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OK, I admit it, I’m becoming obsessed with what is happening – or not happening – in Victoria. And I mean Victoria, Australia, not the capital of Brit
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Thanks for “rave” as a Victorian owner and chair of our Committee of Management I hear you loud and clear, always look forward to your emails, and now you are looking south I hope to contribute and seek advice from you and other readers.
Problems with (Australian) Victorian OC Act 2006 have been rightly spotted in your podcast. They are not purely theoretical, they have actually happened in many large blocks of flats recently (2022) in West Footscray, Sunshine ,… around Melbourne:
Lack of transparency by Management left lot owners in the dark unless someone is willing to spend big money to fight the laws.
It is unlike NSW where owners are allowed to attend Committee meetings ( Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 No 50 [NSW], Schedule 2 Meeting procedures of strata committees, Section 13 Non-member owner may attend: An owner or, if the owner of a lot is a corporation, any company nominee of that corporation is entitled to attend a meeting but is not entitled to address the meeting unless authorised to do so by resolution of the strata committee.).
Too much power for Chairman combine with lack of transparency is conducive to corruption. The Chairman may bring in his service providers and pressure the Manager to approve that.
OC Act does NOT require Committee members to declare kickbacks, only Manager has to declare (sections 117, 122A, 122B)! The buck can be passed around.
At one OC in Footscray, 24 pairs of Aluminium framed windows had been actually replaced at the price of $6000 per pair while market price were only $800/pair plus labour of at most $1200/pair. Someone had made an overcharge of $4000×24 just for replacing 24 pairs of windows.
Chairman and Manager passed the buck around. They admit absolutely no responsibility. The plan was then repeated at other large blocks of flats in Sunshine by the same Chairman!
OC Act has also been inflicted with another newly created problem known as “benefit principle”. The benefit principle can be easily manipulated to dishonestly send the whole repair bill of any common service solely to any targeted single owner, sending him bankrupt.
These three features are currently the worst features of Victorian OC Act. They may be bad enough to send property investors out of the Victorian flats/units market.