Flame Tree wrote:
Seems like a over-reaction setting up a by-law that will get used once ever blue moon. Would you not be better to just write it up as a egm/agm Motion with the detail in the explanatory guff and just pass that?
General meeting motions do not have the power to ascribe responsibilty for common property to individual owners. You would need every owner to agree to this in a legally binding agreement passed as a special resolution or by-law. That is the law (Section 108) and you can’t just ignore it because it seems excessive.
That is the only way to avoid subsequent owners coming in and saying they don’t agree with the arrangement and that it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny from a legal point of view and they want the owners corp to fix their windows, meaning the owners who have already paid for their own windows have to pay twice.
That said, I reckon we are over-thinking this. The Act says common property has to be repaired. If the other owners won’t agree, then either or both of the owners with faulty windows can take the owners corp to NCAT and seek orders.
And again, it’s a matter of sitting down with a spread sheet and explaining to the recalcitrants how much more it’s going to cost if they don’t just go ahead and pay for the repairs collectively. Otherwise a by-law or special resolution with each owner taking responsibility for their own windows is the simplest and least expensive way forward.