Surveying Visitor Parking – how does your building stack up?

Visitor parking is one of the most in-demand—and misunderstood—resources in strata buildings. Whether it’s an apartment complex, mixed-use development, or commercial strata, parking spots meant for visitors are often at the centre of disputes, confusion, or even breaches of by-laws.

So we asked the people who know best: building and facilities managers, strata committees, and property stakeholders across Australia. The results? Insightful and enlightening. So if you’re struggling with what building rules you should adopt in your strata apartment building by-laws around visitor parking, read on.

In this blog, we break down the key findings from our latest 2025 visitor parking survey and offer key insights about what residential buildings across Australia are doing for visitor parking to help inform your visitor parking action plan.

Why Visitor Parking Rules Matter in Residential Apartment Buildings

In high density urban areas, visitor parking isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s essential infrastructure—especially in densely populated apartment buildings where guest access is critical to community function and safety. But when visitor parking rules are unclear, inconsistent, or outdated, the system breaks down.

Common issues consistently highlighted included:

• Residents parking in visitor parking bays overnight or permanently
• Guests overstaying in visitor parking bays beyond the time limits without consequences
• Misuse of parking passes or access devices to allow unauthorised drivers to use visitor parking bays
• What action buildings can legally take to enforce visitor parking rules

So how are residential apartment buildings in Australia currently managing this?

How Are Apartment Buildings Setting Visitor Parking Rules?

Most rules are set at the strata or building management level, often decided by the Owners Corporation, Strata Committee or Residents Committee. For larger buildings, the Building Manager usually gets involved as well.

Communicating to residents and visitors what the building rules are for visitor parking varies widely. Some buildings use:

• On-site signage and noticeboards
• Emails or newsletters
• Attempts to create a rudimentary booking system
• By-laws lodged officially but never updated

But a large number of sites either have poorly communicated rules—or none at all.

💡 Tip: If your visitor parking rules aren’t visible, they may as well not exist.

Who Should Visitor Parking Be For?

One of the most decisive findings from our 2025 visitor parking survey was the overwhelming agreement on who visitor parking  bays are intended for. It’s obvious right – visitor parking should be used exclusively for visitors.

However, Our survey of  building managers, strata managers, and property managers responses showed that’s not always the case

• 85% of responses said the visitor parking was exclusively for visitors
• 15% of responses said that residents are also permitted to parking in visitor parking bays, and

While the majority affirmed visitor-only use, it was interesting to note that 15% of buildings permitted residents to use visitor parking bays. More thoughts on that later

What Are the Most Common Rules on Visitor Parking?

Here’s a snapshot from our 2025 survey results:

Frequency: How Often Can Visitors Park?

The lack of consistency in frequency rules often leads to resident complaints and misuse of visitor parking systems – usually always back to the stressed out building or facilities manager, and the owners corporation or strata committee.

• Once per day or once per week were the most common responses
• A few allowed use up to 3 times per unspecified period
• Some buildings had no limits so visitors could park in any vacant bay – complete chaos!

Duration: Maximum amount of time Visitors can park

Many buildings leave this rule vague, creating loopholes and disputes—especially where there’s no proper visitor parking solution in place. Not a great plan! However in our survey results, we found the following duration data.

• Minimum stay: 2 hours
• Maximum stay: 72 hours (3 days)
• Most commonly allowed: 24 hours

Enforcing Visitor Parking Rules

Enforcing visitor parking rules in residential strata buildings is one of the most persistent challenges for building managers and strata committees alike. Without the right tools or clear communication, it often falls into a grey area—where rules exist, but enforcement is inconsistent or ineffective. 

Our survey revealed that while many buildings have defined stay durations and usage frequencies, few have systems in place to monitor or enforce them fairly. Some rely on attempting to manually enforce fines, towing (which now must be done within the process of a legal framework in NSW, Victoria and Queensland), on in one case suspending access to security swipe cards (not sure this would be upheld by a court). While others don’t enforce at all— their chances of actually getting any financial penalty back far outweigh the time and effort that you need to put in. This leads to resident frustration, repeated misuse of visitor bays, and community conflict. 

It’s clear that without a smart, accessible solution—like smartphone-operated parking bollards or digital tracking—rules alone aren’t enough to protect visitor parking spaces or ensure compliance.

And when it comes to charging for overstaying visitor parking limits? 

The numbers speak for themselves. Out of all the buildings surveyed:

• 36% had implemented by-laws to enforce infringement charges
• while 63% buildings had no such measures in place.

That means the majority of buildings aren’t backing their visitor parking rules with real consequences. Without enforcement frameworks or penalty systems, rules risk becoming mere suggestions—leaving visitor bays vulnerable to repeat misuse and pushing the burden back onto already stretched building managers.

Enforcement: Are Buildings Charging for Overstays or Breaches of visitor parking rules?

In those buildings which do have financial penalties implemented, we’re  seeing that infringements fall into two broad categories. Fixed fine and variable fines.

Infringement Types

• Fixed fines (e.g. $88, $240, $300) – a one-off significant fine amount which you hope acts as a direct deterrent. These tend to be more common in more structured sites
• Others use variable fines and attempt to charge an hourly rate for overstays. These rates are dependent on several factors – and may or may not include an administratie fee as well.
• Several buildings charge admin fees for repeat breaches or take away access privileges (eg. suspend your access card) and then charge an admin fee to reactivate your security access card. This is an interesting concept but please be careful and seek legal input on this before you implement. Does taking away a resident’s security card access impinge on their right to fair enjoyment of their property, and is that type of suspension commensurate with the infringement of the visitor parking rules.
• Interestingly, some building managers said they still rely on towing. Again, you need to be very careful about enforcing this. Changes to strata laws mean that there are now very specific legal processes that you need to follow in several states before you can tow a vehicle from common property. For example in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, where any towing needs to follow a very structured and well documented legal process.

How do buildings actually collect fines for visitor parking infringements?

The biggest challenge these buildings cited however was actually collecting the fines and enforcement fees. With no access to data relating to ownership of visitor or resident vehicles, registration details or licence plate, the only way these building managers could hope to recoup their fees is through stickers or notes or infringement notices manually and physically put on the cars.

Whether anyone actually pays these fines, or how you chase them up is another complete unknown. Most responses said that it’s incredibly time-consuming, labour intensive and almost impossible to recover the fines, so all the effort put in had no teeth. 

In relation to suspending security access for violations of visitor parking rules, that’s a grey area in terms of the ability to restrict a resident’s right of enjoyment of their property (whether owner or tenant) that you would want to carefully assess from a legal liability perspective.

In addition, for those sites still relying on towing for compliance, it would be worth revisiting your by-laws and your enforcement strategy for visitor parking before it creates legal risk.

💡 Want a more effective approach? Smart parking solutions using automated parking bollards let you secure bays and track usage without relying on unenforceable penalties and grey areas of property law enforcement.

Is There a Grace Period for Visitors?

In our survey we asked building and facilities managers whether they allowed any grace period for visitor parking. For example, if a visitor is running a little late coming back to their car, is there any tolerance of this. Again, the results were quite diverse.

About half of the buildings surveyed had no grace period. A few offered:

• Fixed grace time (e.g. 10 minutes)
• Verbal warnings before penalties, or a limited number of infringements before enforcement action.
• Discretion by the building manager

Unfortunately, this inconsistency leads to conflict and confusion. That’s why many sites are turning to automated visitor parking systems and smart parking bollard solutions that enforce limits fairly and without ambiguity.

So… What Does “Best Practice” Look Like?

The residential apartment buildings we surveyed which had the most success in managing visitor parking shared a few common traits:

• Clear, consistently communicated rules
• Define duration of visitor parking access, generally short-term (e.g. 24 hours max)
• Define frequency of the number of times people can use visitor parking in any period (eg. once a month)
• Enforcement that’s legal, trackable, and fair
• Physical tools to control access, like smartphone-operated parking bollards

When residents or guests overstay, smart parking management systems which have building rules baked in, such as bollards that raise and lower remotely clearly enforce the rules fairly. And avoid constant misuse, frustration and wasted time.

Final Thoughts: Is It Time to Revisit Your Building Rules on Visitor Parking?

Visitor parking rules aren’t just housekeeping. They impact the liveability of your building, the safety of residents, and the fair access of guests.

If your building doesn’t yet have a clear framework or the right tools to manage visitor parking in apartment buildings, now is the time.

• Review your current by-laws
• Update your visitor parking system
• Communicate rules consistently
• Replace manual enforcement with smart parking bollard systems

Need help? We work with strata managers, committees, and property developers across Australia to implement smarter, simpler, and more secure parking solutions for residential apartment buildings and strata managers.

Explore our full range of parking bollards  and highly sophisticated automated parking systems with your building rules built in and speak to us about how to solve your visitor parking problems.