There’s a question in the Flat Chat form this week that highlights a couple of dilemmas that commonly confront apartment owners and tenants. It’ concerns’s about knowing there’s something wrong with your apartment – in this case the absences of child safety locks on windows – and having a friend as your landlord..

Our Flatchatter – or, at least, his son and his partner – rent an apartment on the eighth floor of a block and the windows don’t have any locks, child-proof or otherwise.

The tenant doesn’t want to hassle his landlord, a friend, or get him into trouble and “the strata” (whatever that is) has told him they’re not interested.

Now, is it because they’ve been contacted by a tenant or, in fact, a tenant’s dad? The former shouldn’t make any difference because strata law says that occupiers of a lot are ‘interested persons’ who can even initiate actions at Fair Trading and NCAT.

Or is it because they don’t think child safety window locks are not their responsibility?  They are. The owners corporation must pay to install and repair window locks, unless otherwise agreed in your strata by-laws, according to the relevant government website.

The law says windows within a strata scheme must have a safety lock if the lowest part of the window is within 1.7 m from the inside floor, and the inside floor is 2 m or higher from the ground outside. A safety lock must stop the window opening more than 12.5 cm and all locks must be childproof and resist force equal to 25 kgs.

In any case, we have, as usual, an elegant, low cost, no hassle solution HERE.

In another post, another parent (seems to be a pattern here) is wondering what their son can do, having bought an apartment with leaky waterproofing after a reno by the previous owner. There are indications that the work on the renovation wasn’t done to the standards indicated in the scope of works provided in the by-law and permissions.

So who do they pursue (or sue)?  The water-proofer, the tiler or even the person who sold them a flat with a bodgy bathroom? Or should they just put it down to the slings and arrows of strata life? Your thoughts, please, HERE.

Finally, a hold-over from last week, a committee member wants to know if it’s worth getting a by-law that says renovators must abide by the building’s DA when strata law already says by-laws Like the ones required for major renovations) can’t supersede superior laws (like planning permission).  That’s HERE.

By the way, I ran all these problems through our shiny new Flat ChatBot, the answers are revealing, in so many ways.

So easy to ask and answer questions

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