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An Owner is entitled to a see a copy of the Agreement – he/she can formally request it from the Managing Agent as part of an inspection of the Strata documents upon payment of a fee as prescribed. Informally he/she can approach the Secretary to see it. I would expect that an Executive Committee member would have access to a copy from the same source. The Agreement is between the Managing Agency and the Strata Scheme, so each party should retain a copy of the agreement.
There are quite a few matters to take into consideration. Given that fees usually are increased once a year, a rise from $835 to $850 only represents 15/835, or 1.7%, less than CPI. Whether or not you use the swimming pool and lifts, they have to be maintained, and in fact will add value to your complex and its component units. If you’d bought a unit without those facilities, then maintenance naturally would be cheaper. Your caretaker probably costs you around $70,000 per year (inclusive of leave, sick pay, insurances and super), so that alone based on 80 units would take up most of your levies for a quarter. Don’t forget that also included in your levies are insurance on the building and water usage charges. Also you should be contributing to a sinking fund to cater for ongoing maintenance. If you want to get rid of the pool then a special resolution could be put forward at a General Meeting, but in my opinion you’d be reducing the value of everyone’s unit if it were to be approved. Don’t complain unless you’ve done your homework, each complex is different.
There is provision in the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act which may legitimise the practice adopted by your OC. Of course that would depend on agreements being drawn up and being acceptable to both owners and the OC. I’ve never heard of the term differential levy. See below:
111 Can an owners corporation provide amenities and services to a lot?
An owners corporation may enter into an agreement with an owner or occupier of a lot for the provision of amenities or services by it to the lot or to the owner or occupier of the lot.
I’d agree with kiwipaul. Whether the pipe which burst was serving more than one lot is irrelevant when it comes to insurance. Insurance cover paid by the Owners Corporation is for the buildings, and extends to more than just common property. Apart from your pipes in the walls it covers such items as toilet suites, sinks and vanities, and kitchen cupboards. Virtually the same as if you were insuring your own house on a separate title. Contents insurance covers those items which you typically bring with you when moving house, and also such inclusions as carpets and curtains. Of course when it comes to claims you are not covered for fair wear and tear or deterioration of such items. Damage must be sustained from some unexpected event such as impact, storm damage, fire, earthquake or whatever else is in your policy documents. Unfortunately little beasties such as termites aren’t a part of it. If there is consequential damage to the unit owner’s (or tenants) possessions then I have some difficulty in seeing the fairness of having the OC subsidise payments to just those residents who fail to adequately insure their contents.
Matt
You say that the work is going on (inferring that it hasn’t yet been completed). In that case it is probably not worth while cleaning up until the dust generation has stopped, yes it’s a nuisance but all owners including yourself will benefit from the completed job. One could assume that company contracted to do the work would be required to clean up afterward, it should be part of the contract, but they would possibly need to gain access through your lot to do so. No doubt the Strata Management company would have arranged the work, so you should contact them to discuss the situation.
If they had been on the ball they should have notified owners of the expected duration of the work and arrangements for cleanup.
I’d go one step further than scotlandx and suggest that your parking space as shown on the strata plan extends from floor to the underside of the ceiling above it. In effect you own that space, so you as an individual are entitled to all of it, unless you lease or sell it to someone else. That may present problems, I’m not very familiar with stack parking but if it has to be attached to common property then load capacity would come into it, also the potential for increased fire loading should a fire occur would need to be considered by your council.
A lot of tradespeople are not clear on the differences between common property and the lot (neither are many owners for that matter!) If you have a managing agent it is best to get them involved in engaging the contractor for any work carried out. The agent should send a numbered order form to the contractor which clearly sets out the work agreed to and the price, and tells the contractor where to submit the account. Make sure though that your managing agent checks with you that the work has been performed properly before he/she pays the account. Unfortunately if owners or an executive committee take it on themselves to order work on common property they can become personally liable in the event of a dispute over payment or the quality of work performed.
Hi again
Don’t agree with the OC Manager – nothing here to see regarding “sole access”. If it’s common property then the OC is obliged to maintain it, end of story.
DaveB
See
UNIT TITLES (MANAGEMENT) ACT 2011 – SECT 24
Maintenance obligations
(1) An owners corporation for a units plan must maintain the following:(a) for a staged development—the common property included in a completed stage of the development;
(b) for a development that is not a staged development—the common property;
(c) other property that it holds;
(d) the defined parts of any building containing class A units (whether or not the defined parts are common property);
and here are the “defined parts”
“defined parts”, of a building containing class A units, means—
(a) the following structures in the building, if load-bearing:
(i) walls;
(ii) columns;
(iii) footings;
(iv) slabs;
(v) beams; or
(b) any part of a balcony on the building.
@Austman said:
Thanks for the response.It’s a Class A unit. It’s a repair/maintenance issue. The external terrace/courtyard doors no longer close properly and can’t even be locked. They seem to be out of alignment or maybe the rollers have worn out. This is a ground floor unit and the doors open to a private walled terrace/courtyard area. The unit above has a balcony instead and a similar sliding door arrangement to that balcony.
The OC manager has now told me maintenance of these doors is an owner responsibility because “The door is not typically considered to be a common area issue, they form part of the unit that the unit occupier has sole access to, therefore the doors would be considered to be the individual owners issue to repair.”
It seems the OC manager considers “sole access” to be a reason for the OC not to maintain them. The balcony doors would be sole access too.
Is the OC manager correct?
In the ACT there are Class A and Class B units. Class A generally covers apartments which are built with multi storey construction, with lots one above the other. Here the common property walls (including external windows and doors) are maintained by the Owners Corporation, similar to NSW.
Class B units are town houses and villas. Unlike in NSW here the responsibility for maintenance rests with the owner of each lot.
In either case the Owners Corp is required to insure all the buildings. So if for example there is damage to your doors caused by an external event you may be able to claim from the Owners Corp insurance.
The internal walls are not common property, thus they are the responsibility of the owner. The floor is common property, so the owner should have organised repair through the Owners corporation, giving them the opportunity to obtain competitive quotes and employ suitably qualified and insured tradespeople. Also the owner is not entitled to upgrade the bathroom using a higher grade of tiling than originally installed. In my opinion, I’d be telling the owner concerned that if he didn’t like the settlement offered he was welcome to try his chances at legal action.
It’s not a standard strata rule as notification of an Executive Committee Meeting is required at least 72 hours before. For Community Titles you have a Community Roll which should list owners’ names and an Australian address for each owner. Obviously if notices are to be posted then you should allow sufficient mailing time for each notice to be received before the meeting, I’d suggest a week.
In granting building approval for your block the local council would have considered the number of car spaces required for the number of units built. If the car spaces are being subsequently reduced by enclosing some of them as storage cages, then cars from the units concerned will be parked elsewhere, adding to the problems of visitor parking and the availability of parking in the street nearby. Additionally I would be concerned about the materials stored there as commonly they attract vermin and pests, and can be a fire hazard.
So it would also be worthwhile to approach your local council to get their views on the matter, and see whether they will take action to prevent the enclosures taking place.
Hi Eddie
Having spent a lot of my time on Executive Committees I’m happy to do it without recompense for the majority of owners who appreciate it. It takes too much time to painstakingly detail all the phone calls, photocopies, postage etc for my liking. Though there are owners out there who continually complain, and take up an inordinate amount of time of the Executive Committee over trivial matters. I’d say that in the past I’ve spent 80% of my time on 20% of the owners. The worst complainants are often the non-resident owners who don’t bother to attend meetings or even put in a proxy, and expect the resident owners on committees to ensure that they keep up the value of their properties with little or no investment, and endure the mess and abuse of their tenants. In strata schemes where there is a large proportion of non-resident owners I’d maintain it just isn’t fair to expect the few resident owners available to be on committees to do the work for nothing, where the majority of owners are only in it for purely financial reasons. Some schemes do leave it all to the Managing Agent but in my books having it unsupervised by an EC doesn’t result in the best outcomes for the property.
Some of the legal issues associated with motor accidents occuring on private property were brought out on the last episode of “Four Corners” entitled “While they were sleeping”. In NSW at least, it seems that police powers to prosecute drivers on private land are limited. This program is currently still available on i-view and I found it to be well worth watching.
Whilst speed limit signs are virtually impossible to enforce on strata property, at least they give a reminder to owners and visitors what is reasonably expected. If you have a persistent offender it is possible to estimate their average speeds over a known distance by using a stopwatch.
You raise an interesting question. If the splashback is directly fitted to a common wall, then it is obviously fulfilling the same function as ceramic tiles, and has been fitted in lieu of tiles, as you say by the builder. In the case of flooring, hard surfaces directly attached to concrete are accepted as being part of the common property, these may be either ceramic tiles or parquet for example, but not carpet. Same as vermiculite on ceilings. Quite frankly I don’t see any difference in an original permanent hard attachment to a vertical part of common property rather than a horizontal one, and if your property was constructed after 1974, then your Strata Manager may well be incorrect in his interpretation.