The complicated answer to the question “What is a Body Corporate?” is, it’s a mechanism for holding and managing common property.
To make things a little clearer lets look at a simple illustration.
A Simple Land Subdivision
The process of developing land is relatively simple to understand.
A developer wants to subdivide lot 1 on “Plan A”.
A new plan is drawn up and registered. The new plan cancels lot 1 on “Plan A” and creates the new plan “Plan B” with two lots in it’s place. The geographical boundaries of the land in total remain unchanged, however now there are two lots in place of one.
Effectively “Plan A” no longer exists.
Now that the lots have been subdivided they may be sold to separate owners.
Subdividing Smaller Blocks
Say the new owner of lot 2 on “Plan B” decides to make a little money from the block of land by subdividing it again.
The government has regulations regarding minimum lot size and lot 2 on “Plan B” cannot be subdivided into two equal lots that meet that minimum requirement. Further, if the land cannot be subdivided then the lots cannot be sold separately.
To overcome this problem the lot is strata titled.
Effectively what that means is the land is not separated. The two lots are created through the same process, in this case cancelling lot 2 on “Plan B” and creating lots 1 and 2 on “Plan C” with some leftover land.
Who owns the leftover land?
Lot 1 and lot 2 on “Plan C” jointly own the land. It is common property.
To tie everything up nice and neat and legal that common property is assigned the real property address lot 0 on “Plan C”. At the same time the “Body Corporate for Example Community Title Scheme xxxxx” is created as the owner of lot 0 on “Plan C”.
Who owns the “Body Corporate for Example CTS xxxxx”?
The owners of lot 1 and lot 2 on “Plan C” jointly own the common property so they jointly own the body corporate created to hold and manage that land. It is held for their joint benefit. It is also their joint responsibility to care for that land, or rather the mechanism that owns that land, the body corporate.
Lot 1 and Lot 2 on “Plan C” can both be sold as individual lots, however, what’s transferred at time of sale is not just the lot, but also a proportion of ownership in the body corporate.
This is a very simplistic example of a subdivision. That said, its the same process for all body corporates in Queensland, from duplex’s to those with hundreds of lots.