What is community title?

Authored by Robina Kidd, Partner and Carolyn Chudleigh, Partner, Holding Redlich (NSW); Lisa Gaddie, Partner, Lander & Rogers; Richard Skopal, Principal, DWF (Australia) (Vic); Luckbir Singh, Director, MacDonnells Law (Qld); Gary Thomas, Special Counsel and Anthony Davis, Director, McWilliams Lawyers; Katie Loughridge, formerly Solicitor, Australian Government Solicitor office (WA); Philip Page, Retired Partner, Mellor Olsson (SA); Tim Tierney, Principal, and Sebastian Thomas-Wilson, Principal, Tierney Law (Tas); Tony Morgan, Partner, Andrew Giles, Partner, and Cooper Hood, Associate, HWL Ebsworth; Lyn Bennett, Consultant, Minter Ellison; Leon Loganathan, Partner, Ward Keller (NT); Stephanie Lynch, Partner and Christine Murray, Managing Partner, Meyer Vandenberg Lawyers (ACT). Updated by the LexisNexis Legal Writer team.

New South Wales

Community plan

Community title is a type of Torrens title subdivision and is also a type of freehold ownership. After a community plan is registered at the Land Registry Service (LRS) and subdivides the land into community property (always identified as "Lot 1" in the community scheme) and lots, each lot is given a folio identifier as it would in a conventional subdivision (eg Lot 10 in community plan 270270 has a folio identifier of 10/270270). There is therefore no substantial difference in the transfer of ownership of a community title lot, a strata title lot or a traditional subdivided lot.

A community plan, which is registered as a “deposited plan” and given a “DP” number by the LRS, must create at least two community development lots and one community property lot.

The collective owners of the community development lots make up the body corporate, (also known as the “community association”). This can become quite technical in NSW, as the community schemes legislation (also known as the community titles legislation, being phrases practitioners use to describe the Community Land Development Act 2021 (NSW) and the Community Land Management Act 2021 (NSW) and their related Regulations) also has the flexibility to create “subsidiary schemes” — ie additional layers of management — in the form of precinct schemes and neighbourhood schemes.