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[scher1s]

We are in the process of purchasing a villa and our settlement happens in 4 weeks. When we had the villa inspected, few structural repairs came back:

1. Shower leaking, we believe its  due to non-existent waterproofing, as the bathroom is still in ‘original’ condition. It is soaking the floor and timber beams under it, possibly rotting it, though we can’t be sure until it is inspected.
2. Some of the supporting piers are falling over. In addition to this, the shower leak is going through to the ground under the property and further destabilising that side of the villa and has caused ground movement. The pier in the main bedroom had to be repaired three months earlier due to this and cracks in the walls of the second bedroom and the door not closing properly is also evidence of this.
3. The leak is also creating an ideal breeding ground for termites.

We want to approach each issue slowly, but for the moment we would like to renovate the bathroom when settlement rolls around so we can move in as soon as possible but would need the OC to fix the leak before we do anything as it is their responsibility. As further use will only make the problems above worse.

The original report with the repairs outlining all structural repairs mentioned above was given to the EC and strata management over 2 months ago, so they are well aware of the problem. We also asked the current owner to get in contact with Strata over three weeks ago and ask them to repair the problem. The current owners were essentially given a non-committal response somewhere along the lines of ‘take pictures of it and we can have a look’. We then approached Strata last week requesting the problem to be inspected and repaired and we still have not received any response or movement from Strata or EC. We are beginning to see the people in the EC are very autocratic about requests, which have been confirmed by other people in the complex.

Questions:

– What’s the best way to approach this situation, in where the EC is not very professional about repairs? We would like to move in soon as possible as we pay rent to the inlaws and can’t afford to pay the mortgage and rent.
– We would like to renovate the kitchen, mainly replacing the original kitchen cabinets and benchtops etc with a functional one and tile the floor, do we need OC permission to do this?
– We would also like to renovate the bathroom, other than putting in the request, do we also need to provide plans on what we are doing?
– What is our recourse if the EC decide to drag this out? We don’t want any problems, we just want to renovate and move in.

Thanks.

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