A unit looks like the easy job. The floor plans repeat, the sales sit close together, and the comparison building is right there. In practice a unit or townhouse asks a different set of questions from a house. What is being valued is not a dwelling on a piece of land. It is a lot in a community titles scheme, together with a share of what the scheme owns and what it owes. Two apartments with the same floor plan in one building can be worth meaningfully different amounts.

What is actually being valued

Strata property in Queensland is held as a lot in a community titles scheme, run by a body corporate under the state’s community titles legislation. Townhouses commonly sit on a standard format plan, where the lot has its own parcel of land. Apartments usually sit on a building format plan, where the boundaries follow the structural elements of the building, meaning the floors, walls and ceilings. So a townhouse lot has land of its own to analyse in the familiar way, while an apartment does not, because the land sits under the scheme as common property.

Lot entitlements sit alongside this. Queensland schemes carry two schedules: contribution entitlements, which set each lot’s share of the levies, and interest entitlements, which set each lot’s share of the common property. They are not always proportionate to size or value, particularly where the original developer set them. A lot with a heavier contribution entitlement than its neighbours pays more every quarter for the life of the scheme, and buyers price it.

The body corporate records are evidence

For a house, the valuer inspects and analyses the sales. For a unit there is a further body of evidence, and most of it is written down. Assessing a lot in a scheme, a valuer weighs:

  • Levies. The administrative fund covers day to day running, the sinking fund provides for long term capital work. High levies are not automatically a negative, since lifts, a pool and security cost money to run. Insurance premiums sit inside those levies and have moved sharply in some buildings. Levies high relative to what the scheme delivers are the problem.
  • The sinking fund. Bodies corporate are required to forecast major capital spending ahead and fund towards it. A healthy balance against a current forecast says paint, roofing, lifts and waterproofing are provided for. A thin one in a building approaching that work signals a special levy.
  • Special levies and minutes. A struck levy is a known cost. One discussed in committee but not yet raised is an unpriced risk, and the minutes are where defects, disputes and deferred work surface first.
  • By-laws and exclusive use. Which car park, storage cage or courtyard attaches to the lot, and whether it forms part of the title or is allocated by by-law. Letting and pet rules also shape who can buy.

None of this is subtracted from a figure mechanically. It disciplines the comparison. A sale in a scheme with a funded sinking fund and no known defects is not comparable to one in a scheme facing remediation.

A fault in the building is a fault in every lot

The largest departure from house valuation is that the condition of the structure is shared. Water ingress at a podium, spalling concrete on a balcony edge, a failed membrane, cladding rectification, a lift approaching replacement. None of these are confined to the lot where they first show. They sit in common property, and every owner funds the repair through levies.

So the inspection does not stop at the front door. The valuer looks at the common areas, the basement, the roof and facade where they can be seen, the standard of construction, and how the scheme has been maintained. A valuation is not a building inspection, and where the scale of remediation is unknown the professional position is to qualify the figure rather than fold an invented allowance into it.

Comparing inside the building and across buildings

Sales within the same scheme are the strongest evidence available, because they hold constant almost everything a valuer would otherwise adjust for. Same building, same levies, same management, same location. Where there are recent arm’s length sales in the scheme, they lead the analysis.

They are not always there. A small scheme can go years without a sale. The valuer then works outward to comparable buildings and adjusts for age, facilities, levy levels, scheme size and the standard of the common areas. This is where a unit valuation departs most sharply from an online estimate, which treats a suburb’s units as one interchangeable pool. Two bedrooms in a walk up of eight lots and two bedrooms in a tower of two hundred are different products. Inside the building, developer releases carrying incentives and transfers between related parties are not market evidence.

What moves value from one lot to the next

Height and outlook carry a premium where the upper floors gain something real, whether a view, quiet, breeze or distance from the street. In a low rise block where level three sees what level one sees, that premium narrows to very little, and in a walk up with no lift the top floor can trade at a discount. Aspect matters in Brisbane, where a western living area takes the afternoon heat.

Car parking is one of the clearest differences in the inner suburbs. A secure park, a second park or a lock up garage can be worth a substantial sum where street parking is restricted, and close to nothing where it is easy. Usable outdoor space has also been repriced by buyer behaviour, and a genuine covered balcony or private courtyard now reads to many buyers as living area rather than an extra.

Oversupplied pockets and tightly held schemes

Unit markets are more exposed to supply than house markets, because supply arrives in concentrated blocks rather than one lot at a time. Where a pocket has absorbed several towers of similar stock in a short period, resales compete with new releases and values in that stock can sit flat while the wider market moves.

The opposite case is the small scheme with nothing competing against it. A block of six or eight in an established street, or a townhouse complex of a dozen with modest levies and no lift, tends to be tightly held. Sales are infrequent and the evidence base is thin, so the valuer reasons from fewer relevant sales and shows that reasoning rather than hiding it behind one confident number.

Whether the question is a purchase, a settlement, a fund’s annual reporting or a lender’s figure that does not match the market, a unit or townhouse deserves the same evidence based treatment as a house. Call the practice on 07 5550 4055 to talk through what the property and the scheme behind it will need.