Struggler, As one “Strata Guru” to another, let me say that in the 6 years that I’ve been Secretary & Treasuer of our 27 Lot self-managed Plan where 16 Lots are tenanted, and 4 Lots are holiday rentals, I’ve found that the problem of visitor parking is one only two Strata–related problems that I just can’t solve.
We registered a Special-By Law in 2006 that gives the Owners Corporation (O/C) the ability to issue a “Parking Fee not exceeding $500 per day or part thereof” to any person whose vehicle is parked in a space not allocated to their Lot, or in a designated visitors’ space, or on the Common Property.
That Special By-Law transfers responsibility for the payment of that Fee from the person who parked the vehicle, to the resident of the Lot where that person was living or visiting, and finally to the Proprietor of that Lot.
I’ve just checked or records, and over the past five years the O/C has issued 137 “Warning Letters” and invoiced 16 $55 Parking Fees; 7 to visitors, 4 to residents (all tenants), and 5 to Absentee Proprietors (Landlords). Of those, only 9 have ever been paid, and none of those by Absentee Proprietors.
In fact, one Absentee Proprietor included the O/C’s Parking Feed in his Civil Claim against a previous tenant, and after almost three months the Local Court awarded just 53% of that Proprietor’s total claim, and granted the offender time to pay; lots of time!
So I guess that sometime in the far distant future, that Proprietor will pay 53% of the O/C’s Parking Fee that was originally invoiced to his previous tenant in February 2011.
By the way, that other problem that I thus far can’t solve is convincing some rent-hungry Absentee Proprietors to terminate the Rental Agreements of their continually miss-behaving tenants before those Agreements enter their variable term, because once that variable term commences, Property Managers will do nothing (usually for the same $ related reasons), and as an O/C is not a “person” in the eyes of the Tenancy Division of the CTTT, we’re off to the General Division armed with Warning Letters and Notices to Comply – where Orders are few and Penalties are fewer!!