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I live in a block of 20 units in Sydney. All our units have an undercover car space and storage cage allocated with their title. We have a situation in which one of the units is using their car space as a storage area where a large amounts of wooden furniture is stored. This is not only a breach of our by-laws, but it creates a fire hazard which would affect our insurance claim in the event a fire was to occur. We cannot forcibly remove the items as we have been informed that this would constitute theft.
Unfortunately we are not able to make contact with the owner as we only have an email address which they do not respond to. Attempts to make contact via door knocking and leaving notes in their letterbox also remain unsuccessful (we believe that the unit may be tenanted).
We are in a situation where the owner has breached the by laws and created a problem which leaves us exposed to our insurance being invalid/rejected in case of a fire, as we have not removed a known hazard which contributes to/accentuates the risk of fire.
Can anyone offer any advise on what can be done in this situation.
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I changed the heading on this post from “Storage of junk in car space” because I think the real issue here is the inability to contact the owner. Once you have contacted the owner, you can deal with the by-law breaches.
And I think the key to the solution is to agree at a strata committee meeting to issue a Notice To Comply and then pursue an action at NCAT for the impposition of fines. The fines will escalate every time your notice is ignored and eventually that will get the owner or their property manager’s attention.
Also you might look at Section 258 which allows for maximum fines of $550 for failure to notify the OC of the commencement of a new tenancy.
258 Tenancy notice to be given to owners corporation(1) If a lot is leased, the relevant person must give notice of the lease to the owners corporation not later than 14 days after the commencement of the lease.
Maximum penalty—5 penalty units.(2) If the relevant person fails to comply with subsection (1), the tenant may give notice of the lease to the owners corporation.
(3) If a lease of a lot is assigned, the assignor must give notice of the assignment to the owners corporation not later than 14 days after the execution of the assignment.
Maximum penalty—5 penalty units.(4) The notice must be in writing and specify—
(a) the name of the tenant and an address for service of the tenant, and
(b) the date of commencement or assignment of the lease, as the case requires, and
(c) the name of the real estate agent managing the lease, if applicable.
Any or all of these are intended to get the lot owner’s attention, so with that in mind I would go in hard at the start and then ease off once contact has been established.There’s a very good chance that the property is being managed by a rental agent who is simply not passing on the messages from the OC because they want the owner to think they are on top of their job and they don’t want to bother them. Sudden appearance of fines on their levy notices will bother them.Anyone else been in this situation? And how did you handle it?If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
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Just getting back to ‘wooden furniture’ in storage cage for a moment. Im questioning the claim re insurance. Very often, stuff in a cage is covered by furniture covers etc so there may be many more ‘wooden ‘ items in the cage that the OC are not aware of. Also, what about books stored in the cage. Mostly anything stored can burn. So im questioning two things. Insurance coverage & what exactly is mentioned in the pdf associated with the insurance. This could effect so many ‘storage cages’ surely?
I wonder if the insurance issue is a case of “loading up” as the police call it when they add multiple offences to the original charge, just to make sure they get the culprit for something. Unless the insurers or fire saftey people have issues a warning, this is a bit of a furphy, albeit an understandable one. Go back to any by-laws that state what can or can’t be stored in a parking space, and others about the appearance of lots FROM common property and that should be enough.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.