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[sturh]

Hi, I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask but I’ve got some questions about an unusual situation we might be in.

My father built a block of 4 units in Wollongong back in 1983 and still holds 3 of the units, and has been self-managing the strata since the late 90’s. Lately for health reasons he needs a lot of help with managing things like this, and looking over our records it seems he probably hasn’t been aware of the legislation changes that have taken place over the years and probably hasn’t been doing some things that he should have.

We’ve been on top of levies and expenses lately, and have been providing the other owner with an annual financial report. But I don’t think he has held an AGM for a very long time. We also don’t have a 10 year capital works plan and I’m not sure if there are issues with how someone reimburses themselves for strata expenses etc.

He is quite stubborn that he does not want a strata manager, but he is unable to even manage the finances without my help and looking over what I understand the requirements to be, it would be very daunting for me to attempt to fix the issues with AGMs etc. myself without any such experience, and I am uncertain about how much I can do myself (I have power of attorney).

Discussing these issues with him, he eventually just gets frustrated and just says to sell the units, which I believe would be impossible without getting some of the administrative issues resolved.

We have a rental agent for the units who has been helpful with maintenance issues, etc. which technically have been common property issues.

So am I maybe overthinking how difficult it would be to sort this out by the book with online resources etc. ?

Or is a strata manager probably the best bet (particularly if we are thinking of selling soon)?

Are there serious issues with not having done things properly, or can these issues be resolved at the AGM/EGM we will be needing?

What would be reasonable in costs for a basic record-keeping and agm administration management per year? I’m getting a range of estimates and am not sure what’s reasonable (or what additional charges we’d be up for in fixing things up). We can probably handle the finances at the moment, but we’re considering whether it would be more attractive to sell a unit with independent management of the finances too.

Anything to point me in the right direction here would be appreciated – sorry if it’s a bit much, I’ve been trying to get my head around all this strata law stuff etc lately.

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