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Has anyone checked for leaks?
Sounds like you’d be a prime candidate for water-saving meausres as outlined in this page on the Green Strata website.
Or maybe one of your neighbours has a nice little hydroponic cannabis growing venture up and running.
The best way to control water usage, especially in small blocks, is to check for leaks and then install separate water meters for each unit.
And if individual owners don’t want to pay for meters, you install them for those who do and then only charge them for the water they use, so that the others have to share the cost of all the rest of the water used. They’ll soon come on board.
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I don’t know if it’s normal but pre-payment of debt collection fees is not demanded by all firms. Colin Grace of Grace Lawyers – one of the biggest players in the field – wrote this:
Debt collection is not dissimilar to any other form of legal process. When we are engaged by an Owners Corporation for our debt recovery services, we will issue our invoices for the work that we undertake and expect to be paid for our work just like any other service provider (eg. plumbers, electricians). If we do our work well (which we do, always!), then we will recover the levies and the costs that the Owners Corporation has incurred as part of the process. The advantage for Owners Corporations is that the legislation allows for them to then legally recover the amounts of our invoices from the owner who failed to pay their levies (in part or whole).
As we have been working in the industry for many years we don’t normally ask for payment before we undertake the work, we undertake the work and then issue our invoices for payment within 30 days. As a favour to some of our clients who are dealing with plans in dire need of funds, we may agree to allow them extended time to pay our invoices (so as to allow for some recovery action to bring in some funds first).
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No amount of polite notes changes by-laws or Environmental Protection laws. We had a neighbour who said the police had told him it was OK to have a party. Maybe they did but it made no difference – he was still pinged for excessive noise after hours.
In your shoes I would let this one go and hope it’s a one-off. If it turns out not to be, you can call the police if the next party breaches the standard local laws on noise (not after 10 pm on “school” nights or midnight at weekends). Otherwise, if it is excessive at any time of day or night, regardless of the above laws, you can ask your strata manager or committee to issue notices to comply.
If the proposed party does turn out to be excessively noisy, you can ask your strata manager or committee to send a letter saying there have been complaints and that any repetition will be dealt with by by-law breaches and/or complaints to police.
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Make sure those figures are fully documented so that anyone who does a search of your strata records can see that there is a problem coming down the line. That way current owners can either start putting money aside or face having $20k cut off the sale price of their unit.
That said, $20k is not an outrageous price for a parking space in an apartment block so maybe the next purchasers will wear it as and when it occurs.
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The problem for small blocks is that strata managers can only really charge a certain amount per unit, but small blocks can have just as many problems (if not more) than larger ones.
Perhaps a combination of two of our sponsors – Stratabox and Strata Answers would give you a compromise between self-management and full-service strata management.
Let us know if that works for you.
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SIGH
This stupid software is dropping hyperlinks! Aaaaargh! There goes my weekend!
and here: https://www.flatchat.com.au/topic/committee-members-parking-on-common-property/
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There is already a thread running on this RIGHT HERE.
Click on that and you will find links to Strata Answers, our sponsors who, it turns out, will find the perfect strata manager for you. Or you could or just click on their link HERE
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It might help if you detailed where you have searched so we don’t go down the same rabbit holes.
But, to mix my metaphors, you may be barking up the wrong tree in any case. The committee member’s son expects to get free parking on common property? Why would you even consider that? I don’t know what the cost of informally renting a car space from another resident in your building might be, but in mine it’s about $60 a week.
So your committee member’s son thinks he is entitled to $3000 worth of free parking and gets snotty when he’s denied it. This is not a good look for him, the committee member or the rest of the committee.
By the way, the by-law forbidding obstruction of common property is all you need to ensure access to the electrical services room. That’s what the by-law is there for.
So dig no more! It’s a distraction. Have a meeting and tell the young (??) man to get real or you will charge him the going rate for all the free parking he’s had.
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As the driveway is common property, you can set your own speed limit but then you also have to enforce it yourselves through by-laws and breach notices. That raises the issue of how exactly you prove a resident was exceeding the speed limit.
Speed bumps or chicanes may be the simplest solution … or you could quietly threaten the speeder that when you install the speed bumps, you will make sure everybody in the scheme knows why they are having to pay for them.
I have had a quick look online for private speed cameras and can find nothing available in Australia (although that doesn’t mean there aren’t any). However, how about this for a solution? Install a security camera and paint two lines as far apart as you can on the section of driveway most used for speeding.
You can then use security video to calculate the speed of vehicles and hit them with Notices to Comply.
For instance, if the markers are 20 metres apart and the driver crosses them in less than one second (as timed by the camera) then they are travelling at more than 50 kph [see replies below].
But first you will need a by-law in place that set the speed limits at a reasonable level (5 to 10 kph?) so you can then have something to enforce. Or you could just talk to the driver and say, this is what we are going to have to do unless you stop being a dickhead.
As far as standard by-laws go, unless your DA specifies the maximum speed on the driveway – in which case they would be breaching planning law, meaning they are breaching the relevant by-law – you need to set your own.
Either way, it’s a matter of proving it, and I think for that the security camera and marker lines may be the best way to go … although your fellow Flatchatters may have a better idea.
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There are specialist strata debt recovery agencies around who will not only get you your money back, but it will be at no cost to your strata scheme as they can claim all reasonable costs against the debtor.
Google “strata debt recovery” but make sure you contact a strata debt specialist rather than an ordinary debt collector working on commission.
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There are two elements to this. The first is to get some stability with your strata managers, the next is to get the right contract.
Some strata managers will charge you a low up-front fee then slug you for every phone call they make or receive, or email they read or send. These are what they call Schedule B charges.
Others will charge you a higher, all-inclusive fee. A few greedy buggers will charge you both.
As far as recommendations go, just scroll to the top of these pages and click on the ad for Strata Choice, our long term sponsors, and have a chat with them about your issues.
Or you could look at a new service that offers to get you five strata management quotes. I have no idea how good it is, but then, how bad could it be?
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Ooops! I misread the findings in the original case – I’m blaming the flu – so thanks to Colonel Schultz for correcting that and I have now amended the story. I should have realised the the Tribunal rarely if ever awards damages.
As for the strata manger sending out Notices To Comply to all owners, I agree that it’s technically not the right thing to do, but it may be politically the most expedient move.
A Notice To Comply is effectively a warning that you have breached a by-law and there may be consequences if you continure to do so.
Thus, sending it to people who haven’t breached is a misuse of this official warning. However, given that members of the committee are among the culprits, it may be that rather than single them out, the strtata manager has managed to issue the wrning without compromising his relationship with the committee.
I am not in favour of warning being sent out before NTCs – the NTC is only a warning, after all – and issuing three warnings before you send an official warning, as some schemes do, is a piece of nonsense.
But this sounds like one case where a general warning to all owners would have been appropriate, followed by NTCs to the actual culprits.
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Come on to this Forum and you’re going to get my opinion whether you want it or not.
But what exactly was the point of your posts?
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The point I was making was that you can’t expect the owners corp to pay for legal advice on a fight between two individuals where defamation has been alleged and not yet proven.
It might – and I stress only might – be appropriate for a strata committee to pay the unrecovered legal costs of a member who has sued someone over an issue related to their management of the strata scheme, and won their case.
But to answer the original question (again) it would be very irresponsible for the committee to take sides in an issue and fund legal action based on allegations of defamation of one owner by another. It would be different if the committee itself was defamed or accused of defamation.
That said, I recall a case where a resident sued a minority of the strata committee over a note sent out with the unanimous approval of the committee. The resident clearly hoped that by cherry-picking four of the nine members, the strata insurance wouldn’t kick in. But the strata insurer decided this was in fact an attack on the whole strata committee so provided insurance cover.
The resident lost, costing them in excess $300,000, while the winners suffered 18 months of terrible stress as they feared losing their homes.
Despite costs being awarded against the plaitiff, you would be lucky now to find a strata insurance policy that doesn’t specifically exclude defence of defamation claims.
Right now, if I was told two members of the committee in my building were thinking of using strata funds to pursue and/or defend a case of personal defamation, I’d call an EGM and have them both kicked off the committee, or at least block the use of committee funds.
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