What a Strata Repaint Actually Costs in Melbourne

Every committee asks the same first question, and it is the right one: what is this going to cost? The frustrating answer is that the range is very wide, and the reason it is wide is worth understanding, because the same factors that make budgeting hard are the ones that make three quotes impossible to compare.

Rough budget bands

Before anyone has inspected your building, these are the bands worth planning against:

A small townhouse complex exterior commonly lands somewhere around $12,000 to $20,000. Small blocks more broadly sit in the $8,000 to $25,000 range. Larger apartment buildings with multiple storeys run from roughly $100,000 into the $200,000s. Facade work is often quoted per square metre and comprehensive repainting can be priced in the region of $50 to $120 per square metre of facade, with interior common areas much lower.

Treat all of that as a starting point for a levy conversation, not as a quote.

What actually moves the number

Access

On anything above two storeys, access is frequently the largest single component and it varies more between buildings than the painting does. Scaffold, swing stage, elevated work platform and rope access are all very different costs, and the right one depends on the building's height, anchor provision, street frontage and the amount of work to be done.

This is why a CBD building can cost substantially more than an identical building in the outer east. You are paying for the location, not the paint.

Preparation

The second big variable, and the one most often under-scoped. A building that needs a wash, spot prime and two coats is a fundamentally different job from one carrying render cracking, drummy patches, efflorescence or a failing previous coating. On a deferred building, preparation can exceed the cost of the coating itself.

What is included

Balconies, balustrades, soffits, entry doors, car parks and line marking are all commonly in one quote and out of another. Before comparing prices, compare scopes.

Why the cheapest quote is usually cheapest

In our experience the lowest quote is rarely the same work at a better rate. It is usually less work — less preparation, a thinner coating system, balconies excluded, or an access method assumed that will not actually suffice. None of that is necessarily dishonest; it is often just a different reading of what the building needs. But it means the comparison is not price-to-price.

The questions that close most of the gap are: what access has been assumed, what preparation is included, what coating system and film build is specified, are balconies and soffits in or out, and what is a provisional sum rather than a fixed price.

Building the budget

If your scheme has a maintenance plan, the painting line in it should be reviewed against current pricing rather than carried forward at whatever figure was set years ago. If it does not have one, a condition assessment by element — with a remaining life and a recommended year for each — is more useful than a quote, because it tells you what to save rather than only what to spend.

Most Melbourne strata buildings repaint external surfaces every seven to ten years. A scheme that budgets against that cycle rarely needs a special levy. A scheme that waits until the building looks bad almost always does.