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What would constitute ‘not maintaining the Common Property’, please, when it comes to trying to get things done properly by the Owners Corporation and Strata Committee.
Is it cleaning and gardening work being almost undetectable while the rip-off-merchant contractors get their fees for next to nothing?
Is it peeling paint on window sills which haven’t been painted for six years?
Is it dirty, stained driveway concrete and garage doors making our North Shore block look Third World?
Is it filthy carpet? Or does the carpet have to be threadbare and ripped?
Hope you get my drift.
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I’m interested in this general topic too. My building is small (six owners, four of whom are also residents) and we have a strata manager.
I’m a total newbie to all this. But it does seem to me that a strata manager (who might never see the building from one month to the next) would not be well placed to know what needed to be done and so perhaps must be alerted by owners who are.
For example, shortly after I moved in to my apartment I noticed that the common property clothes lines were perishing and the garage guttering was badly clogged with leaves (there was veritable garden growing out of it!). So I wrote to the strata manager with a question about it. She immediately ordered the work and it was done.
All good. But I must say I regretted mentioning the clothes lines when I saw what we were charged for that. No doubt it would have been inappropriate to do so, but it would have been much cheaper for me to have bought the replacement line and taken an hour to install it myself!
My current concern is the front and side garden for my building, which is badly in need of love (aka serious rejuvenation work, pruning, replanting, etc.). I’ve recently taken to trimming the ground cover myself whenever it starts to grow over the front path and fence, and clearing rubbish. But as far as I can tell from the financials/minutes for my building, no one has been hired to do even routine garden maintenance nor does it come up for discussion. I guess at least we’re not being ripped off!
But it could be so much better, and better maintained. I do care about the appearance of my building as a whole: its interwar character is one of the reasons I bought my apartment in the first place. Given that there’s nothing happening, my personal inclination is to consult a horticulturalist/gardener I’ve worked with before and pay him myself to prepare a recommended makeover plan and quote that I could take to the OC/SC. That would be a one-time project and then a maintenance strategy would need to be set up. But I have no idea if this is a good way to proceed or not.
Erte – Some ideas for you:
Check the Budget from your previous AGM to see whether there has been a Budget item for the garden, and check how much money has been set aside for the budget.
You are perfectly within your rights to seek out a quote for the garden make over and submit your concerns and the quote to the Committee via the Strata Manager.
Find out what the Committee spending limit is for your scheme. If the cost of the make over fits the Committee spending limit then I suggest that you ask the Committee to approve the garden makeover at the next Committee meeting.
Some scheme’s that have owners who are interested in gardening also have a ‘gardening group’, sanctioned by the OC, who volunteer their time to maintain certain elements of the garden.
If the cost of the garden make over is larger than the Committee spending then you will need to submit a Motion to the next AGM.
If the garden budget is too small and needs to be increased then this will also need to occur at the next AGM.
Fey and Erte, as LP has pointed out you are well within your rights to seek out alternates quotes etc. What I have learnt from experience in like matters is don’t tilt at windmills by yourself.
By this I mean talk to as many other owners as you can and get to know those that are of a like mind. The amount of support you have for any issue is crucial. Point out to others what you are trying to achieve.
For example point out that:
the painting needs doing or it will cost us more later!
I got a quote from a tradie that is 30% than the one the SM got us, why are accepting higher quotes?
I think it’s helpful to get all stakeholders to agree on what constitutes a ‘reasonable’ level of maintenance and presentation. I now lean towards s a definition of about ‘80% of new’. If you can measure it to that it becomes easier to assess if it needs attention now and we should address it, or it doesn’t so don’t worry about it. That should also help overspending by those just never satisfied, and others who say ‘it’s always been that way’.
A great reference book compiled by building and strata managers I highly recommend is the ABMA Building Management Code which is current best practice guide. It goes into all this stuff and if adopted by your complex allows all to use it as their measure without getting personal or political.
@Erte said:
I’m interested in this general topic too. My building is small (six owners, four of whom are also residents) and we have a strata manager.I’m a total newbie to all this. But it does seem to me that a strata manager (who might never see the building from one month to the next) would not be well placed to know what needed to be done and so perhaps must be alerted by owners who are.
It sounds like yours is one of the many schemes where the owners have delegated all the strata committee functions to the strata manager. This should not mean, however, that the committee ceases to function.
The best way to approach this may be to arrange an informal meeting to discuss what the majority of owners want to do in the future and to canvass the idea of undertaking the smaller tasks (like re-stringing the Hills Hoist) yourselves.
This way, you can keep things up to scratch just by the occasional chat over a cup of tea, or an informal ring-around, and then ask the strata manager (or not) to do what needs to be done.
This is not what’s laid out in strata law, but it’s simple, effective and efficient and only becomes a problem when someone objects – and that’s when you start having formal meetings to ratify your majority decisions.
Obviously, there are limits to what you can decide informally but most things in the day-to-day running of a scheme would be covered.
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Thank you, everyone, for all the explanations and advice! I am a little confused, though. If a building has retained a strata management company and has a “case worker” (for want of a better term), i.e. the person I’ve been referring to as our “strata manager”, what exactly is their role? And how is that connected with the strata committee?
To put it another way, if the SC is functioning in a customary/proper manner, what is it that the contact at the strata management company should be doing or contributing.
I think it’s perhaps telling, in relation to my building, that there are six owners and of the three who are on the SC at present only one of those is actually resident in the building. I wonder if this may have something to do with the delegating of functions to a professional and with certain aspects, such as the garden, being allowed to slide.
@Erte said:
If a building has retained a strata management company and has a “case worker” (for want of a better term), i.e. the person I’ve been referring to as our “strata manager”, what exactly is their role? And how is that connected with the strata committee?This depends on the committee and the manager. Basically the strata manager is there to look after the financial and legal obligations of the building if the owners don’t want to do it themselves. They collect the levies and pay the bills.
The owners can collectively decide how much or how little involvement they have with the running of their building and usually do this as a committee.
Theoretically, the strata manager takes his or her instructions from the committee, and the committee takes its instructions from the owners in a general meeting.
In reality, the strata manager often (but not always) advises the committee on what it should be doing, they get on with the small stuff, and once a year the committee takes major proposals to the owners at an AGM for approval.
In short, the role of the strata manager is defined by how active and knowledgeable the committee is. In many cases, in NSW, at least, the strata manager just goes ahead and gets things done under powers delegated by the committee, although the committee can resume any or all of those powers as and when it pleases.
To put it another way, if the SC is functioning in a customary/proper manner, what is it that the contact at the strata management company should be doing or contributing?
I’d hesitate to say any such relationship was ‘customary’ – there are so many different ways of going about this. It depends on the committee and the manager.
However, it’s common, especially in small schemes for the strata manager to do most of the work with the committee chipping in occasionally on specific issues or projects (which the SM then manages). Some schemes never have committee meetings but instead relay the outcomes of informal chats that the SM then wraps up in a notice or agenda to the owners.
In bigger schemes, the strata manager can operate almost like a company secretary, making sure the decisions made by the committee are valid and legal and then expediting them through contact with service providers and tradespeople.
I think it’s perhaps telling, in relation to my building, that there are six owners and of the three who are on the SC at present only one of those is actually resident in the building. I wonder if this may have something to do with the delegating of functions to a professional and with certain aspects, such as the garden, being allowed to slide.
I’d say this has everything to do with sliding standards. Your committee is dominated by people who don’t live in the building and can’t see what’s going on, with the numbers made up by someone who either doesn’t know they can change things or doesn’t care.
In a small scheme, the chances that your committee is dominated by people who don’t want to spend any money they don’t have to is increased. Simple answer, work out some improvements, cost them then get yourself on to the committee and push them through.
Getting back to your original question, the strata manager isn’t going to do this kind of thing unless the committee tells them to. So the committee is the key.
And be careful that you aren’t confusing the role of a strata manager with a building (or building services) manager. The roles can overlap but the former is much more about paperwork while the latter is, literally, more hands on and nuts and bolts orientated.
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