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I checked with our sponsors Bannerman Lawyers and they confirm that this is an issue between the squatter and the owner and since the squatter has no legal standing in the scheme, then it’s the owner who must be pursued over by-law breaches.
Now, it sounds like the committee has a deal of sympathy with the owner so they may be less than keen to blitz them with notices to comply over by-law breaches. So what’s to be done.
Guerilla tactics like supergluing the lock and cutting off electricity are probably illegal. However, if the owner ASKS the strata committee to cut off the electricity , that would be a different matter.
I wonder what would happen if you got a letter from the owner saying they are worried about fire safety following a recent renovation and could you please cut off electricity and maybe even gas until it is checked.
Or how about this? With the owner’s permission, get tradies to remove the front door and take it away for “inspection” and only replace it when the squatter has left.
The problem with people who choose not to follow the rules is that they count on us to be law-abiding. Does anyone have any legal ideas for dealing with this situation?
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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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OK, so somewhere in the middle of all this there must have been a strata committee election and this is what Section 31 (1)(d) of the NSW Act says about the situation you described:
31 Persons who are eligible to be appointed or elected to strata committee(1) The following persons are eligible for appointment or election to the strata committee of an owners corporation—
(d) an individual who is not an owner of a lot in the strata scheme, if the person is nominated for election by an owner of a lot who is not a member, or is not seeking election as a member, of the strata committee.
What that means in broad terms is that the owner concerned could only legitimately nominate a non-owner for election to the committee if they themselves were not standing for election.
Now, there may be a grey area if the owner has multiple properties in which case the owner of Unit 1 can nominate a non-owner and the owner of Unit 2, the same person, can stand for election. Maybe. I’m not sure and, if the owner concerned has multiple properties, I would be checking with Fair Trading or a strata lawyer before I went to the barricades on this.However, if the election was legit, then any bona fide member of the committee can be nominated for any role on it.
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- This reply was modified 1 month ago by .
general guidance will apply to strata residents in other states.
There is an amount of fudging of the level of approvals required in Victoria. The guide suggests that only a simple majority is required when instaling EV charging through the general maintanance provisions, but a special resolution (75% of votes) may be required when there is a level of complexity and disagreement.
In NSW, EV charging is specifically identified in strata law as a sustainability measure and therefore the required common property by-laws only require a simple majority. Impending legislation will see that flexibility extended to individuals who wish to install their own EV charging in their parking bays.If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
Put a motion to the Strata Committee Meeting agenda requesting that your Strata Manager places the funds into a term deposit
That could create a problem if your scheme is in the habit of declaring zero income to the tax office. Term deposits will attract interest, which will have to be declared, which will require input from your strata manager and an accountant, which may cost more than you get from the interest. I’d think the simplest solution would be for the OC to instruct the treasurer to a) list the special levies money as a separate line item in the accounts and b) not permit its use for any other purpose.
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Uberowner is right to ask what the potential or actual problem is. AI could be very helpful in your strata scheme. Imagine if you fed all the past five years’ committee minutes into AI and asked it to summarise the issues that have taken up most time and those that are still unresolved.
Your biggest issue is unlikely to be the theft of information – most of which is almost publicly available anyway – but people using AI to formulate arguments in favour of something they want (that the majority doesn’t) and thinking they are asking a machine that knows everything, rather than a computer program that aggregate information from different states to tell you what you want to hear.
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the quoted section of strata law and the original post refer to strata committee meetings, where proxy votes don’t apply. As acknowledged, rules are very different between NSW and Vic (where owners don’t have the right to attend committee meetings). In both cases, committee meeting decisions can be overturned by the owners at a general meeting so if there is jiggery-pokery afoot, there are remedies.
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Generally speaking you are allowed to trim the branches of trees that overhang your property but there are conditions, not least that you have to pay for it. Also, if this is strata, you have to establish who owns what.
Here are some other rules, according to City of Sydney Council (but probably apply in most areas):
Rules for Pruning- Stay on your land: Do not step onto your neighbor’s property to do the work unless they give you direct permission.
- Cut only to the boundary: Stop cutting right at the property line; do not hack away parts of the tree living on your neighbor’s side.
- Do not harm the tree: If your cuts kill or poison the tree, you can be sued for property damage.
- Check local council limits: Some areas protect certain trees or require a permit for heavy pruning if the tree is in a heritage zone or of a protected species.
Also,
- Return the cuttings: Legally, the pruned branches and fruit still belong to the tree owner, so you should offer the offcuts back to your neighbor.
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It depends. If the intention of the item is to have a general review of common property, in order to identify issues that require further investigation, then the broad brush approach is fine. But if the agenda simply says “common property” when the intention is clearly to discuss a specific issue, and perhaps one that the secretary doesn’t want to alert other owners to, then you could say it was in breach.
What can you do about it? Not a lot. The tribunal is not going to declare the decisions taken at a meeting invalid because the agenda wasn’t up to scratch. But the owners at a general meeting can do so. And that is your safety net – self policing by a majority of owners.
It it’s egregious and systemic, you can ask the owners and, failing that, the Tribunal to remove the offending committee members.
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I am concerned I am once again going to have no say on how its addressed
That’s a valid concern but the Tribunal is unlikely to instruct them to fix the problem in a specific way, although they may well be instructed to fix it. One thing you can do to propose a motion to the strata committee or even a general meeting that asks the OC to fix your issues by a proven method or explain to owners why they have chosen a different and possibly less effective solution which may result in more remediation bills in the future.
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- This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by .