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It would require the consent of all owners to such a proposal.
As you say, that would be unlikely if not impossible to achieve – why would the person who benefits from this inequality wnat to change? You can’t get turkeys to vote for Christmas.
However, there is a legal procedure but it would require presenting a compelling argument which would include surveying all the apartments – to which Mr Turkey would also object – and then hiring property lawyers to argue your case.
Then you would have to calculate to potential benefit versus the cost saving and most people would say it wasn’t worth the money or the hassle.
The only occasions on which I have heard of this being a cost-efficient exercise was where the developer had set the UEs for commercial premises on the ground floor at ludicrously low levels to attract purchasers. The inequity was so obvious that it was hard for the shop owners to argue against the case.
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Is it on your plan as an emergency exit gate, as described under fire safety regulations? If so, it must be able to be opened from the inside without needing a key?
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Have you been asked to remove your stuff? In which case, the key question is, is it a storage area for common property or is it for commonly shared use?
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I thought strata manger mismanagement because he not mentioned about at my own expenses and won’t provide quotation to me. He apparently did nothing since I require to repair it.
Two points, you would have to have had the device repaired anyway so the fact that the strata manager didn’t tell you it would cost is not a huge issue. Would you have decided not to have it repaired if you had known?
Also the fact that the SM’s appointed techie couldn’t do it is not really an issue unless the SM charged you for the first visit.
I’m inclined to think about the strata residents who can’t even get their strata managers to answer the phone. In fact, was it the strata manager or the building manager – two very different positions?
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This question was copied and pasted into another section of the Forum. This is a breach of our stated policies here. Please stick to one question per topic.
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If you find you can’t vote for a refund, can you instead vote for a substantial (temporary) reduction in levies to offset the amount paid?
That would be one solution, and it would get around the potential one-owner veto. I suspect however that in this case the owner is not actively engaged in the running of the scheme and may not have the political heft to organise support for a levies reduction. This is the downside of not getting involved and letting your committee get on with it – others make decisions and you don’t know how to change them.
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If the new water system is being attached to the outer wall, that requires a by-law. I would make the owner’s contribution (at least) to the removal of the lean-to a condition of granting the by-law they need to install the new water system on the CP wall.
That said, I’m not sure that the owners corp doesn’t have a responsibility to remove the asbestos from common property (the wall and the area on which the lean-to sits).
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The bad news is that, according to Section 77 of the Strata Schemes Management Act, “Distribution of surplus money in administrative fund or capital works fund,” your owners corp can only repay surplus funds if there is a unanimous resolution to do so.
The good (but not great) news is that under NSW strata law, a unanimous resolution is one that is passed with no votes against. In other words, you just need everyone at a general meeting to agree or abstain. You don’t need every owner in the block or at the meeting to agree. On the other hand, one vote against at the meeting would kybosh the refund.
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This is what the law says:
26 Appointment of proxies(1) Duly appointed proxy A person is a duly appointed proxy for the purposes of this Part if the person is appointed as a proxy by an instrument in the form approved by the Secretary and the form is signed by the person appointing the proxy or executed in any other manner permitted by the regulations.
Now the offical form – which is the only one legally acceptable – has a second space in which the lot owner can name a back-up proxy if the initial nominee has exceeded their quota. I’m not a lawyer but if that space is left blank, I would argue that the lot owner hasn’t nominated the person who is later named in the form. They left the space blank and someone else wrote the name in.
I would seek mediation at Fair Trading with a view to a Section 232 ruling at NCAT to order the secretary to stop canvassing for votes with blank spaces for overspill nominees.
And I’d ask to be able to see and copy the strata roll – which you are legally entitled to do – so that you can alert all the other owners to the fact that a cabal is gaming the system to give themselves absolute power in the scheme.
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Sell it anyway. The contract of sale shows that the purchaser takes it with all faults, patent and latent. Note that the purchaser has more protection buying a handkerchief than buying your property.
Not according to this article, and others: https://cmlaw.com.au/unveiling-the-truth-navigating-vendor-disclosures.
The purchaser could easily prove that the vendor knew of a problem that would have affected their decision to buy.
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You are “keeping strata informed”? I think you can do a lot better than that.
Damp will almost certainly be coming from common property, which means it is the Owners Corporation’s responsibility to fix it. Write to the committee and/or the strata manager and tell them they need to investigate the problem and fix it or you will take them to NCAT who will order them to do exactly that.
Or, if the block is less than six years old, the builder or developer should fix it.
The person who shouldn’t have to fix it is the person who buys it from you. But they won’t because a cursory look at the strata records will show that you have damp in your apartment and you know about it.
Apart from anything else, Section 52A of the Conveyancing Act requires sellers to disclose all “material facts” about the property that could impact a buyer’s decision to purchase. This can include information about property damage, building defects, zoning restrictions, environmental concerns, legal encumbrances, and any past or current legal disputes related to the property.
If you don’t disclose the problems, and there is proof that you knew about them, the purchaser can rescind the contract and demand repayment, plus legal costs.
Your best bet by far would be to hire experienced strata lawyers and get them to send a letter of demand to your strata scheme, then take it from there.
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Ceilings… are common property
But the paint on them is not.
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This quirk in strata laws and the interpretation thereof has bugged me for years. In any other walk of life, if one party’s negligence (failure to repair and maintain common property) caused damage to another party’s property, the first party would be liable for repairs. I have heard of owners making a claim directly to the strata insurer, or alternatively, going to the small claims court. Either way, success is not guaranteed and you have to ask if it’s worth the effort.
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I cant find any part of the act that says that NCAT notice must be sent to all owners. JT correct me if I’m wrong
This edited from Tina’s last post:
Section 228 Notice of Applications to Tribunal (2) of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW). On receipt of an application, an owners corporation given notice of an application for an order must… immediately serve a copy of the application on each owner of a lot in the strata scheme except an owner who is a named party to the application.
Looks like a compulsion to serve the notice, by whatever means.
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I asked Fair Trading and they sent this:
A spokesperson for NSW Fair Trading said:
NSW Fair Trading is currently investigating NetStrata. As part of its investigation, the regulator engaged an independent examiner, McGrathNicol, to prepare a report into the company’s operations. McGrathNicol’s summary of findings will be made publicly available in due course. While the investigation is under way, no further comments can be made.
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