Survey or strata plans

Find answers to your most common enquiries about a survey plans, strata plans and survey-strata plans.

What is a survey?

A physical action by a licensed surveyor involving measurement and the placement of marks (pegs), to re-establish existing land boundary lines or create new land boundary lines based on the analysis of existing survey plans and the location of existing survey marks and/or improvements such as fences or buildings.

What is a survey plan?

A plan prepared by a licensed surveyor showing the results of a survey, with distances (horizontal), angles, areas and of appropriate, improvements. The plan may be prepared for subdivision (deposited/survey-strata plan) or for showing the location of existing boundaries (re-establishment plan).

Types of survey plans include:

• deposited plan
• plan
• diagram.

What is a strata plan?

The mechanism for creating strata schemes and strata titles under the Strata Titles Act 1985 as Amended. Strata plans define the lots in a strata scheme (areas owned individually) and common property (areas owned jointly by all lot owners in the strata scheme). Strata lots must be limited in height and depth (the stratum of the lot). Strata plans show a building on at least one lot of the strata plan and stratum of the lots is always linked to buildings shown on the plan.

What is a survey-strata plan?

The mechanism for creating survey-strata schemes and survey-strata titles under the Strata Titles Act 1985 as Amended. Survey-strata plans define the lots in a survey-strata scheme, which are the areas in the scheme owned individually. Common property areas owned jointly by all lot owners may, or may not exist in survey-strata schemes and are defined as 'common property lots'. Survey-strata lots may be limited in height and depth but generally are not. No buildings are shown on survey-strata plans.

Are there any restrictions to the information I can access?

Landgate maintains the official register of land ownership and survey information for the Western Australian State Government. This means that it is a public register and all land information contained in it is available to everyone.

Can I get a survey or strata plan outside of WA?

Landgate only maintains the records for WA. For land information from other states, please refer to these official government sites:

Northern Territory
Queensland
New South Wales
Victoria
South Australia
Tasmania

What is an easement?

An easement gives a person or a company 'rights of use or engagement' over land owned by another.

What is a Right of Way (R.O.W.)?

A right of way is a strip of land available either for use by the general public, or a restricted section of the community, and may be created by subdivision, specific transfer, or continued use over a period of years.

What is common property?

Common property is property which is jointly owned by all of the owners in the strata/survey-strata scheme and is not contained within any individual lot. Many strata owners believe that there is no common property in their scheme, and that they own the whole of 'their strata unit' (ie the building in which they live) and the surrounding garden and carport area. However, in many cases this is not correct.

Due to changes to the Strata Titles Act 1985, and different ways in which strata plans have been prepared, a number of individual ownership/ common property scenarios exist.

In general terms, common property on strata plans is any land not comprised within a lot shown in the plan, and land leased to increase the area of common property.

Common property in a survey-strata plan is allocated a lot number which is prefixed by the letters 'CP'. Read the Strata Titles Practice Manual for further information.

What do I own individually on a strata/survey-strata plan?

To understand what you own, it is essential that you obtain and examine a current copy of your strata plan and seek advice on its interpretation. Basically, whatever is indicated on the plan as a lot/pt lot is owned by proprietors. For instance, if you are the owner of lot 1, whatever is shown as the plan as being part of lot 1, is owned by you. Read the Strata Titles Practice Manual for further information.

What is unit entitlement?

The Strata Titles Act 1985 as Amended defines unit entitlement as establishing the following:

1. The voting rights of a proprietor.
2. The undivided share of each proprietor in the common property.
3. The proportion payable of each proprietor of contributions levied under section 36 of the Strata Titles Act 1985 as Amended.

Strata and survey-strata plans show the relative proportion of each owner's share in the scheme. This is called unit entitlement and is set by a licensed valuer. In a strata scheme, the unit entitlement of strata lots is calculated to take into account the capital value of buildings on strata lots as well as the land (whether it is common property or individually owned). The unit entitlement of survey-strata lots is calculated on the unimproved site value of the lots and ignores the value of any buildings on the lots.

Do all plans show building outlines or dimensions?

Survey plans do not provide building outlines or dimensions, contact your local government authority for more information. Survey plans do provide lot dimensions (including areas and angles) for all lots within a subdivision. The lot dimensions may be used to help determine the area available for various building projects.

Do all plans have the same information?

Strata, survey-strata and strata plans have evolved over time and there are variations in the plans. The more recent plans are more detailed.

A warning message is being displayed when confirming my online order, what does it mean?

1. "The survey you have requested is current - please note that there are other not yet active surveys against this address."
   
   This message is displayed when a current survey is selected for an address where multiple surveys exist. In the above example this would be the current strata plan, prior to the new subdivision survey.
2. "The survey you have requested is not yet active and as such has no registered titles - please note that there are other surveys against this address."
   
   This message is displayed when a not yet active survey is selected for an address where multiple surveys exist. In the above example this would be the new subdivision survey that is in the process of being registered.


3. "This address does not have any surveys attached."
   
   There are also instances where no strata plan exists for an address. In these cases, the system will display this message. Where this occurs you will not be able to proceed with your order, and will only have the option to go to the previous screen.