One topic dominated your Forum discussions last week, and it was neither negative gearing nor capital gains tax.
The hot topic was lift maintenance, inspired by a piece from an executive of Kone elevators who urged strata owners to be more active in maintaining lifts and to set aside realistic amounts of funds for their repair or replacement.
Having recently divested from a building that had 16 – yes, 16 lifts – this was music to my ears.
Currently living in a 19-storey block which completed the refurbishment of our four lifts (in two towers) a year or so ago, I can testify that if you wait until your lifts go past their use-by dates before you put money aside to fix them, you are stacking up problems for yourself.
The worst affected are older buildings with only one lift, especially one that has never been properly maintained. And keeping the thing chugging along until it fails completely only makes the inevitable repairs more serious and time-consuming.
I recall a Flatchatter from a couple of years ago whose committee ignored their duty to repair the lift, even when it failed to stop at one floor and didn’t line up with the lift lobbies on those that it did.
You have to maintain and repair or even replace your lifts. If you happen to have older residents on higher floors, you might find the failure of common property comes with a claim for accommodation while it’s being fixed.
If the responses on the Forum tell us one thing, it’s the value of calling in experts – not necessarily the lift installers – at the first sign of problems, rather than waiting until the lift is unusable.
You can read the chat, and chip in with your own thoughts and experiences, HERE.
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