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I notice that there is media attention on the high numbers of apartment owners in arrears with their levies, especially in the ACT. Lots of cries of “unfair!” because the mean old strata managers are chasing the levies using collection agencies and lawyers, adding to the outstanding debt. And those debts mount up pretty fast once lawyers are involved.
I’m not a harsh person. I know how hard it can be to suddenly be faced with an unexpected bill for essential repairs, or a doubling of levies because the capital works plan has some big expenses coming up over the next few years. I think owners should be able to enter a payment plan wherever possible.
What is missing from ALL of the media coverage is the lack of engagement of many owners in their collective responsibility for managing a building. We talk about low levels of financial literacy amongst adult in this country. With more and more people moving into apartments, how about some attention to what I’m calling “strata literacy?” (That’s right folks, you read that term for the first time here).If someone is not paying their levies, the Committee can’t fire the cleaners, turn off the electricity and refuse to pay the strata manager until the errant owner pays up. No, everyone else has to cover those unpaid levies so the bills can be paid. Not enough attention is given to this inconvenient truth.
Somehow, we need ALL owners to understand that those levies pay for important stuff, even if it is boring. And ALL owners get to vote on who is on their Committee to decide how that money is spent. And ALL owners are given copies of budgets and capital works plans to consider. And ALL owners can attend an AGM to make comment on those budgets and plans.
And if owners want to disengage with all of that (because it is boring) then it’s pretty unfair to then cry poor and expect the other owners to cover your share of the levies because you were caught by surprise. So I waver between sympathy and exasperation when I hear about owners going bankrupt due to unpaid levies.
Sympathy because there are genuine cases of hardship and apparently some Committees refuse to allow payment plans, and exasperation because the media reports never look at the impact of those unpaid levies on the other owners in that building, or the debtor’s possible lack of involvement in their own strata process.
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Agree with these sentiments. While it would be good nice for a strata corp to allow payment plans, the costs for that would need to be born by the recalcitrant levy payer.
It is not the strata manager putting up fees, but the owners corp, that you and your neighbors are part of. If a unit is not paying, the other owners will need to pay more so that the required bills can be paid. Noting this will include essential items like Insurance, electricity and water .
As UberOwner says owners should be involved with the process of monitoring and setting budgets.
Some of the ideas suggested in the Media would be unworkable – eg a suggestion that there should be a limit on how much “strata fees” can go up in a year. Thats not going to work, as there is not also a limit on how much electricity, insurance and other charges can rise.
There needs to be more education for unit purchasers at the time of buying on their obligations in strata
Why dont the lawyers and conveyancers educate their clients about what they are getting into.
On the other hand, with stand alone houses being so expensive, property ownership via a unit purchase is the only option for many people. They borrow to the hilt and have no wiggle room left when an unexpectedly high levy comes up.
Maybe our insurers could provide levies insurance? There’s a business opportunity if ever I saw one. They cover death, travel, cars, homes, strata – why not unexpected levies?
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The problem is that most levy problems are not that unexpected. Things like the need to fix building defects are usually because at least a certain proportion of the owners have been ignoring things.
Our previous manager had allowed the unpaid levies to build up. We have 5 owners with debts totalling $150,000 which means we are short about $3,000 for each of the total owners. Supposedly it was going to the debt collectors, but who knows. Shortly we will. We are going to end up having so many forced sales because we have a massive remediation bill, so we need to get the arrears under control.
Most of the owners wont be able to afford the remediation, so they will be added to the list. What a neighbouring unit block seems to have done is to increase the capital works levy to about $3,000 a year, and there are now 3 out of 24 up for sale. They will be borrowing $150,000 per unit, so the repayment will be $23,000 a year. Buyers are probably looking at $200,000 off.