Your body corporate insures the building. That doesn't mean you're covered.

Quick answerIn Queensland the body corporate must insure the building and common property for full replacement value, including debris removal and professional fees, hold public liability of at least $10 million, and get an independent valuation at least every five years. Everything inside your lot boundary that is yours stays yours to insure: fit-out, contents, plant serving only your lot, your own liability, and your rental income.

What the body corporate insures, by law. Under Queensland's body corporate legislation the scheme must insure the building and common property for full replacement value, reinstated to as-new condition, with demolition, debris removal and professional fees included, and carry public liability cover of at least $10 million per event. It must also obtain an independent replacement-value valuation at least every five years. The rules are the same under the Standard and Commercial Modules, so a commercial scheme does not get a different rulebook. On the liability limit, $10 million is only the legal floor: major strata insurers including CHU and Flex lifted their public liability minimums to $20 million, and $20 million has become the commonly recommended benchmark, even though Queensland law only requires $10 million. It is what we recommend a committee holds.

What stays on you, the lot owner.

• Fit-out and contents inside your lot. Shopfitting, cabinetry, equipment, stock, renovations you paid for. Some scheme policies carry an extension for lot-owner improvements, but on the wordings we see it generally only pays out in a total loss of the building, so do not rely on it for the fire that only takes your tenancy. Strata wordings also commonly exclude air conditioning that serves an individual lot and temporary floor, wall and ceiling coverings inside the lot. Your own air conditioning carries the same trap as any commercial lease: the tenant may service it, but capital failure is yours, which needs Equipment Breakdown Insurance.
• Your own liability. The body corporate's liability cover protects the body corporate on common property. Inside your lot, and as the lot's owner, you can be sued in your own name. The full explanation lives on Property Owners Liability, which is the canonical home of the strata liability gap.
• Your rental income. If you lease your lot out, loss of rent is your cover to hold, not the scheme's. On the strata wordings we see, any loss-of-rent benefit flowing from the scheme's policy after a partial loss is commonly capped at around three months and a small percentage of the building sum insured, which is nowhere near an 18 month re-fit and re-let.

Commercial strata also includes shapes people do not expect, like multi-tenancy strata warehouse complexes. We know these first-hand: CIB owns a unit in one at 789 Kingsford Smith Drive, Eagle Farm, which used to be a CIB office as part of our growth and heritage. And mixed-use schemes, with ground-floor food or retail under offices, are underwritten differently again: commercial kitchens, foot traffic and fire-spread between uses change how the whole scheme is rated. The warehouse product itself lives on Warehouse Insurance; this page owns the strata mechanics.

For schemes in regional Queensland's cyclone and flood country, one more check: the scheme policy's storm, cyclone and flood settings are location-specific decisions someone made years ago, and the committee should know what they are before a season tests them.

Quick answerWe review both layers, the scheme's policy and yours, where an order-taker broker quotes only yours. We can commission a desktop building replacement valuation to help the committee get the scheme's sum insured right, we run aerial roof checks on strata complexes, and we set lot owners up with the inexpensive separate policy that closes the fit-out, rent and liability gaps.

• Both layers, reviewed. The body corporate's certificate of currency and the date of its last valuation, alongside your own fit-out, loss-of-rent and liability position. The most common finding is at the scheme level, which is precisely the layer nobody was reviewing for you.
• The scheme's number, measured. We can commission a desktop building replacement valuation to help your committee insure the building adequately, at no cost to you, for our purposes as your broker, to inform the advice we give you. See Desktop Building Replacement Valuation.
• The roof, checked from the air. Our Nearmap roof reviews work on strata complexes too, part of the more than 1,200 roof condition checks we run each year. See Roof Condition Monitoring.
• The lot-owner policy, done properly. Fit-out, loss of rent and $20 million property owners liability in one inexpensive placement, typically around $900 to $1,100 a year as an indicative figure for a small fit-out. For leased lots we set the indemnity period at 18 months or more, because the body corporate, not you, controls how fast the building gets rebuilt.
• The liability gap, explained before a claim. A published example we use: a visitor tripped in a car park on the way to a tenant's shop, notices went to the body corporate, the tenant and the landlord's trust, and it was only the landlord's own liability policy that responded for them. The full story lives on Property Owners Liability.

Quick answerThe strata mistakes that cost real money: assuming the body corporate's policy covers your fit-out, rent and liability; never checking the scheme's sum insured or valuation date; leasing a lot with no loss-of-rent cover of your own; assuming the excess is the body corporate's problem; and treating a mixed-use scheme like a simple one.

1. Assuming the body corporate policy covers everything. It insures the building. Your fit-out is commonly paid only on a total loss if at all, a partial loss generally will not activate loss of rent for you, and your liability inside the lot was never covered. The separate lot-owner policy that fixes all three is genuinely cheap.
2. Never checking the scheme's sum insured or last valuation date. The most common gap we find, and the one that turns into a special levy on every owner, including you.
3. Leasing your lot with no loss-of-rent cover of your own. The scheme's rebuild timeline is not yours to control, and any rent benefit from the scheme's policy is commonly capped around three months on a partial loss.
4. Assuming the excess is the body corporate's problem. Allocation commonly follows where the damage originated and whose maintenance obligation failed. Damage inside your lot can mean your excess.
5. Mixed-use complacency. A scheme priced years ago as offices does not rate for the commercial kitchen that moved in downstairs. If the scheme's cover has not kept up with its uses, every owner is exposed together.