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Be very careful when he does sell the rest of the units and you are able to have your first AGM. At that point you MUST examine the current caretaker contract and, if it has been inflated and seems to have no performance measures, find someone yourselves.
Judging by his feather-bedded caretaker contract, and his attempt to get you to pay a third of the costs of the water, he will almost certainly try to con new owners into thinking they have to accept his choices of contractors. Resist this at all costs or you will be paying for it for the next few years.
Find a strata manager who will be willing to take over the building at the first AGM and will speak up for the unit owners at the AGM. Don’t let this guy railroad you and the other owners into hiring anyone else. Find your own contractors like cleaners too. If you haven’t found them by the first AGM, defer the decision.
I can’t overstate how important this is. Once he has sold the majority of the apartments, the building is not the developer’s to do as he pleases – but it sounds like he will try.
Get good people who will look after the owners, not a mate of the developer, because the next challenge will be to get a defects claim in within the two-year window.
In the meantime point him at Section 78 (2) of the Act which says:
78 Manner of levying contributions
(2) Contributions levied by an owners corporation must be levied in respect of each lot and are payable (subject to this section and section 77) by the owners in shares proportional to the unit entitlements of their respective lots.
He can’t just divvy up the payments between the owners on a per capita basis. He owns the other lots so he has to pay (you might find the caretaker contract is suddenly reduced as a result).
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Regardless of what the developer intends to do, they are the owner of 86 percent of the building and therefor should pay 86 percent of the levies. That is quite clear in strata law – you pay the levies according to the unit entitlements you own.
How can you know how much water is being used in other units, even if they aren’t occupied? There could be workment in there.
If your water usage is metered for individual units, then you should pay that. If it is a share of the levies then you should be paying 14 percent (7 percent x 2) of the bills.
I wouldn’t worry about this idiot’s declaration of war. Tell him to go and talk to a strata manager and then come back with a sensible, legal approach. If he doesn’t want to pay his fair share of the bills then he needs to get a move on and sell more apartments.
If he refuses to show you the water bills, you might apply for mediation at Fair Trading right now, and tell him it’s HIS attitude that’s at fault here, not yours.
He is right though, as soon as he sells another two apartments, you owners collectively, will have the upper hand when it comes to votes.
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@scotlandx said:
At the very least you should be insisting that the husband/wife duo comply with the formalities required if they wish to play this game. What I am saying is that the husband can’t just expect to roll up and represent his wife without at least going through the process required.
Absolutely right. You could ask for the application for representation to be put in writing.
Or you could just refuse to allow Mr to represent Mrs. The “proxy” member has to be allowed by a majority vote of the committee. If it’s a 1-1 vote, then the status quo prevails and Mr Proxy can’t join the committee and should remain silent through the meeting.
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Yep, you have a lot of options.
Gather your evidence (a noise diary, recordings and witness statements help).Then go for a request for an obligatory mediation at Fair Trading, followed by an application for orders at NCAT.
And /or an application for a noise abatement order at you district court and calls to the police to deal with noise after 10pm weeknights and midnight at weekends.
And a motion to your next EC meeting asking them to establish protocols for people who have a problem but can’t wait three months for it to be resolved – including removing the rental agents as the only avenue for complaint.
Oh, and get the address of the OWNER of the unit from your strata manager and write to them asking them to get their tenants to respect the laws and by-laws.
For more detailed information on the above, click here
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If your committee does drag it heels over upgrading the water suppy and stop cocks, point out that according to insurers CHU (who sponsor this website ) anecdotally, 80 percent of damages claims are caused by water leaks.
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@Costa said:
It seems strange [that] a Strata Manager, to whom all the usual powers are delegated, doesn’t have a ‘duty of care’ to stop bullying or be liable for its consequences. And I would ask the same question about an Executive Committee.You have pretty much answered your own question. I don’t think a strata committee has a default duty of care beyond what is specified in the Act or in their by-laws. So the committee can’t delegate powers to its Strata Manager for the simple reason that it doesn’t have them itself.
Its up to the chair to control meetings and if they can’t, they should be replaced by someone who can. You could ask the strata manager to chair the meeting, but it will cost you. Again, an enforceable code of conduct and/or standing orders for meetings might strengthen the chair’s arm.
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The answer to this problem begins and ends with the other owners – not the strata manager.
What do you think the reaction would be if you proposed a motion at an executive committee meeting that a general meeting be called with the express purpose of removing this person from the committee?
If the EC agreed to call the EGM – and you would just need the support of three others – you would need to pass a special resolution to get rid of the bully. But being named in the minutes, then the agenda, and the thought of having to justify their actions in front of fellow owners might be enough to make them behave or quit.
If they don’t, surely someone is smart enough to goad them into replicating their behaviour in front of other owners. And it would be the talk of the steamie* in the meantime.
*translation available on request.
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Pamster makes a lot of sense but it depends very much on the type of person we are talking about.
I have seen strata committees brought to a standstill because one person is so certain that they are right that they will not allow any other views to be discussed, let alone agreed on.
This can range from refusal to move on to the next item, even after a vote has been taken, to physically and emotionally threatening rage, leading to the hiring of security guards and the early abandonment of the meetings.
It’s very easy to get someone elected on to committees – it’s very hard to get them off. That requires a special resolution at a general meeting at which someone would have to get up and explain why they no longer wanted this person on the committee. Good luck with that.
A code of conduct or standing orders adopted by by-law at your AGM would go some way to keeping recalcitrants under control – but I don’t know of a single strata scheme that has such a thing
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It’s funny how just about everybody involved in strata thinks there should be a Strata Ombudsman … except for the government. The fact is that if they had one, he or she would be swamped with complaints – many valid, some less so – from day one.
To answer your question, Strata Managers come under the Stock and Property Agents laws and as such complaints have to be made through Fair Trading.
Do this as a matter or urgency before this firm disappears up its own off-the-shelf shell company and sells its business and data base to someone else.
You’ll find the start of the online complaint process here.
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@Pamster said:
I have discovered that the motion for the By-law was defeated at the EGM due to the fact that the unit entitlements counted as votes in favour of the By law were not sufficient be the 75% required to pass a special resolution.Just to be clear, a by-law doesn’t require 75 percent of the votes – just that no more than 25 percent of the votes cast are against it.
What’s the difference?
If there are 90 potential votes at the general meeting and 61 votes are in favour, 19 votes are against and 10 people abstain, the motion is carried because less than 25 percent of those voting — 19 out of 80 – voted against.
So if detailed records of who voted have been retained it’s worth checking. Also check if the votes cast were valid (the owners weren’t in arrears with their levies).
On the question of the air conditioning, in the absence of a by-law allowing a change to common property, the person with the air-con should be asked to remove it (assuming it is bolted to the slab and ducting passes through common property). This may require action at NCAT if they refuse.
The EC was right to try to formalise this situation in some way and there’s no issue with them drafting a by-law. But now that the by-law has failed, the air-con should go.
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Both of these questions have the same answer. To undertstand, you have to consider a “lot” as anything within the (usually) six-sided box formed by the wall ceiling and floor of the lot. The walls ceiling and floor are common property – the airspace inside, and anything contained in it, is lot property. And anything within common property is the responsibility of the owners corp.
So, on the face of it and unless special circumstances prevail, the pipe in the floor of the garage, and its roof an walls, if they are common property, are the responsibility of the Owners Corporation.
We can’t tell you for certain that they are because your strata plan and by-laws may be different – but they probably are.
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I think you need to gird your loins for battle on this one and explain to your other owners what happens if illegal structures on common property are allowed on a nod and a wink.
In simple terms, if this person sells their property and it has unapproved changes to common property attached, responsibility for the repair and maintenance of those structures reverts to the Owners Corporation and that can be a bottomless pit into which you and your neighbours may end up throwing incalculable amounts of money. Or not. But why take the risk?
Strata law is absolutely clear on this and your neighbour should be told firmly by the current committee that it is time to formalise their land grab or remove the structures.
Formalising would mean passing a special resolution by-law under which they accepted on-going responsibility for the structures and paid the owners corp a reasonable fee for their purchase. Once that is done, the structures can only be removed when they agree to do so.
Until then, the could find themselves subject to NCAT orders to remove them.
All that aside, you have to get this all on the record as soon as possible because if this person sells before a formal arrangement is made, and it’s clear other owners knew about this, then you will find yourself in a whole other world of pain.
As Peter C suggests, get a motion on the agenda of the next EC meeting that all “informal” arrangements for personal use of common property be examined and formalised as a matter of urgency (for the above reasons). This person’s election to the committee may then be seen is a slightly more critical light.
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Put a motion to the EC that owners, including EC members, must pay for damage they cause to common property themselves or through their insurance. Membership of the EC allows them no special privileges in this or any other regard.
Additionally, the EC should seek to recoup the monies paid in error to the specific EC member for fear that they be found to have acted fraudulently by giving special privileges or financial payments to EC members, the latter of which is specifically forbidden in strata law.
I would say there is an 80 percent chance they will refuse your motion, in which case you have grounds to take them to NCAT.
Or you could just point them in the direction of this post and tell them to look out for an upcoming Flat Chat column in the SMH.
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Look at item 2 and (as I advised elsewhere) consider taking a Section 162 for the statutory appointment of a strata manager. Or tell the bullies that if they don’t behave, that’s what you are going to do. Do it in writing so they can’t say they weren’t warned. I’m a great believer in the old Spanish Inquisition tactic of showing their victims the implements with which they were about to be tortured.
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@Peter Koorey said:
The Strata Manager has now responded “At the meeting which you attended the EC resolved that the mats and pot plants will be voted on at the AGM and that the sign on unit 20 door is approved”There is no proposed management plan submitted for the pot plants. All items lack Owners Corporation approval.
Approval by the EC is approval by the Owners Corp, except in matters that have to be decided at a General Meeting.
It sounds to me like there has been a decision to clear up the common property before deciding what to allow and what not to allow. You could propose that any permission for pot plants be a ‘licence’ carrying conditions for their care and upkeep, and removal if necessary – i.e. if you wnat p[ot plants you have to agree to the conditions.
That may well require a by-law, if there isn’t one about personal property on common property already, and it’s probably safer to have one.
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