If your committee is stuck on how to fund new washing machines and dryers for the building, you are asking the wrong question. Committees will often debate the cost of purchasing laundry equipment and lament the ongoing costs and management associated with them.
In an Australian apartment building, a communal laundry sits on common property, so the owners corporation owns it and is responsible for maintaining it. The costs fall into three categories: the laundry equipment, the ongoing maintenance of the machines, and the shared utilities for the room. The owners corporation funds this through owners’ levies. The way to remove the two highest costs, the equipment and its maintenance, from the building entirely is a route-operator arrangement. This is where an outside provider supplies, owns, and maintains the machines at no cost to the owners and recovers that outlay through the price residents already pay to use the laundry equipment.
The costs of a communal laundry
There are 3 costs to consider when reviewing your communal laundry: the cost of the equipment, the cost of maintaining the equipment and the shared utilities.
The capital outlay(the price of purchasing the machines). Commercial-grade washers and dryers built for constant use, equipped with card readers for cashless payments, can run into the tens of thousands of dollars for a full laundry room.
Maintenance, the ongoing cost of servicing, repairs, and parts once the machines are installed, is also something to consider. Major repairs can be costly and are usually required to be addressed quickly if the communal laundry is the only place where residents can do laundry in the building..
Utilities, the water and electricity that the laundry room uses. This sits with the building as a common-property cost, metered to the owners corporation.
Who is legally responsible for the laundry
A communal laundry in a strata or apartment building is common property. It is not owned by any single lot owner; it belongs to everyone.I the owners corporation chooses to provide laundry equipment in their communal laundry, they carry the responsibility to maintain it. The principle is consistent across Australia, even though the body that carries it is named differently from state to state. It is the owners corporation in Victoria, New South Wales, and the ACT; the body corporate in Queensland and Tasmania; the strata company in Western Australia; and the strata or community corporation in South Australia.
The no-cost alternative: a route operator
There is a model that takes the capital cost and the maintenance burden off the building entirely. Under a route-operator arrangement, a company supplies, installs, owns, and maintains the machines at no cost to the owners. The building provides the space, the connections, and the room’s water and power; the operator provides everything else and keeps it running. Because the operator owns the machines, the building is not carrying them as an asset to insure, service, or replace. Residents pay per wash, and that vend price is how the operator recovers its costs. The owners corporation pays nothing for the equipment and nothing for repairs.
That is what Nina’s Laundrette does for communal laundries. Based in Melbourne, we work with buildings across Australia, both metro and regional. We supply and maintain commercial-grade washers and dryers at no cost to the owners. Residents pay by cashless tap rather than hunting for coins. Every machine carries a QR code so a resident can report a fault to us directly, and we aim to respond within 24 hours. The committee is no longer the first point of contact for a broken washing machine or dryer.
Common questions
Want to explore using a laundry route operator for your communal laundry?
If your building is weighing up a communal laundry, here is how a no-cost setup with Nina’s Laundrette works.
- Tell us about your building: the number of units, the laundry space you have, and how residents use it now.
- We assess the room: the right mix of washers and dryers for your building’s size and demand, plus the space, plumbing, and power.
- We supply and install at no cost: we own the machines, so there is no capital outlay and no special levy.
- Residents use it, we maintain it: residents pay per wash by card or app, report any issue by QR code, and we keep the equipment running.
See how the no-cost model works on our body corporate laundry equipment page.