Executive committees in some new buildings have just four weeks to make a claim for defect rectification or they could miss out completely, according to panelists at last week’s Flat Chat Live sessions in Sydney.
Strata experts warned owners in the defects danger zone – buildings more than two but less than six years old – to talk to strata lawyers right now.
Otherwise, the new laws that come in on December 1st and which will operate retrospectively, may shift issues that were previously considered “major defects” into the “minor” column.
And since minor issues have a two-year window in which you can claim, you might have missed the boat completely on problems that you consider serious.
That was the main “take home” message from Flat Chat Live, part of the Strata Community Australia owners day, along with a plea to get involved.
As Michael Courtney from Fair Trading’s mediation section said several times, if you want to solve problems in your building, there’s no point sitting back and waiting for someone else or, even worse, the non-existent StrataKops to come along and fight the good fight on your behalf. It won’t happen.
Apart from those issues, a record crowd heard a fine crop of curly questions raised and answered by a panel comprising Robert Anderson of Advance Strata Management, Karina Heinz of Progressive Strata Services, Matthew Carota of Integrated Consulting, John Macgregor of Whitbread Insurance, and the aforementioned Michael Courtney from Fair Trading.
The issues raised sanged from the subtle to the ridiculous: How come changes to common property become the owners corp’s responsibility once the owner who made the changes sells?
Why can’t I put our $350,000 sinking fund into an account that will earn a competitive interest rate?
How do we deal with non-resident drivers and pedestrians using our carpark as a shortcut? Are we liable if there’s an accident?
And there were many, many more. Sadly, there simply wasn’t time to answer them all or even get to all the questions sent in by email or presented on the day.
So, for readers who couldn’t be there, I’ll publish the answers to questions that were raised in this website’s Forum.
And SCA are going to pass questions that weren’t asked to their strata manager members to answer on their website nsw.stratacommunity.org.au.