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You don’t need a DA unless you are planning to radically change the use of the parking space to something else that wasn’t approved. To make this lasting and permanent, I would think a 99-year mutually beneficial lease signed by both parties and attached to your title deeds by your conveyancers might do the trick.
Obviously, the only problems likely to arise would be when one or othe unit changes hands.
If the parking spaces are common property, the owners corp could simply agree to the reallocation. I don’t think you’d even need a bylaw (but I may be wrong).
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Section 106(1) of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) … does not specifically impose a duty to keep the home unit habitable. It reads: (1) An owners corporation for a strata scheme must properly maintain and keep in a state of good and serviceable repair the common property and any personal property vested in the owners corporation.
Surely if common property defects are causing a problem in a lot then they are not “in a state of good and serviceable repair”. I relaise this may be harder to prove than if the law was clearer, but not impossible.
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Good luck claiming from the tenant who I assume lives off the smell of an oil rag, or has already vacated and moved elsewhere and probably adept at evading debt recovery proceedings.
So tenants are “probably” adept debt dodgers? Seems a bit unfair.
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Feel free to use the “send a message” button on the left to have a frank and free discussion about the strata managers you love (or hate).
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It’s common property and if there has been no sale or exclusive use by-law recorded, the strata scheme can demand it be returned to its original state.
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I appreciate that by default the relevant sections of the Data Privacy Act mean that there is no requirement for Body Corporate Committee to provide an email address(es) for Owners to be able to contact them.
The Data Privacy Act? There are Federal and State laws but none of them have that name.
There certainly IS a requirement for Strata Schemes to register the addresses and contact details of all owners. There is also a requirement for anyone who is elected to the committee to be identified in various ways.
Section 178 of the Strata Schemes Management Act (NSW) says this:
(1) Information about lots
The following information must be recorded in the strata roll in relation to a particular lot in the strata scheme—
(c) an Australian postal address, and an email address if the holder has one, if not provided as the address for service.
If the email address is on the strata roll, it must be available to all owners on request. If the apartment owner has one, then it should be on the roll. Privacy laws in NSW do not apply to corporations with a turnover of less that $3m a year.
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Here’s what our principal sponsor Strata Choice says about Fire Safety legislation, with regard to older buildings.
Buildings constructed after 1st July 1988, or those with additions/alterations carried out after that date, are required to submit an AFSS and are the subject of a Fire Safety Schedule.
You can read their fact sheet HERE.
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Pretty sure the Tribunal can’t order the OC to pass a by-law.
The Tribunal can order the owners corp to take action to resolve a problem. If the best way to resolve the problem is to pass a by-law, then that’s what they are doing without saying as much.
That being said, even if we did have a by-law like this, it’s pretty hard to enforce because you’d have to catch them in the act.
By-laws don’t need to be enforced or policed to be effective. They send a signal to people that certain activity is unacceptable; not having one does the opposite. If I were in your building, I would be taking the OC to NCAT over this – passive smoke kills people and the Strata Act recognises this. Stubbing out cigarettes on common property is already a breach. Both are disgusting habits – and I speak as a former smoker.
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Unless I am mistaken, stratum is the singular of strata and refers to a layer of the building, in this case the entire ground floor area.
But your neighbour has a five-storey-high flagpole? I hope the owner knows that they have to take an Australian flag down at night or, by law, ensure it is illuminated.
And I would imagine your neighbours would object to bright lights shining in their windows all night so the flag would have to be lowered every night.
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Regarding the smoking on common property by-law, I would think the easiest solution is for the minority owners – you – to take the scheme to NCAT to get the Tribunal to pass an order that the bylaw be accepted and registered. This is a health and safety issue and should not be ignored.
I’m guessing here – and I’m not a lawyer – but you might look at section 232 of the Act (failure to fulfil a function) and link that to Section 9(2) “The owners corporation has, for the benefit of the owners of lots in the strata scheme … the management and control of the use of the common property of the strata scheme.”
You might argue that an influential minority is preventing the good running of the building and that the scheme should be ordered to pass a by-law that would protect common property and remove something that is hazardous to the residents’ health,
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Good point. There may be something somewhere in the AGM minutes or budget that either allows the SC to spend up to a limit or, indeed, tells members there’s no limit on the spending they can approve.
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Yes. I have heard of a case where the previous manager had acquired considerable power in the building by wrangling the votes of absentee investors and members of his own ethnic group to keep in with the developer by side-stepping defect rectifications. The unaligned owners just wanted to run the building according to the law, rather than to suit the strata manager, so they sought and obtained orders to give the compulsory manager effective oversight but not absolute power (unless the scheme went off the rails).
Section 237 of the Act allows the Tribunal to, on its own motion or on application, make an order appointing a person as a strata managing agent or requiring an owners corporation to appoint a person as a strata managing agent—
(a) to exercise all the functions of an owners corporation, or
(b) to exercise specified functions of an owners corporation, or
(c) to exercise all the functions other than specified functions of an owners corporation.
The phrase “on its own motion” means that you could take a very specific complaint or a number of complaints to NCAT and the member might decide to appoint a strata manager, even though that’s not what you asked for.
I would be very careful, going down this road and make sure you ahve a strata manager to nominate who will do the job.
Recently we have seen compulsory managers appointed who were married to the person the scheme was getting rid of, and another appointed after having been sacked by three previous schemes.
I would consider pursuing orders under Section 232(2) (failure to exercise a function) and have a strata manager in the wings ready to step in if the Tribunal ruled that a compulsory manager was the answer to all your problems.
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Oops! How I think things should be and how they are differ greatly. Section 180 of the NSW Act says this:
(1) An owners corporation must cause the following to be retained for 7 years—
(a) any records, notices and orders required to be kept under this Division or Part 10 of the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015,
(b) minutes of meetings required to be kept under Schedule 1 or Schedule 2,
(c) its financial statements and accounting records,
(d) copies of correspondence received and sent by the owners corporation,
(e) notices of meetings of the owners corporation and its strata committee,
(f) proxies delivered to the owners corporation,
(g) voting papers relating to motions for resolutions by the owners corporation and to the election of officers or the establishment of a strata renewal committee (under Part 10 of the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015),
(h) a copy of any signed strata managing agent agreement or building manager agreement entered into by the owners corporation,
(i) records given to the owners corporation by the strata managing agent relating to the exercise of functions by the agent,
(j) any other documents prescribed by the regulations for the purposes of this section.
Maximum penalty—5 penalty units.(2) The regulations may prescribe a different period for which any or all of the things referred to in subsection (1) are required to be retained.
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