Apartment renovation in New South Wales runs on a different logic to house renovation. In a house, the constraint is council and the building code. In a strata scheme, council and the code still apply — but before any of that, you need permission from your neighbours. The owners corporation controls a surprising amount of what you probably think of as your own apartment, and the boundary between “yours” and “common property” is not where most owners assume it is.
Wollongong’s apartment stock makes this more interesting than it is in a city of uniform towers. You have post-war walk-ups in North Wollongong and around the CBD, solid three-storey red-brick blocks from the 1970s and 80s across Wollongong, Fairy Meadow and Corrimal, newer towers along the harbour and through the city centre, and converted or heavily altered older buildings scattered through the inner suburbs. Each of these presents a completely different set of physical constraints, and the approval process feels different in a twelve-lot walk-up run by three owners than it does in a 180-lot tower with a professional strata manager.
For more detail on this part of the project, see How to Find and Vet a Renovation Builder in Wollongong.
On top of that sit some genuinely local issues: severe coastal corrosion attacking balconies on the beachfront, conservation area controls over parts of North Beach and Belmore Basin, and the practical reality of getting materials into buildings with one small lift or no lift at all.
This is how the process actually works, what is physically possible in each building type, what it costs, and how to avoid the disputes that genuinely happen.
The three categories of strata renovation
New South Wales strata legislation divides renovation work into three categories, and everything follows from which one your project falls into. Getting this classification right at the outset is the single most important step.
Cosmetic work — no approval needed
An owner may carry out cosmetic work to their lot without approval, unless a by-law says otherwise. Cosmetic work includes things like:
- Installing or replacing hooks, nails and screws for hanging pictures and light items.
- Installing or replacing handrails.
- Painting internal surfaces within the lot.
- Filling minor holes and cracks in internal walls.
- Laying carpet — note that carpet is cosmetic, but hard flooring is not.
- Installing or replacing built-in wardrobes.
- Installing or replacing internal blinds and curtains.
You still have to make good any damage, use a licensed tradesperson where the work requires one, and comply with the scheme’s by-laws — some schemes restrict even cosmetic work by registered by-law, so read yours.
Minor renovations — approval by ordinary resolution
Minor renovations require approval by the owners corporation by ordinary resolution at a general meeting — a simple majority. Many schemes have delegated this power to the strata committee by by-law, which speeds things up considerably. Minor renovations typically include:
- Renovating a kitchen, where no waterproofing membrane or structural element is affected.
- Changing recessed light fittings.
- Installing or replacing wood or hard floors.
- Installing or replacing wiring, cabling or power or access points.
- Work involving reconfiguring walls that are not structural and not common property.
- Installing a rainwater tank, clothesline, reverse-cycle air conditioning unit, heat pump or ceiling insulation — subject to the specific provisions.
Crucially, minor renovations expressly exclude work involving structural changes, changes to the external appearance of the lot, waterproofing, and work requiring development consent — all of which push you into the third category.
Major renovations — special resolution and usually a by-law
Anything that affects common property, the structure of the building or the external appearance requires approval by special resolution — meaning not more than 25% of votes cast are against it — and in practice a registered common property rights by-law setting out who maintains the altered common property forever afterwards.
- Structural changes — removing or altering load-bearing walls, penetrating slabs.
- Anything affecting waterproofing.
- Changing the external appearance — windows, doors, balcony balustrades, air conditioning condensers on facades or balconies.
- Work requiring development consent or a complying development certificate.
- Relocating wet areas, altering drainage, penetrating fire-rated construction.
Why a bathroom is always a major renovation
This surprises almost every apartment owner, and it is the most common reason a project stalls. A bathroom renovation involves removing and reinstating the waterproofing membrane. The membrane sits on the slab, and the slab is common property — the lot boundary in most strata schemes is the upper surface of the floor, the under-surface of the ceiling and the inner surface of the boundary walls. The membrane is on the common property side of that line.
- A bathroom renovation therefore requires a special resolution and, almost always, a registered by-law.
- The by-law will typically require the owner and all future owners of the lot to maintain the new membrane and to be liable for any water damage caused by its failure.
- Expect the scheme to require a licensed waterproofer, a waterproofing certificate, product warranties and photographs before tiling.
- A registered by-law costs $1,500–$3,500 in strata lawyer’s fees plus registration, and takes several weeks to draft, approve and register.
- Doing a bathroom without approval and having it leak into the unit below is the fastest route to a genuinely serious dispute, and the owners corporation can order rectification at your cost.
What a complete application package contains
Applications get deferred far more often for being incomplete than for being unreasonable. Submit everything at once and you save yourself a meeting cycle, which in a small scheme can be three months.
- A covering letter describing the scope in plain terms, including what is being removed, what is being installed and what common property is affected.
- Drawings — existing and proposed plans, elevations where the external appearance changes.
- A structural engineer’s report where any wall is being removed or a slab penetrated. Non-negotiable; expect $1,500–$4,000.
- Specification of the waterproofing system proposed, with the manufacturer’s data sheet.
- Acoustic report or product test data where hard flooring is proposed, demonstrating compliance with the scheme’s by-law and the code.
- Contractor details and licence numbers, verified on the NSW Fair Trading register.
- Certificates of currency for the builder’s public liability insurance (commonly $20 million required by schemes) and workers compensation.
- Home Building Compensation Fund certificate where the work exceeds $20,000 including GST.
- A proposed programme with start and finish dates and working hours.
- A waste management and protection plan — how the lift and lobbies will be protected, where the skip will sit, how dust will be controlled.
- A draft by-law where one is needed, prepared by a strata lawyer.
- Council approval documentation where a DA or CDC is required.
Realistic timeframes
The engineering and construction are rarely what determines your finish date. The meeting cycle is.
- Cosmetic work: no wait, subject to by-laws.
- Minor renovations where the committee has delegated authority: two to six weeks from a complete application.
- Minor renovations requiring a general meeting: you wait for the next one, which may be the annual general meeting. Two to five months is realistic; an extraordinary general meeting can be requisitioned but costs $500–$1,500 in strata manager fees.
- Major renovations with a by-law: three to six months from first approach to permission to start. Drafting takes two to four weeks, the meeting must be called with proper notice, and registration of the by-law with Land Registry Services takes further weeks.
- Add a DA at Wollongong City Council, if triggered: another 8 to 20 weeks on top.
- Total for an apartment bathroom in a well-run scheme: allow six months from decision to completion, of which perhaps five weeks is actual construction.
Start the strata process before you finalise design. Owners routinely spend $6,000 on drawings and selections before discovering the scheme will not permit the change they want.
What is physically possible, by building type
Older walk-ups — North Wollongong and the CBD fringe
Two and three-storey brick walk-ups from the 1950s and 60s, often twelve to twenty lots, frequently self-managed.
- Solid brick internal walls are common, and many are load-bearing. Opening up a kitchen to a living room is often possible but needs a steel lintel, an engineer and a special resolution.
- Suspended concrete slabs are thin by modern standards, and impact sound transmission between floors is poor. Hard flooring is a genuine problem here and is where most neighbour disputes originate.
- Original galvanised or copper plumbing is often at end of life. Budget for replacement within your lot, and note that the risers are common property.
- Electrical capacity is limited — many of these lots still have small main switches and no capacity for an induction cooktop plus reverse-cycle air conditioning without an upgrade. Check what the building’s supply can carry before you specify.
- Self-managed schemes can be fast and reasonable, or glacial and personal. Approach the committee informally before submitting anything formal.
1970s and 80s red-brick blocks
- Concrete slab construction throughout, generally more forgiving structurally, but very little slab depth to work with for drainage.
- Windows are typically aluminium-framed and original, single-glazed and often corroded on coastal blocks. They are common property.
- Balconies are frequently the building’s biggest liability — original membranes at end of life, spalling concrete where reinforcement has corroded, and steel balustrades bleeding rust.
- Bathrooms are small and back-to-back with the neighbouring lot, which limits reconfiguration but simplifies plumbing.
- Asbestos is a live possibility in eaves, wet-area sheeting, vinyl backing and electrical boards. Survey before you demolish; $400–$900.
Modern towers — the harbour and city centre
- Post-tensioned slabs in many buildings. You cannot core or cut these without an engineer and scanning, and in some buildings not at all. This restricts relocating wet areas absolutely.
- Fire-rated construction and services throughout — any penetration must be reinstated with an approved fire collar and certified.
- Mechanical ventilation to bathrooms via a common riser, which you generally cannot alter.
- Strong by-laws, professional strata managers and defined renovation procedures — slower and more paperwork, but far more predictable.
- Building manager sign-in, induction, lift bookings and protection requirements add cost to every trade day.
Converted and heavily altered buildings
- Former commercial or industrial buildings converted to residential often have unusual structure and services that were never fully documented.
- Obtain the building’s plans and any defect or engineering reports from the strata manager before designing anything.
- Assume nothing about wall construction — investigate.
Slab depth, drainage and relocating wet areas
The most common apartment renovation ambition is to move a bathroom, enlarge it, or convert a bath to a level-entry shower. Whether that is possible comes down to millimetres.
- Waste pipes need fall — roughly 1:60 for a 100mm line. Moving a toilet three metres from the stack requires around 50mm of additional depth, and you rarely have it.
- You cannot core a slab to create a new stack connection without engineering approval, and in post-tensioned slabs generally not at all.
- Raising the floor is the usual workaround, but it eats ceiling height and creates a step at the door that has to be detailed and, in some schemes, approved.
- Keep fixtures on the existing stack wall wherever possible. A bathroom that stays in place can be transformed cosmetically for a fraction of the cost of one that moves.
- Level-entry showers require a step-down in the substrate or a raised floor. In an apartment they are usually achieved by raising the whole bathroom floor by 40–70mm.
- Removing a bath for a larger shower is nearly always achievable and is the highest-value change in a small apartment bathroom.
Acoustic requirements for hard flooring
Replacing carpet with timber, laminate or tiles is a minor renovation requiring approval, and it is the single most common source of ongoing strata conflict.
- The code sets impact sound insulation requirements for floors between sole-occupancy units, and many schemes have by-laws imposing a stricter standard than the code.
- An acoustic underlay is mandatory in practice, and the good ones cost $25–$60 per square metre — a meaningful line item.
- Obtain the underlay’s test certificate for the specific floor construction in your building, and submit it with your application.
- Older walk-ups with thin slabs may simply not achieve the required performance with any underlay, and some schemes prohibit hard flooring above ground floor outright.
- An acoustic engineer’s assessment costs $1,200–$2,800 and is worth it where the scheme is uncertain or a neighbour is likely to object.
- Post-installation testing is sometimes required by by-law, and if it fails, the flooring comes up at your expense.
Wollongong-specific issues
Coastal corrosion on balconies
- Buildings at North Wollongong and along the northern beaches sit in a severe marine environment. Balcony balustrades, fixings, window hardware and exposed reinforcement corrode fast.
- Grade 316 stainless for any fixing you install on a balcony. Grade 304 will bleed rust within about two years on an ocean front.
- Concrete cancer in balcony edges is a common building-wide problem in 1970s and 80s coastal blocks, and remediation is a special levy issue, not an individual owner’s project.
- Balcony tiling and membranes are usually common property. If yours is failing, that is a building repair, not a renovation — raise it with the committee rather than fixing it yourself, or you may inherit liability for it.
- Check the capital works fund and any recent building reports before you spend heavily inside a lot in an ageing coastal block. A $60,000 interior in a building facing a $2 million remediation levy is poor sequencing.
Windows, balustrades and external appearance
- Windows, sliding doors and balcony balustrades are common property in virtually every scheme, even though they open into your lot.
- Replacing them requires a special resolution and a by-law, and schemes commonly insist on a matching profile and colour across the whole building.
- Double glazing an individual lot is possible but must be consistent with the building’s appearance; expect to fund the whole cost yourself.
- Air conditioning condensers on balconies or facades change the external appearance and need the same approval.
Heritage and conservation areas
- The North Beach Precinct and Belmore Basin conservation area is of State significance, and there are eight other conservation areas across the LGA including Market Street in the CBD.
- Being in a conservation area removes the complying development pathway entirely — any work requiring approval goes to a DA.
- Controls bite on external work: previously unpainted surfaces should not be painted or rendered, metal-framed windows should be avoided in favour of traditional timber, and original roofing should be retained or matched.
- Internal work within a lot is usually unaffected, but confirm via a Section 10.7 planning certificate from Wollongong City Council before you assume so.
Access, lifts and work hours
- Walk-ups with no lift mean every sheet of plasterboard, every bath and every skip load is carried by hand. Add 10% to 20% to labour on a third-floor walk-up.
- Small lifts in older blocks will not take 3.6-metre sheets or a full-size bath. Design around what actually fits, or budget for on-site cutting and the mess it makes.
- Lift protection, lobby protection and cleaning are usually required and sometimes bonded — a $1,000–$3,000 refundable bond is common.
- Skip placement on tight CBD and beachfront streets may require a council permit for a works zone, $300–$1,200.
- Work hours — typically 7am to 5pm weekdays and 8am to 1pm Saturdays under scheme by-laws, sometimes tighter. Noisy demolition is often restricted further.
What it costs
- Apartment bathroom, budget refresh (retile, new fixtures, same layout): $22,000–$27,000.
- Apartment bathroom, mid-range: $30,000–$45,000.
- High-end apartment bathroom with stone and premium tapware: $55,000–$90,000.
- Apartment kitchen, budget: $18,000–$25,000; mid $28,000–$45,000; high-end $60,000–$140,000.
- Whole-apartment cosmetic renovation: $1,800–$3,200 per square metre; high-end $3,500–$6,000 per square metre.
- Strata by-law drafting and registration: $1,500–$3,500.
- Structural engineer’s report: $1,500–$4,000.
- Acoustic report: $1,200–$2,800.
- Extraordinary general meeting: $500–$1,500.
- Access and protection premium: 10% to 20% on labour in a walk-up or lift-constrained tower.
- Expect apartment work to run 15% to 30% above the equivalent house work for the same finishes, purely because of access, protection, restricted hours and approvals.
Avoiding the disputes that actually happen
- Talk to the neighbours below and either side before you apply. Most objections are about noise, dust and duration, and most evaporate when someone knocks on the door first with dates.
- Never start before written approval is in hand and, where required, the by-law is registered. Retrospective approval is possible but you have surrendered all your negotiating position.
- Do not touch common property speculatively — no chasing into slabs or boundary walls, no penetrating the facade, no removing balcony tiling.
- Keep photographic records of everything, especially the waterproofing membrane before tiling and the condition of lobbies and lifts before work starts.
- Use licensed trades and check them on the NSW Fair Trading register. An unlicensed contractor voids your position under the by-law and under warranty.
- Enforce your own work hours on your trades. One 6.45am demolition start will cost you more goodwill than the whole project is worth.
- Understand what the by-law commits you to permanently — usually ongoing maintenance of the altered common property, passing to every future owner of the lot. Read it before you vote for it.
- Where a dispute cannot be resolved internally, NSW Fair Trading offers mediation, and NCAT determines strata disputes. Both are slow; prevention is enormously cheaper.
Apartment work overlaps with several other Wollongong topics worth reading alongside this. The membrane requirements that make a bathroom a major renovation are set out in waterproofing and wet area compliance, while bathroom renovation costs and timelines and kitchen renovation costs give the underlying pricing. The conservation area controls are covered in heritage and character controls, the corrosion specification in renovating for the local climate, and licence checking in finding and vetting a builder.
A closing thought on renovating within a scheme
The instinct most apartment owners bring to this is that the strata process is an obstacle placed between them and their own property. It is worth reframing. The scheme’s rules exist because the building is a single structure that everybody shares — one membrane failure travels down three floors, one hard floor laid without underlay makes a neighbour’s life miserable for a decade, and one cut into a post-tensioned slab can compromise a structural system.
In practice, the owners who have the smoothest projects in Wollongong are not the ones with the best lawyers. They are the ones who bought a Section 10.7 certificate and the strata records before they made an offer, read the by-laws before they engaged a designer, went to the committee early with a complete package, told the neighbours what was coming, and treated the six-month approval timeline as a fact of the landscape rather than an insult.
A related guide to consider while planning this work is Kitchen Renovation Costs in Wollongong: What You Actually Pay in 2026.
Get the classification right, submit everything at once, and design within what the building can physically accommodate rather than fighting it. Apartments in this city — particularly the older blocks a few streets back from the beach — are among the better value renovation propositions on this coast. They simply require a different kind of patience than a house does.