› Forums › Living in strata › Strata Matters – invitation to public forum with NSW Minister for Fair Trading › Current Page
@Jimmy, if you have not interviewed Angus Abadee yet, I think you should. He knows a lot about the power of the Strata and Property Services Taskforce. He’s enthusiastic about the resources being put together to help strata committees. People were firing all kinds of personal strata questions. He was 15 minutes over time in the Strata Matters forum tonight. As I left the building, there was still a line of people wanting to talk to him.
Jason Yat-Sen Li (NSW MP for Strathfield) hosted. More than 100 people attended. Anoulack Chanthivong (Minister for many things including Fair Trading) addressed the crowd briefly. Angus Abadee (Property Commissioner) gave a Strata 101 overview and took questions from the floor. There were heaps of questions. They covered the same kind of topics we read about here. It was like Jimmy taking questions on the James Valentine radio show but it went for two hours.
Angus Abadee mentioned the Strata and Property Services Task Force. He wants to take the workload off NCAT. Everyone should try and talk to each other to sort out disputes. If that fails, go to mediation with Fair Trading (which is free). NCAT should be the final step.
He expressed concern that strata buildings were not well maintained. Successive generations of owners have kicked the can down the road. Failure to maintain common property years ago means they cost much more to fix today.
Rising Insurance premiums: he attributed this high volume of insurance claims. He thinks claims would reduce if people maintained their buildings in the first place. ACCC is looking into the small size of the insurance industry (not many players). Without competition, premiums can be kept high.
Angus Abadee encouraged people to join a strata committee. It was explained that they have to get involved by attending meetings and voting.
Strata Hub was mentioned a few times. There are tools to help people do a building health check and put together their own capital works plans.
We were encouraged to use NSW govt resources to query the qualifications of builders / contractors, project managers.
He said that strata managers are not happy to see him when he and his team come to audit their practices.
A sampling of complaints heard tonight:
. Strata managers being corrupt, overpaid, unqualified, biassed towards certain strata committee members.
. Problems with repairs, increased cost of repairs due to a “design and building practitioner” scheme
. Cost of updating by-laws (someone was quoted $800) whilst renovating a bathroom. Other people in the strata plan had renovated their bathroom without seeking permission.
. Ten-year building manager / cleaning contract costing $300K raised sympathetic grumbles in the room.
. Embedded networks