Forum Replies Created
-
Replies
-
@Blue Swimmer said:
I must ask you, Robbiejuve, why was the cat there without permission at all, since you knew it was required? You should simply have asked for permission in the beginning, as per the requirements.I agree with most of what Blue Swimmer has written but the question of why permission wasn’t sought before the cat was introduced speaks to the issue of why there is a by-law that appears to allow pets under certain circumstances but then, in reality, is used to operate as a blanket ban.
As BS says, if they want a ban they should pass a by-law banning pets. A by-law that sets out the conditions under which pets can be allowed, implies that pets are allowed and therefore any refusal on the basis of “we don’t want pets” is unreasonable.
I also disagree on the tactics of not attending the mediation. I would attend, state the case as I’ve outlined and leave it at that. It doesn’t look good if you refuse to attend – maybe you don’t care enough – but there is no compulsion to concede anything at the mediation.
As for costs, there are very very few circumstances under which the CTTT is allowed award costs and even then they don’t. So forget it. But if the cat isn’t causing any problem to anyone else, refusal is unreasonable and you are in the right.
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.
You are being railroaded by a Fair Trading mediator who has overstepped her authority and a supine EC led by an all-too-familiar figure, the autocratic chairman.
You need legal advice but don’t expect to get it for free. However, it will cost less that re-carpeting your upstairs neighbour’s place, both financiall y and it term of persona satisfaction.
If you want a good strata lawyer, send an email to Suzie Broome of our sponsors Makinson & d’Apice (sbroome@makdap.com.au) with a link to this page so she can see the whole saga.
And ask your chairman if he is aware that he is well out of line in supporting someone who is in clear breach of your by-laws. Suggest that once you have dealt with chummy upstairs, you might look at recovering your costs (and some extra payment for years of distress) from the Owners Corp because of the bad management by him and his pliant strata manager.
He’d better make sure the EC insurance is up to date or he could be called to account personally for his incompetence and far from impartial decisions.
The argument about not rocking the boat in case it affects property prices is so old hat – people are suspicious when they look at buying into a building that has had no problems. There is no such place on the planet and the savvy purchaser will run a mile when they sense that there’s a culture of cover-up.
And as for getting used to the noise – that’s a choice that he’s made but you don’t have to. Maybe his upstairs neighbours have better insulation, maybe he’s a bit deaf, maybe they take their shoes off. Whatever, it has nothing to do with you.
It sounds to me like these people are having lend of you and your EC is perilously close to being dysfunctional. Stop offering money, talk to a lawyer and bring these tinpot despots into line.
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.
I am astonished that Fair Trading is apparently colluding with your neighbour to get you to pay to rectify their mistake in laying inadequately insulated floorboards.
And while I am all in favour of mediated solutions, the hardball approach is quite simple – no floorboard, no problem, therefore the upstairs owner should be re-laying the carpet entirely at their expense.
I get a sense from what you are saying that this neighbour is deliberately delaying a decision to avoid having to do anything.
However, I can see that you might want to spend money on fixing the problem rather than, say, legal fees, so here’s what you want:
Fully insulated carpet professionally laid with “gold standard” insulation underneath.
A signed agreement from him, lodged with the Owners Corp, that he accepts that timber flooring is inadequate and that he will never remove the carpet from his apartment unless it is to replace it with carpet insulated to a similar standard.
A rider added to his title deeds saying that the carpet may not be removed by future purchasers.
I added the last two elements because this person is perfectly capable of ripping up the carpet again just before they sell the unit, with the deal done and dusted before you can even register a complaint. Then you would be in a whole other mess with the new owner.
Frankly, if it were me I would just stop all negotiations now and roll on to an adjudication at the CTTT and then, if need be, a hearing. If the CTTT does one of its customary logic flips, you can appeal to your District Court.
But if you are reluctant to go down that road, then go in with a once and final offer which has a limited time and has very clear parameters on when the work will be done.
If they show any reluctance, tell them you will run the case through the CTTT.
Assuming your by-laws include the standard item about not disturbing the peaceful enjoyment of another lot, you should, if you prepare your case properly, have every chance of success.
And you really should think about talking to a lawyer, just to find out if running the case is going to cost you less than re-carpeting the upstairs flat.
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.
Congrats from me too, Whale, and all of uis at Flat Chat. You’ve done us proud.
And I’d also like to mention that Scotlandx has been quietly elevated to StrataGurudom – I say quietly because I don’t know if he even knows since he hasn’t replied to my email.
Onwards and upwards (as Harry Triguboff says)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.
Yes, I would recommend Strata Choice, not so much because they are sponsors, but the other way round – they are sponsors because they are the kind of people I would recommend.
But really, you first of all need to think about what you want and bear in mind the “compulsory” appointment doesn’t compel a strata m,anager to do the job – you have to have a strata manager lined up and ready to do it before the CTTT will issue the order.
So you need to shop around and find a strata manager who:
a) will accept the job
b) understands what your problems are and knows how to fix them
c) is appropriate for your building.
If yours is a small building you may not get a strata manager who’s prpared to take on that level of hassle for the limited fees available. A small local independent operator may then be the best bet.
If your building is large, you may want a strata management firm with serious heft that can deal with any heavy-duty opposition that might arise (did anyone say owners who are lawyers?).
One thing you do need is for any strata manager you employ to be a member of Strata Community Australia, the strata manager’s professional body. Apart from Strata Choice at the top of this page and SrataRes at the bottom, I would happily recommend Strata Plus, Dynamic, O’Connors and McCormacks (off the top of my head).
The critical thing is that you need to know what you want them to do and then be convinced that they will do it. They only way you can find that out is by talking to them.
Meanwhile, if anyone else has any positive recommendations they want to make, feel free to hop in.
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.
Having kicked this debate off with an editorial about how it’s OK to do nothing about a problem that affects only you, I now find myself being asked to defend a position that has been misconstrued as suggesting that it’s OK to do nothing about something that only affects other people.
This was never my argument and I have to blame myself for not making my position absolutely clear. So if we are going to open the discussion out, let me try to establish what that position is:
If a by-law breach offends you or any other person, then you should pursue it – but only if you think it will do any good.
But what about a situation where a by-law has been breached but it’s extremely debatable whether or not any harm has been done?
Right now in my building one of the topmost balconies, 15 storeys up and about five metres wide, is absolutely covered with flashing white Christmas lights. You can literally see the balcony lights for miles and I can think of at least two by-laws that are clearly being breached and there may be more.
For the record, I’m not a big fan of Christmas lights (or Christmas at all, for that matter) but I know they bring a lot of pleasure to those of a less curmudgeonly disposition than mine.
However, by-law breaches are very visibly occurring. Should I write to the Strata Manager and EC? I know the lights will be gone after Twelfth Night but, hey, this is a thin end of a wedge that will appear in big fat rainbow colours round about Mardi Gras. Maybe I could get a motion up for our AGM specifically banning (or allowing?) fairy lights. Yes! That solves the issue of the by-law breach – let’s ALLOW the decorations.
I should run a campaign to wrest the rich proxy harvest from our all-powerful chair to ensure the passage of a by-law removing restrictions on what you can have on balconies and what you can do to common property to specifically allow Christmas lights, Mardi Gras decorations and, to be fair, Australian flags for Anzac Day and Australia Day. Oh, and can we allow the Aboriginal flag too … or that really cool flag that replaces the Union Flag in the top left corner of our flag with the indigenous banner. Then there will be no by-law breach and everyone will be happy.
OK, not everyone because people are different. But, most importantly, the by-laws aren’t being breached. Hmmm.
See, I have to consider the possibility that everybody except me is perfectly happy with the way things are, by-law breaches or none.
So I think I might take an executive decision to do nothing except sip another glass (or three) of Sangiovese on my balcony, the only place around here where I can’t see those bloody lights.
All joking aside, the issue of free-range parking cited by Struggler (immediately below), is one where you could reasonably argue that it affects the value of everyone’s properties because it creates an impression of chaos in the same way that allowing everyone to paint the front of their townhouses a different colour might.
It is also unfair in that case because people are using common property selfishly for their own benefit free of charge while one owner doesn’t have that option.
The offended owner has the right to take the issue to the CTTT and ask them to issue an order to enforce the parking by-law. Good luck with that! The chances are the CTTT will rule that since the majority of owners like things the way they are, they’re not going to do any such thing.
And if there was the remotest chance of that action succeeding, the majority of owners would simply amend their by-law to allow them to do what they are already doing. As Churchill famously said, democracy is the worst system of government in the world … apart from all the others.
A smarter move might be to canvas real estate agents in the area about what they think free-range parking does to the value of properties, then let the neighbours know what they say and let them make the change from within. Then mark out some external parking slots that are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Or let it go because in the final summation, the energy, time and emotion expended in trying to get selfish humans to be less selfish may not be worth whatever it is that you gain.
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.
Blue Swimmer said:
It’s not hard for someone fit enough to ride a bike to carry it up stairs. Jerry Seinfeld does it in New York. I’m guessing they would rather clutter up the common property than their own apartment.
Really? Like parking them on their balcony, perhaps? Always an attractive look.
Actually, this feeds into the discussion HERE about the wisdom (or otherwise) of letting things go.
Any building these days should have a safe and secure area for parking bikes. Timilla should lobby her EC and Owners Corp for the provision of one since there is an obvious need.
Having bikes chained to railings isn’t the greatest crime in strata (especially if they aren’t actually obstructing anyone) but neither is it ideal for the reasons mentioned by Blue Swimmer.
If there is a genuine obstruction of the passageway, they should be parked somewhere else. If not, and they aren’t breaching any other by-law, the bikes should be left alone until such time as the Owners Corp provides a bike rack.
One other point, Timilla clearly isn’t an ‘absentee landlord’ – he or she is around and taking an interest and, for my money, there’s nothing wrong with owners sticking up for their tenants when they think they are right.
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.
I’m with our newly annointed StrataGuru ScotlandX on this. The Strata Manager can only charge interest on unpaid levies. However, they may be able to charge you separately for debt recovery.
Have a look at this discussion HERE where Whale lays out very concisely what can and can’t be charged by the strata manager
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.
[While i was writing this post, Whales’s post (immediately below) came in – we are basically saying the same thing but I would start with his post as it lays out what can and can’t be charged very clearly and I don’t think I disagree with any of it.]
OK, the relevant sections of the Act for NSW (below) compels the Owners Corp to charge interest on unpaid levies but is less clear on the costs of debt collection which it says the Owners corp “may” recover. The Owners Corp (not the Executive Committee) is allowed to waive the interest and other charges by a special resolution vote (requiring 75 percent support). The sympathetic Chairman was actually over-stepping the mark by trying to get the EC to waive the additional charges – that can only be done by the Owners Corp by a special resolution at a general meeting.
Little Voice can’t be charged interest or for debt collection unless the payment was more than a month overdue so we have to assume that was the case. But it only has to be one day over for these penalty charges to kick in. If you then refuse to pay the interest or the cost of debt collection, you get yourself into this accumulating interest and debt recovery fee cycle.
The charges seem excessive but once the Owners Corp and the strata manager have crossed the line where interest is mandated by strata law and debt collections are allowed by your own by-laws and contractual arrangements with strata managers, you are in a cycle of penalty interest payments and debt collection fees all of which are, on the face of it, valid if unfair.
The only way to break the cycle is to pay the accumulated debt. You can then wait until the next General Meeting and present a motion asking the other owners to pass a special resolution to waive the costs which could be credited to your account. If you are still ‘unfinancial’ by the time of the next general meeting you can’t even propose that motion.
If there has been some impropriety – e.g. the strata manager has jumped the gun in chargiing you for the debt collection sooner than they were legally allowed, you can raise this with Fair Trading. Otherwise the best thing to do is pay up and throw yourself on the mercy of the Owners Corp at your next General Meeting (and do some heavy duty lobbying before then).
We had a chairman in out building who stopped paying levies when he and his cronies were kicked off the Executive Committee. He took great pleasure in running up a $20,000 hole in our finances – but the smile disappeared when it turned into a $40,000 debt for unpaid levies, penalty interest, debt recovery and court costs.
My advice, pay the bill and argue the toss later.
Here’s what the strata Act says:
79 Interest and discounts on contributions
(1) Any contribution levied by an owners corporation becomes due and payable to the owners corporation in accordance with the decision of the owners corporation to make the levy.
(2) A contribution, if not paid at the end of one month after it becomes due and payable, bears until paid simple interest at an annual rate of 10 per cent or, if the regulations provide for another rate, that other rate.
(3) However, an owners corporation may by special resolution determine (either generally or in a particular case) that a contribution is to bear no interest.
(4) An owners corporation may, by special resolution, determine (either generally or in a particular case) that a person may pay 10 per cent less of a contribution levied if the person pays the contribution before the date on which it becomes due and payable.
80 How does an owners corporation recover unpaid contributions and interest?
(1) An owners corporation may recover as a debt a contribution not paid at the end of one month after it becomes due and payable, together with any interest payable and the expenses of the owners corporation incurred in recovering those amounts.
(2) Interest paid or recovered forms part of the fund to which the relevant contribution belongs.
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.
Depending on the proximity of other people’s homes, I don’t know if designating it an unrestricted play area ’24/7′ is a good idea. If there’s no one around likely to be disturbed, then fine, but otherwise it’s reasonable to set ‘playtimes”.
On philosophies, two of my favorite quotes suggest this once angry young man has been calmed by age:
“If you sit by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float past.” – Japanese Proverb
and
“Before you go seeking revenge, you should dig two graves.” – Confucius.
But re Stig and his coffee, what’s with all the Thermos flasks?
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.
I think Whale has expressed something I was trying to get to. By-laws are adopted as a package for a lot of strata plans on a one-size-fits-all basis. But very few strata schemes have exactly the same priorities or needs. Also, in older buildings, by-laws often haven’t evolved to match the world in which they operate. That’s how you very quickly get to a position where the least relevant by-laws are actively ignored. I agree with the notion of a general review of by-laws and I think it should be done as a one-off, based on a simple majority of owners, rather than the progress-crippling 75 percent. After all, we accept the by-laws for a new scheme by a simple majority – maybe once every ten years we should get to review them on the same basis.
Of course, I speak from a fantasy land where the majority of owners know what by-laws are, care what they say and understand what they mean.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.
@Blue Swimmer said:
I am most puzzled by the Moderator and chieftain of Flat Chat suggesting by-laws need only be observed selectively. Struggs need not apologize. I’m with him on this.I don’t think that what I said. What I was trying to establish was a difference between by-laws that need to be applied because there has been a complaint or there is a serious problem and those that have technically been breached but haven’t really bothered anyone.
I don’t dismiss the principle of the thin end of the wedge (or, indeed, the slippery slope) but I think if we are going to entice more people into strata (as we need to do) we shouldn’t be scaring them off with a rigid “zero tolerance” approach to by-laws.
Many of our attitudes to strata living and the by-laws inspired by them are seriously out of date – hence the current major review of strata law. But if you’d care to point out the passage of the Strata Act that says Owners Corporations have a legal obligation to enforce their by-laws, I would be most enlightened.
If there is no legal obligation to do so (and I don’t think there is likely to be one even after the laws have been revamped), you are entitled to ask why that is. An oversight? Perhaps. But allowing communities to set their own thresholds of what is and isn’t acceptable, seems more likely.
Selective enforcement of by-laws, to me, is when you pull someone up for the same offence that another resident commits without any comeback. For that reason I have in the past argued in favour of compulsory enforcement when there are complaints.
I believe that Executive Committees have an obligation to pursue legitimate complaints by residents and I think when they choose not to do so, they should be obliged to put in writing why they have made that decision.
But I don’t think anyone should be actively looking for faults and flaws in others’ behaviour. That’s not what community living is about.
All by-laws are not equal. Choosing to ignore washing that can’t be seen on a balcony or a kitten that isn’t doing anyone any harm is a bit different to allowing people to park their third or fourth cars in visitors parking, have all-night parties or leave dogs yapping all day while they are at work.
And finally, thank you for elevating me to Chieftain of the clan McFlatchat. Slainthe Mhath.
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.
I can see a lot of sense in what you are saying, although I don’t agree 100 percent.
If it was up to me, on most issues I’d tend to wait until there was a complaint and deal with it then.
The parking analogy is valid but it is one of the ‘hot’ strata issues that you might keep under a tight rein anyway whereas others – like the obligation to keep your windows clean – may be allowed to drift. In the parking case, in some places a gentle reminder – “your car has been parked here a lot and just reminding you that’s a breach of by-laws” – might be enough before the EC goes issuing notices to comply.
I also think that different strata plans work in different ways and that’s very much to do with the kind of people who live there. Some people only respond to the big stick while others are more receptive to the quiet word.
It’s not an exact science and there are times when ‘zero tolerance’ is the only option that works – I just wouldn’t make it the only option for everyone every time.
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.
@That Crazy Swede said:
The Crazy swede is confused. I’ve read in these pages that if something akin to Bill Bratton’s Zero Tolerance policy isn’t stuck to rigidly, ‘the rot will set in’. Give them an inch and they take a mile.You can’t simply accept the strata laws you like and the ones that suit you, but flaunt or even worse in my opinion, not enforce the laws you don’t agree with can you?
I don’t know who said you have to stick to zero tolerance ‘rigidly’ but i hope it wasn’t me. Yes, give some people an inch and they will take a mile – but other people might just be trying to muddle through as best they can and will take direction and correction where it’s offered. You won’t know which is which until they show their true colours.
It’s not a question of accepting the strata laws you like and flouting or chosing not to enforce the others.
Some issues are worth going to the barricades over and others aren’t. If somebody is breaking by-laws and causing other people distress, and they refuse to toe the line then, to quote myself, you should “go them like a pit bull in a poodle shop.”
But there’s also the concept of “no harm, no foul”. For instance, if you are visiting a neighbour’s apartment for some reason and discover they are drying their washing on the balcony in breach of whatever by-law you have, even though no one else can see this, do you really raise a complaint. Zero tolerance would say yes, common sense would say ‘why bother?’
If people park briefly in visitor parking while they unload their groceries into the lift, and everybody accepts that they are, strictly speaking, breaking the rules so they move on as soon as they have unloaded, is there any real harm?
But if someone gets into the habit of leaving their car there for hours rather than minutes, yes, the rot has started to set in, as you put it.
A smart EC and/or strata manager will quickly spot the first signs and respond accordingly. But policing your strata block with the grim efficiency of the KGB (or in your case, SÄPO??) is not the way to build a responsible community. And hunting out every minor infringement or example of ‘creative’ management is not going to make us good neighbours in anyone’s eyes.
As the New York experience showed, zero tolerance is a great idea when everything has already hit rock bottom – but it is not a philosophy for building new communities based on mutual trust and respect.
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.
So cetaceans and crustaceans don’t get on – who knew?!?
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.