is spread across six schemes or six hundred. That comparison is the only thing that turns a fee into a judgement.
Everyone dealing with a building without living in it. Purchasers, insurers, contractors and brokers have a legitimate reason to know who holds authority over a property. None of them appear on a strata roll. None of them qualify.
A note on our own numbers
Every figure above describes the register before 26 May 2026. Our manager linkage is frozen at that date and there is no lawful public source that would let anyone — us included — refresh it. A scheme that has changed agent since May still reads here as it read then.
We would rather say that plainly than bury it, because it is the point of the article. Every month, the last complete picture of who manages what in New South Wales gets a month further from the truth, and nobody can produce a new one. Not us, not the largest group in the state, not the public service that used to publish it.
That is a description of a problem, not a boast about an asset, and it should not sit comfortably with anyone in this industry — ourselves included.
About UNDA Management
UNDA Management provides market intelligence for strata managers — 89,000+ NSW schemes mapped, every manager linked, every contract cycle tracked. Our sister product, UNDA Development, provides precedent intelligence for property developers and property planning consultants. Learn more at unda.management
