Six months of conversations with residents, building managers, committee members and strata firms across Sydney. Here’s what we found, and why this is one of the largest, quietest opportunities in property.
SOURCES: ABS, STRATA COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION, NSW FAIR TRADING, 2024–2025
Notices land in lobby print-outs, manager emails, body-corporate PDFs and WhatsApp threads. Residents miss the one about the water shut-off and find out when the shower runs cold.
New residents have no introduction. No directory, no faces, no context. Community is one of the top three reasons people choose apartments — and the one thing nobody delivers.
When something breaks, residents don’t know who to contact. When committees meet, residents don’t know what was decided. The building is a black box you happen to live inside.
The same announcement goes out four times — email, SMS, lobby print, group chat. Every time. Building managers spend hours each week on the same five communications.
No read receipts, no acknowledgements, no analytics. When the fire warden asks who’s been briefed on the new evacuation plan, the honest answer is “I sent the email.”
Strata software was built for accountants and lawyers, not for the person actually on-site. Residents never log in. Committees never log in. Nobody logs in.
Existing channels max out below 50% read-rate. The category itself is compounding at +4% a year. The faster the buildings multiply, the worse the comms gap gets.
Strata in Australia is the beachhead. Above it sits the entire global residential asset class — and above that, every building humans live in, work in, or pass through. Each ring is the next door we earn the right to open.
SOURCES: SAVILLS GLOBAL REAL ESTATE VALUE 2024, ABS, STRATA COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION
Sydney is live. The next twelve months: every major AU + NZ city. Year two: the APAC building-density corridor. Long arc: every dense city on earth.
Residents, owners, building managers, committees, and strata firms each have their own tools today — and none of them talk. Every other property category solved this a decade ago. Strata didn’t, because nobody built for the on-site reality.
Hemma starts with the one thing everyone agrees is broken — communication — and earns the right to do more. Communication is the wedge. The building OS is the destination.
See the long-term picture — beyond a few buildings in Sydney.