Painting Townhouse and Villa Unit Complexes: How Small Owners Corporations Get It Done
Most of what is written about strata painting assumes an apartment building: a facade, a lift lobby, corridors and a committee with a strata manager. A large share of Melbourne's owners corporations are nothing like that. They are a row of six townhouses in Brunswick, a court of eight villa units in Box Hill, or a cluster of ten two-storey units off a shared driveway in Footscray. The buildings are freestanding or attached houses, the common property may be little more than the driveway and the fences, and the committee is often two owners and a shared email address.
Repainting these complexes has its own logic, and it trips people up in predictable ways. This is a guide to doing it well.
Work out what is actually common property
On a townhouse or villa complex, the first job is establishing what the owners corporation is responsible for painting and what belongs to each lot. It depends entirely on the plan of subdivision. On many older villa unit plans the lot boundary is the exterior face of the walls, so the outside of each unit is the lot owner's, and the owners corporation only paints shared structures such as carports, fences, letterboxes and a common driveway wall. On other plans, particularly newer townhouse developments, the boundary sits at the interior face and the whole exterior is common property.
Get the plan of subdivision out before anyone quotes. Our article on common property versus lot owner painting responsibilities covers the principles, but on small complexes the plan is the only real answer, and the owners corporation should not spend its funds painting something that belongs to a lot.
Even when it is not common property, paint it together
Here is the thing about a row of townhouses: it reads as one building from the street whether or not it is legally one. If three owners repaint in three slightly different creams over five years, the row looks tired and mismatched, and every unit's value drops a little. The best outcome, and the one most small owners corporations eventually arrive at, is to repaint the whole complex at once, under one contractor, in one specification, with each lot owner paying their share for their own walls and the owners corporation paying for the common elements.
That takes a resolution and some organising, but it produces a consistent finish, a single warranty, better pricing than eight separate jobs and a complex that looks maintained. We are used to quoting it that way, with the price split by lot and by common property so the treasurer can allocate it.
Colour consistency and the original scheme
Most villa unit and townhouse complexes were built with a single scheme, and many owners corporations have rules requiring exterior colours to stay consistent. When the complex is repainted together, the colour decision is made once. If the owners want to update the scheme, the moment to do it is when everything is being painted, and it should be recorded so future individual repaints match. Where a row has already drifted, a whole-complex repaint is how it is brought back into line. Our article on choosing exterior painting colours for a strata building covers the process.
The substrates you find on these complexes
Melbourne's villa units and townhouses from the 1970s to the 2000s are mostly brick veneer with painted timber or fibre cement trim, fascias, eaves and garage doors, and sometimes rendered or bagged brick fronts. Later townhouses add rendered lightweight cladding, painted timber battens and Colorbond. Each needs its own preparation, and the trim work is where these jobs spend their time: dozens of fascias, downpipes, meter boxes, carport posts and garage doors. Rendered fronts on 1990s and 2000s complexes frequently have cracking and drummy patches that need render repair and remedial preparation before paint.
Painting around a dozen households
An apartment repaint can be sequenced by elevation. A townhouse complex is sequenced by house, and every house has people living in it who need to get their car out, hang washing and let the dog into the yard. We plan it unit by unit: which days the painters are on each home, what needs to be moved off verandahs and away from walls, when windows and doors need to stay closed, and how access to each private yard is arranged. A notice to each household before the job and a short daily update keeps it civil. Because the work is at low height, access is mostly ladders and small platforms rather than scaffold, which keeps the cost down and the disruption short.
Fences, carports and the shared driveway
The common elements are often the most weathered part of a villa complex because nobody owns them individually. Timber and Colorbond fences, carport structures, the letterbox bank, the bin enclosure and any walls along the shared driveway are typically the owners corporation's responsibility and should be in the scope. Driveway line marking and unit numbering are frequently added at the same time.
Pricing and approval on a small complex
A small owners corporation usually does not have a strata manager arranging three tenders, and the treasurer is a volunteer. We provide a written scope that separates common property from lot work, a price per lot where the owners are sharing, and a simple summary that can be circulated for a vote. The Owners Corporations Act sets out how spending is approved and how special levies are raised if the maintenance fund does not cover it; our article on capital works fund versus special levy repaint explains the options.
What the finished result looks like
A villa court or townhouse row repainted as one job looks like a new development again: consistent colours, crisp trim, tidy fences and carports, one warranty and a record of the scheme for the next time. If you are on the committee of a small complex anywhere across Melbourne and are trying to get a repaint organised, send us the address and, if you have it, the plan of subdivision. We will tell you what is common property, what is lot, and quote it in a way your owners can vote on.