Forum Replies Created
-
Replies
-
I agree with all of this but it’s a wee bit more complicated thatn that. Foxtel has to be installed to the building before individual owners decide whether they want the service or not. That’s an expense all owners would bear. After that, it’s up to individuals whether or not they subscribe, meaning there is an expense to owners even if they don’t want the service. And, by the way I think the required change to common property would need a special resolution and if, say, only 20 percent of owners were against it. they would still have to pay for the basic upgrade and installation.
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 simply reads to me that you can’t take action to recover levies within the 30-day ‘grace’ period. it doesn’t necessarilly mean that interest isn’t applicable should that period be exceeded. These are two entirely different issues.
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.
Another thing to remember is that you can’t truly vote for the EC by proxy becasue you don’t know who will be standing until the AGM is underway and nominations are called for. The EC can invite people to nominate in addvance and even suggest that they send out information with the AGM agenda stating what their views are on the running of the EC for the next year. But that is all optional and very few ECs do that.
thebuildingmanager is right – choose the person you give your proxy to very carefully. And beware – if you take the lazy option and give your chairman a ‘blind’ proxy, even on the basis that they have done an OK job in the past, you can bet you will not be the only one and you and your fellow owners could be handing one individual an awful lot of power that they may not be particularly well equipped to deal with.
This is a pattern I’ve seen many times. A chairperson who hasn’t done too badly suddenly has enough proxy votes to decide what will and what won’t happen, select their own EC, drive the agenda and, with their handpicked EC loyally in tow, control the flow of information through the EC minutes. AGMs become perfunctory meetings where all the decisions have effectively been made in advance so debate is an irritation and distraction from the main game – getting elected for another year.
It may bring a level of stability but it’s not healthy – either for the strata plan or the individuals involved. So choose your proxy carrier wisely and hope they do the right thing when tough decisions have to be made.
On the question of voting for or against members, the usual procedure is that you have one vote per candidate, per vacancy on the EC. So if you have seven seats, for instance, you have seven votes but you can only give one per candidate. There is no “vote against” but if you really don’t want a candidate in there, make sure as many people as possible are voting for other candidates to fill the vacant seats.
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.
It sounds like an opportunity for a quiet chat and compromise. Does he need to be there for the whole 20 hours? But curbing the activities of someone who is trying to help an elderly relative does have a whiff of mean spirit about it.
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 suppose it depends on the agents and the EC involved. We all hate these signs – until it’s our turn to sell. But it’s important that the RE agents and, indeed, the owners have no right to do anything on common property without the Owners Corp’s permission.
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.
Firstly, the Strata Manager can’t give permission to change Common Property even if they have delegated powers. This can only be done at an AGM – so regardless of what the former SM said, the owner did not have permission to to this.
The question remains, what do you do next. If it changes the outward appearance of the building for the worse, the Owners Corp has the right to tell the owner to reinstate the original fittings at their own expense. If you don’t mind the new fixtures, you still need to be sure that the Owners Corp will not be held liable for repairs etc in the future, especially if this is an expensive installation (and might have been shoddily installed). I f you just let this go, you may find in the future that you have to pay for expensive repairs to a balcony that you didn’t want changed in the first place.
At the very least I would be asking the owner to submit a special resolution by-law at an Extraordinary General Meeting taking full responsibility for the balcony work now and in the future. I would also expect them to pay the cost of having the by-law written by a lawyer and the cost of the meeting to approve it.
If the owner refuses to do any of these things, I’d hold an Executive Committee meeting to issue a Notice To Comply ordering them to reinstate the balcony to its original state.
Your Owners Corp can’t be held responsible for work done under a verbal agreement that may or may not have been reached with a Strata Manager who did not have the right to make such an agreement in the first place.
Even if you don’t mind the new balcony, you have to establish that responsibility for its upkeep now rests with that owner and the only way to do that legally is to pass a special resolution.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.
Rebecca wrote:
There was no mention of having to pay the OC the assessed value of the converted space – which in my eyes would be hard to ascertain even at the point of resale of the unit.
There are professional surveyors whose job it is to assess the value of Real Estate and they would give you and your Owners Corp a fair assessment of the before and after values. The principle is well established and a legal precedent was set (in the High Court, I think) after an owner with most of the voting power in the building sold himself the loft space for a tiny sum to create two whole new apartments. This was judged to be a ‘fraud on the minority’ and the principle of ‘buying’ the common property for the difference between the cost of the work and the increase in value was established.
I don’t know if you noticed in that article but Real Estate agents said the attic conversions add about $150,000 to the value of the property and that’s what the renovator paid to build his, so the $15,000 ‘donation’ may have been about right. If it was well off and the established rules hadn’t been followed, any disgruntled owner or a new EC could come along and take legal action to get more money from the renovator.
I think if you have your heart set on this, you might be better off looking at a block of units where someone has already done this and then having a really close look at the EC minutes leading up to the renovation and during it. You might find a building where the other owners are already cool about it. Or it could be that it caused them so much hassle that they said ‘never again’!
Just remember that the OC doesn’t have to sell you Common Property (the roof space) if they don’t want to. That is a great imponderable but if you’re keen, anything is possible.
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 got the sense that Struggler was syaing there was plenty of time to add motions to the agenda BEFORE it was sent out. Or was it just the way I read it?
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 reckon this should be categorised as more of a dream than a plan. There are so many potential pitfalls – not least the Owners Corp refusing to sell you the space, which as other posters point out, is theirs to do with as they please. The thing to remember is that just because the attic is above your apartment, it doesn’t mean you have any greater claim on it than any other person in the building.
A much better plan would be to buy into a building that offers the potential for upgrading by buying a bigger unit when one becomes available (and maybe renovating that). But, as ScotlandX points out, there’s no free lunch in strata – any ‘profit’ you make by extending into common property goes straight to the Owners Corp.
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.
OK, the first thing to bear in mind is that there is no substitute for a good carpet on a quality underlay when it comes to sound insulation (in either direction). Everything else is a compromise and the probability is that your floorboards were never intended to be exposed. Carpet would possibly have been laid when your flat was first built.
The other thing to remember is that you can investigate the acoustic qualities of flooring till the cows come home but if the result is that enough sound is transmitted to annoy your neighbors, then you have a problem.
That said, cork does have sound deadening qualities and is used as a layer in some of the higher-end ‘acoustic’ timber flooring. It may even be be better than timber as a flooring material if installed properly. Have a look at these websites HERE and HERE and you could talk to an acoustic engineer.
Judging by what I’ve read, cork boards rather than tiles ‘floating’ on an effective insulation bed will give you a better sound insulation than timber would. But whether that is enough depends very much on the specifics of your building.
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.
There’s this story, written by … um … me
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.
Absolutely! It should be the other way round with you telling the owner to talk to his agent about any issues. The owner has certain responsibilities to the owners corporation and he can’t just pass the buck to some non-involved third party. Remind this owner that recent court cases have made the owner of the property legally responsible for theit tenants behaviour in relation to other owners. This is not something the should shirk if they don’t want to end up in strife.
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.
Funny you should say that, this morning I’m meeting someone from a company called Stratamatch a kind of dating agency for strata plans and SMs. Look them up on stratamatch.com.au and let me know how you go.
Meanwhile, this is always the danger when you give your SM the obligatory three months notice that you are sacking them. I would always follow that up with a notice that you are putting the job up for tenders and inviting them to re-apply.
Your current SM shouldn’t leave you high and dry but somebody better gets their hands on the chequebook soon or you are going to have unpaid bills and a whole mess of other problems.
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.
Is the sign on common property? If it is, and it clearly doesn’t have permission, the EC have every right to demand its removal, with or without an EC ruling or specific by-law.
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’t imagine any grounds on which a legal action like that might succeed, unless there was a corrupt process in awarding the contracts, you didn’t get the required two estimates for work or the votes weren’t counted properly.
In fact, an owner taking you to court for NOT doing the work would probably have a better chance of success. Just make sure your EC insurance covers legal action and you’ve got very little to worry about. I wonder where people who don’t have the money for essential maintenance find the cash to pay lawyers.
But, all joking aside, one of the few legal obligations imposed on Owners Corporations is that you have to maintain common property. That has been upheld time and again in the courts and your litigious neighbours should take note.
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.