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i live in a block of 11 apartments with a 3 member committee, including myself as chair. it is becoming increasingly difficult to get owners to join the committee, hence i find it concerning that nsw fair trading is in the process of making the role more onerous with increased responsibility & liability.
my worry is this will result in even fewer owners being willing to join the committee, especially chair, a role which i am keen to pass on but nobody else wants to do it, even before the changes.
i am particularly annoyed with the situation where owners can purchase a unit & then have no further involvement beyond paying levies – they don’t attend agms. in our case it is investors rather than owner occupiers. i have occassionally run into some who are full of praise for our 3 committeee members as “you are doing such a good job we are happy to leave it in their capable hands”!!
i do think increased responsibility & liability should be across all owners not just the few reluctant committee members… but how?
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It’s a bit like any volunteer role, especially in childrens’ sport. You do a good job and set a high bar and no one wants to take over and achieve or exceed that high bar. In many organisations, you have to do the irresponsible thing and refuse point blank to take it on for another year. Be stubborn. Shrug your shoulders as if you don’t care. Or don’t attend the AGM and send a non-resident family member in your place to take the emotion out of the situation.
But be careful what you wish for. You could end up with someone who does a very poor job indeed, or doesn’t do the job at all and things fall apart. Or you could end up with someone who uses the role to his or her own advantage.
In my strata, I’m the Chair but in practice I do all the work of the Secretary, Treasurer and Chair. Everyone in our small block wants to be on the Committee but no one wants to do the work. So in the past couple of years I’ve started to refuse to do work. I do all the basic admin and I have one long-standing project that I continue to manage. But anytime someone wants something fixed I ask them to take on their requested project on the grounds that I’m doing everything else. In other words – yes it can be fixed but only if you (the requestor) make that happen. It’s a bit different to your situation where you are trying to even get people on the Committee. I’m not sure what you can do but would it be possible to get elected at the AGM when that agenda item comes around, and then resign at the same meeting if others won’t step up to be on the Committee and help with the work?
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… anytime someone wants something fixed I ask them to take on their requested project on the grounds that I’m doing everything else. In other words – yes it can be fixed but only if you (the requestor) make that happen.
When you think about it, this is just an extension of our responsibilities as members of the Owners Corporation (rather than the strata committee).
You want the lobby of the building to be retiled? Get three quotes and present them to the committee for initial assessment before it goes to the OC for approval. If you are passionate about wanting something fixed or changed, it should be important enough for you to do the legwork. Otherwise, why should anyone else, committee member or not, do the work when they are not being paid?
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My impression is that at regulatory policy formulation level there is not much understanding of the impracticality of loading strata committees with responsibilities. While I am sure there are many schemes in NSW with functional committees, my own experience suggests they may be the exception not the rule. In a a smallish 10 unit scheme I bought into, the strata committee it seems never once met. Whatever business was done was by unrecorded approvals to strata manager. I have sighted a website advisor claim that the Act does not mandate a requirement that a committee actually meet at all. Probably strata manager agencies encourage unimpeded delegation to their nominee.
At the same time, in my experience very few owners saddle up for Ctee membership and most that do are reluctant about responding or giving much time. This fact of life makes it unlikely that requiring training of Ctee members or their involvement in capital planning programs will do much more than discourage recruitment. Of course the problem is not confined to strata management.many incorporated associations struggle to find active officers. For strata schemes I suggest that Fair Work could do more to enliven Ctee functioning and membership if it put more pressure on strata management agencies to reach a set of mandatory KPI ,designed to better inform and involve owners, starting with AGMs
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You are correct about the recently added responsibilities and workload for committee members. The Dept of Fair Trading will shortly (“within weeks” according to the NSW Strata Commissioner, Angus Abadee, at a conference on 14 August) be requiring strata committee members to take a 1 hour training course, in order to be on a strata committee.
But as long as some owners are volunteering to be on the committee and the building is well run, and the other owners are content with how it is being managed – and there is a professional strata manager involved, then the system is working.
The obvious response for buildings when this isn’t the case is “Don’t the owners want to sell some day?” If you are an owner in a building which is not operating properly, then you will have big problems selling the Unit! The strata report on a strata building that is not fully compliant with the law will ensure that the Unit is unsellable, or only sellable at a large discount. Even if you sell to a naive purchaser, they will be able to take legal action against the previous owner, if they later find the strata laws were not followed. Who would purchase in a building that has not been holding Annual General Meetings, and approving repairs and maintenance in properly convened strata committee meetings? No-one sensible.
The strata report on a strata building that is not fully compliant with the law will ensure that the Unit is unsellable, or only sellable at a large discount. Even if you sell to a naive purchaser, they will be able to take legal action against the previous owner, if they later find the strata laws were not followed.
I’m not sure about that. I think Caveat Emptor – buyer beware – still applies. It’s different if the vendor lies about what has been done and what hasn’t. But I don’t think it’s legally or enforceably incumbent on them to offer the information to potential buyers that the building has been badly run. Only thorough and professional strata checks will do that.
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I share your concerns. I am the chairperson of the strata committee in an eight-unit complex, and I find it extremely difficult to keep the owners corporation engaged in the running of the building.
Many owners are content to enter the complex, go directly to their unit, close the door and take no further interest in the affairs of the owners corporation. Some owners do not attend annual general meetings, participate in discussions or volunteer for the committee. Yet, when a particular issue does not align perfectly with their expectations, they may criticise the committee for not doing enough.
Our committee has had to deal with significant and complex matters, including building defects involving the Building Commissioner, a major lift repair, conflicts between residents, and the proposed installation of solar. These matters require considerable time, judgment and persistence from a very small number of volunteers.
That is why I do not believe training should be limited to strata committee members. Training should extend to the owners corporation and owners generally. People who purchase into a strata scheme should understand that they are not simply buying a private apartment with an unrelated management service attached. They are becoming members of a collective legal entity with shared responsibilities for common property, finances, compliance, repairs, risk management and long-term planning.
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That is why I do not believe training should be limited to strata committee members. Training should extend to the owners corporation and owners generally.
Would you suggest that votes at a general meeting should be contingent on an owner providing proof that they have undertaken some sort of strata training? Too radical? Undemocratic? Pesonally, I think anyone turning up to vote in a general or state election should be asked three basic questions- what is the name of the Prime Minister/Premier, what is the name of your local MP and who is Australia’s head of state. Failure to answer two out of three correctly would result in them being marked as having attended to vote but not getting a ballot paper.
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LOL. Maybe they should also be asked which level of government is the subject of the election in which they are about to vote. Automatic ballot refusal if they don’t know.
I seem to recall in the past couple of years someone promoting themselves (highly dubiously) as the “Strata Ombudsman” got a chunk of state government funding to produce a guide for new strata owners who’d just bought in. Has anyone seen a copy? I’d love to get my hands on one.
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I’ll add another +1 to Darryl’s thought. I’m stunned at how oblivious some buyers are to the nature of strata, and who claim they are ‘ambushed’ when they have to contribute to forecast repairs. ‘You didn’t disclose that in the contract!’. Err…we didn’t write the contract. We didn’t see the contract. We didn’t see the strata report, but we did give the report writer access to our records…
I bought a rural property many years ago. The mandatory Council zoning certificate attached to the contract for sale had a cover page with a brief, large-print statement along the lines of: ‘This property is in an area zoned Rural. Expect dust, spray drift, noisy machinery operating at any time of the day throughout the year. [don’t bother complaining to us]” etc.
Something like this would be a good addition to strata contracts, to very briefly state something like “As well as the right to live in or rent your apartment/townhouse/whatever, you are becoming part of an owners corporation which owns and runs the entire building. You will pay a share of the building’s operation and ongoing maintenance through levies, and can participate in its management by attending meetings or joining its committee.” In large red print!
I suggested to a conference years ago that strata by-laws should include a couple of examples on their front pages of by-laws that the strata committee keenly enforced. Things like: “We take noise compalints seriously” or “we stringently enforce rules in relation to visitor parking”. In other words, the kind of issues that plague some schemes more than others. The reason for not doing this, some strata managers argued, was that it would make the other by-laws look less important and encourage owners to ignore them. To which I say, sometimes it’s better to try something that might be a minor mistake than play it “safe” and do nothing at all.
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People who purchase into a strata scheme should understand that they are not simply buying a private apartment with an unrelated management service attached.
Good idea but who would provide the information? Developers? Real estate agents? That’s who purchasers deal with before they buy and they’re unlikely to do anything that makes potential customers think twice (or at all).
Solicitors and conveyancers? Already too late. Maybe the government could require potential purchasers to log into their website and get a code that they’d need before they could complete the purchase. Like the much-vaunted short-term letting register, perhaps. Wait a minute!!!
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