Imagine if you bought an apartment and it turned out to be a house. No, seriously, the roof, walls, floor and terrace are all lot property, as are the water pipes, electrical cables and windows.

The only reason it isn’t really a house is because it sits on top of a block of units.  It turns out that the previous owner bought the air space and presumably agreed to the standard by-law that says anything they put there is their and subsequent owners of the apartment’s responsibility.

Hence buying an apartment where you own all of what would otherwise be common property in the rest of the block.

Now all of this is news to our Flatchatter whom you suspect might not have been so keen on the property had they known they’d inherit all the disadvantages of owning a house without many of the advantages of owning an apartment (like shared costs of repairs and maintenance, for instance).

This has occurred in Melbourne and Victorian law says that a property vendor must declare any “material facts” before the sale. 

These include everything from structural defects to the fact that a serious crime has been committed there, it was once used as a methamphetamine lab or even that planning approval has been granted for something elsewhere that could have an impact on it.

Now there are penalties of up to $24,400 for failing to mention material facts and a potential jail term for deliberately concealing them.  But is the information that the apartment is not common property a material fact?

You can add your opinion and offer some advice HERE.

Elsewhere on the forum

• Boom, boom, boom! Portable basketball hoop has turned up in common property. That’s HERE.
• Can we choose our own electricity supplier and how do we do it? Not as simple as it sounds. That’s HERE.
• Do we really need a maintenance schedule (ACT)? That’s HERE.
• UPDATE: How to deal with the noisy bonking on a nearby balcony. That’s HERE.

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