bluehouse – whilst awaiting a possible response from mini , let me clarify that I thought your main issue was that your Owners Corporation (O/C) was aware of, or at least suspected, that an Owner had made fairly substantial renovations to their Lot, and that as the Lot was on the market and a deposit may have been taken, you were concerned that your O/C may be held responsible for the maintenance and repair of any common areas involved in those renovations by a new Owner.
If that’s correct, then we’re not talking about a Breach of the Model By-Law that prohibits activities such as driving a nail into a common wall, and even if that was applicable, how could your O/C defend the fact that it has never issued the Lot Owner with a Notice to Comply, which after all states only that a breach is believed to have been committed, so it could have afforded the current Owner an opportunity to respond, if only to refute that belief?
It was for those reasons that I suggested that your O/C approach the issue from the angle that the current Owner may have breached S65A of the Act by adding to and/or changing and/or erecting a new structure on common property areas within their Lot, and that a note to that effect on a document such as the S109 Certificate would be an appropriate means to make the parties (the vendor and the purchaser) aware of the suspected situation, and to let them resolve it together with their legal representatives and to the satisfaction of the O/C prior to settlement.
So rather than a new Owner not being obliged to restore the common property areas of their Lot to its former condition because works had been done to those areas by the “predecessor in title”, I would contend that the approach that I’ve suggested would in fact prevent a new Owner from denying prior knowledge of the works, and to either do the restoration with funds allowed from the Vendor at Settlement, or to beforehand seek the O/C’s retrospective authorisation to those past renovations, subject to conditions perhaps including one making that new Owner responsible for the maintenance and repair of those.
As with some other suggestions I make here, this is one that’s worked for our Strata Plan in all but one instance where the new Owner accepted the funds allowed from the previous Owner to make agreed changes, in that instance to take-up a floating floor, and then didn’t. Fortunately for our O/C, the then CTTT’s chocolate-wheel of possible decisions ruled in our favour albeit with the assistance of a relevant Special By-Law, which by the way is one of the reasons that, as opposed to being overwhelmed by it, I try so hard to avoid the NCAT and the real Court System; so be careful what you wish for!