I have a townhouse in Highgate Hill in Brisbane that is not part of an estate. They are like houses with only a courtyard each, 2 stories, but share common walls. There are quite high body corp fees, however, despite there not being very much, or exciting, common ground. There are no pools, security gates, etc.

Make sure you get an accurate view of body corp fees, as soon after buying mine, there was call for extra fees for a once-off painting of the exterior. They wanted $4000 within two weeks for each residence. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t afford that, but we are still paying off this large new expense, and there are parts of the property that I was led to believe was covered by body corp but the body corp told me that these areas are my responsibility (although I can’t change anything without their permission, of course).

Anyway, it is tricky to find this info out, as the body corp wouldn’t let me see this info prior to purchase, so it wasn’t until after that I realised how much I was up for.