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The first question will lie in the company “articles” or papers that establish the rules and regs of your building.
The second part is much more difficult but far from impossble.
You will require as a high level of agreement in the building to go strata. Then you will need to establish your unit entitlements by using a chartered surveyor. And then there are about a dozen other things I haven't even though of. But it can be done. Talk to a lawyer.
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bpositive said:
Get a few owners together and consult a lawyer – there is something called compulsory strata management where the CTTT appoints a managing agent.
That's true and you might get a appointment if the EC is harming the building or demonstrably corrupt. But being remote and uncommunicative is probably not sufficient grounds for a statutory appointment.
Your best bet is to retake the palace at the next AGM – you might find the strata manager is suffering from the same lack of communication as you are.
By the way, one element in the appointment of a statutory manager is that you have to find one who is prepared to take on the job. This is one area where the democratic muscle is the one you want to flex.
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That's the heart of the matter – is a bylaw that says effectively and literally, “we give you permission to clamp our cars” a true instrument of legal permission by the owner? If it is, then such a by-law is not in contravention of the law because the law allows for permission to be given.
Don't get me wrong – I'm not saying this is the case. I don't know. As I said in my column, this hasn't been tested and it may not be valid. We won't know for sure until someone challenges it and gets a ruling.
However, I can assure you this by-law has been adopted in a couple of buildings (to great effect on the parking problem – I hasten to add) and I don't know of any cases where it has been struck down either at the CTTT or in court.
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That's really interesting. It must be one of those things that varies from State to State and perhaps council to council.
I just called City of Sydney planning department and they said, among other things (like heritage issues), you can't change the configuration of rooms without council planning approval.
I'm not questioning Austman's information but it does seem strange to me that you could make structural changes to a building without any competent oversight authority's approval.
My advice would be, check with your local council's planning department (or risk an order to reinstate if everything goes pear-shaped).
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I would think your local council's planning department might also want to have a look, given that there are structural changes involved.
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Firstly, you haven't made a mistake at all. I know it can seem pretty negative on these pages at times but think of this as a community of people reaching out and helping each other to SOLVE problems, not create them. The vast majority of people living is strata love it. I've rented and owned apartments for the past 20 years – and had my ups and downs – but I wouldn't take a house in a fright.
You can't assume the developers have done the right thing re the floors – depends on the developers – but in a good quality build it should be OK. If it isn't OK, they're going to have big defect claims against them.
So relax and enjoy. And come back here if you do have problems – and just think, if you were in a new house and had issues, you'd be on your own.
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Congrats on silencing the drummer – however it happened. As an ordinary owner you can attend an EC meeting but they have to agree or vote to let you speak before you can do so.
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Mr Strata said:
Why should all owners contribute towards one persons fight with a neighbor that they find to be too noisy?
The process for an individual to take an issue to Fair Trading is the same as an owners corporation taking it to there. Why have a battle with the EC to enforce the by-laws instead of getting on and having your issue addressed? Seems a bit futile to encourage this approachOK, there are some issues that are truly between neighbours – like the piano playing example – but others where the EC needs to take a stand to show what kind of community they are in.
Is a noisy, aggressive and anti-social neighbour who only disturbs one resident a case for letting that person handle it on their own? And rogue parking – if only one resident is affected, do the others just turn their backs and say 'not my problem'.
And what if that person is unable to understand the processes or is too scared to do anything about their problem?
The process is not “exactly the same”, Mr Strata, and well you know it. An EC has the benefit of experience, professional advice and collective decision making. Most significantly, their handling of a case gives a sense that the community supports the owner who is suffering.
Conversely, an owner acting alone can too easily be dismissed as just another strata whinger who should be living in a house and the CTTT adjudicators can't help asking themselves why the EC isn't going in to bat for them.
And that's the root of this problem. The strata industry is focused on getting as many people into as small a space as possible and to hell with the consequences. Unless we start thinking about community responsibilities rather than personal “rights” all we're doing is building the slums of the future.
Community standards are not established by rules but by what the community does when those rules are breached. If you tell residents they are on their own, don't expect them to care too much about the buildings they live in and the people they live with.
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Interesting stuff, Ray. I've just had a look at Section 138 which seems to be about an adjudicator stepping in to make a judgement when an EC has failed to act on a complaint.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem penalty on the EC for deciding to do nothing about a legitimate claim so it seems like the EC can just wash its hands of any issues, knowing that the CTTT Adjudicator can make rulings for them (although I suppose in extreme cases it could be used as an argument for imposing a statutory manager to run the scheme).
I may be reading it wrongly, but you're not actually taking the EC to the Tribunal for failure to act, but taking the issue to the CTTT because the EC has failed to act.
But you're right about doing your own 'dirty work' – there's a simple rule of thumb: if it's not important enough for you to gather the evidence, why would anyone else give up their free time to help you?
I reckon there should be some way of weeding out people who join executive committees just to protect their own interests and have no desire to help the neighbours they should be looking after.
Maybe section 138 should have a rider that if you vote irresponsibly to do nothing about a legitimate claim you should be banned from being on an EC for a few years.
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The Herald's website has gone totally nuts on this topic with yours truly copping loads of (mostly unwarranted) abuse, basically for suggesting that there is no easy answer. Worryingly, some correspondents are suggesting illegally parked cars can be clamped or towed. They can't, as this legislation (link provided by a reader) clearly states. You can join in the fun and games HERE.
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wombat said:
It seems to me that the combination of the notion of an unfinancial member not being able to form part of the quorum and the notion that the owner cannot rectify their finances during the adjournment period is contradictory and unjust.
The adjournment is necessary to move towards having the meeting that has loosened the quorum conditions.It seems to me that the purpose of the adjournment is lost when the manager says nothing can change during the adjournment period.
It sounds like you have yourself a classic 'Catch-22' there but the law does provide a circuit breaker.
12 Quorum
(4) If a quorum … is not present within the next half-hour after the relevant motion or business arises for consideration at the meeting, the meeting stands adjourned for at least 7 days.
(5) If a quorum … is not present within the next half-hour after the time fixed for the adjourned meeting, the persons present personally or by duly appointed proxy and entitled to vote constitute a quorum for considering that motion or business.
In other words, turn up for the next meeting, your neighbour's vote will once again be ruled invalid wait half an hour and then you get to vote all on your own on the matters on that agenda. It sounds like red tape gone mad but if you've ever been on the end of a nit-picking legal argument about how a decision that was made never should have been made, you'll see why the strata manager has followed the rules to the letter.
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If you can prove negligence, you may have a claim against them via their professional indemity insurance. Whether or not it will fly is a whole other issue. Talk to a lawyer experienced in strata defects before you do anything else.
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To answer your first question, perhaps someone who has installed cameras recently can give us a ballpark figure.
I Googled “security camera installation” and it came up with pages of possible suppliers. On entry in particular Security Quotes, gets you to fill in a questionnaire about your basic requirements then, apparently, you get quotes from several companies.
I would think it would be a good idea (and possibly essential) to get Owners Corporation approval on this at a general meeting.
The Strata manager might monitor the camera but would probably charge you extra for doing so. The simplest way, if you don't have a building manager, is to store the images on a computer that's accessible by the secretary or chair of the building.
You might want to ask the strata manager to store the collected images on an external hard drive for backup.
You could even pipe the images into your TV aerial cabling so that everyone can watch (and record). Endless hours of entertainment for all.
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choux flat said:
When buying a unit in a strata, you own a physical asset much of it shared, and you 'bought' a set of rights and restrictions. Can this be seen as a contract of sort? Once an issue is brought to the attention of the Owners Corporation, does it then become their obligation to deal with it?
If only it was as simple as that. When you buy an apartment you do, indeed, undertake a contract to abide by the by-laws. But unlike in other states there is no legal obligation on the NSW Owners Corporations to enforce those by-laws.
Now, that's not to say the OC has no obligations. The Strata Act details the requirement to, for instance, carry building insurance and maintain and repair common property. And there are other external legal obligations such as Occupational Health and Safety regulations.
Some might argue that the OC has a 'duty of care' which effectively works as an obligation to enforce by-laws. But if that can be proved – and I don't know if it ever has been – it would be as a consequence of not taking action, not (as far as I'm aware) to to force them to do something.
As the coming weekend's Flat Chat column will argue, all of this makes by-laws in NSW effectively optional. And that means the grounds on which they are selectively enforced could theoretically be challenged as prejudiced against targetted individuals.
There's an easy fix – make by-law enforcement obligatory, as it is elsewhere. Sadly, the mandarins of Fair Trading aren't even remotely interested in what strata dwellers want or need – that would undermine their frequently promulgated fiction that they are doing a good job.
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Good point, CBF, but it depends on the by-laws. They may only specify dogs to be carried or taken on leashes .. or not say anything at all. That's the wonder of by-laws … they're little fortune cookies of mystery.
Let's assume kitty is allowed to wander – for the sake of a delicious argument, if nothing else. What then? Is this cat-napping? Or slightly over-zealous kitty care?
If it's not a breach of by-laws, it's not a strata issue. But then, a solution is still required.
I had an over-fed cat who developed diabetes. Twice-daily injections for umpteen years, expensive cat-sitters when we went on holiday, constant trips to the vet. And all because we fed her a bit too much.
It's a worry and I don't know if there's a solution.
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