Multi-owned properties in the Asia Pacific Region: Rights, Responsibilities and Restrictions

Rapid urbanisation, urban densification and the rise of neo-liberal policy programmes across the Asia-Pacific region have combined to fundamentally reshape property systems and housing opportunities. However, policy development timing, pace and impact has varied between and across societies and has been affected by economic conditions and financial reforms. In concluding, we explore the common and different consequences of these trends and their significance in terms of urbanisation, the growth of multi-owned property and the attendant rights, restrictions and responsibilities as demonstrated by our co-contributors. We highlight directions for future research.

This book provides critical insight into the experience of multi-owned property, and showcases different cultural responses across the Asia-Pacific region. Escalating demand for properties within global cities has created exuberance around apartment living; however less well understood are the restrictions on individual rights and responsibilities associated with collective living. In contrast to the highly populated and traditional communal housing arrangements of past Asian economies, we see an increasing focus on neo-liberalist, market-based policies associated with the rise of an Asian middle class shaping structural change from communal to individualistic. This edited collection unpacks the rights, restrictions and responsibilities of multi-owned property ownership across the Asia-Pacific region; examining the experiences of developers, strata-managers, owners and residents. In doing so, they highlight how the rights of one party affects the restrictions and responsibilities of others within different policy frameworks. This work will reach an interdisciplinary audience including scholars and practitioners of sociology, public policy, urban studies and planning, economics, property management and architecture.

In this chapter, we examine impediments to environmentally sustainable and energy-efficient change in multi-owned properties and how this impacts on the capacity of the strata community to achieve economic and environmental goals. Our research identifies four major impediments to sustainable adaptation in the Australian context. First, there are missed opportunities to integrate core environmental sustainability principles into initial design and construction. Second, centralised systems create difficulties in terms of facilitating consumer awareness of on-site energy and water use and waste. Third, decision-making for environmentally sustainable adaptation of dwellings is complex with strata managers remaining key gatekeepers of environmental and financial product information in this process. Finally, the market does not provide appropriate financing mechanisms to facilitate loans within the multi-owned property sector.