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But if you have a water ingress problem, and you have reasonable evidence about it, it is the Owners Corporation’s responsibility to investigate and fix it. They should arrange an engineer or expert to investigate and report.
There are a lot of ifs and buts in the above response but the line quoted here is key. If common property is causing a problem, then the OC must pay to fix it. If they want you to arrange an engineers report, you have to make it clear to the committee that the OC will have to pay for it, ultimately. Take it as a positive – they are going to allow you to choose your preferred engineer – and they will pay, whether they want to or not.
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Upgrading the building’s common property requires a special resolution (under section 108 of the Strata Schemes Management Act) at a general meeting.
Two points.
- It’s a lot easier to get approval for by-law changes if you can convince the committee to get on board with the idea before you go looking to pass by-laws. Convince them that it will enhance the value of everyone’s homes.
- Does it really require a 75 per cent vote? Under Section 5 of the Act, “Resolutions of owners corporations”, a resolution of an owners corporation is a special resolution if… the resolution is a sustainability infrastructure resolution—less than 50% are against the resolution.
Under Section 132B (2) “Financing and installation of sustainability infrastructure”, sustainability infrastructure means changes to part of the common property (which includes the installation, removal, modification or replacement of anything on or forming part of that property) for any one or more of the following purposes—(a) to reduce the consumption of energy or water or to increase the efficiency of its consumption,(b) to reduce or prevent pollution,(e) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,(f) to facilitate the use of sustainable forms of transport.
Surely all of a,b, e and f apply to a bicycle rack, which means all that should be required is a 50 per cent vote in favour at a general meeting. Worth pursuing from that point of view.
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The only way to avoid escalating it is for the secretary to block the emails (easily done on most email platforms) but that doesn’t mean the sender won’t ramp up their threats. If these are serious and persistent threats of violence or doing some other harm to the recipient, the secretary can go to the police and apply for an Apprehended Personal Violence Order (APVO) which can also apply to verbal threats and abuse. Check out this link for more details.
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There are three ways to approach this. The best may be to approach the strata committee with a plan that they can adopt. Provide them with a cost estimate and a compelling argument as to why they should install the racks at Owners Corp expense.
If that doesn’t fly, do the same at your next AGM and get the owners behind the project.
And if they just don’t want to pay, ask if you can do it at your own expense, offering to take responsibility via a by-law. But start with the first idea and gather as much information as you can about how many bikes there are in the building.
The arguments against are likely to include that the OC doesn’t want to be liable for stolen bikes. The response is that they put up a sign or pass a by-law saying bikes are left at the owners’ responsibility and should be insured against theft or damage.
The other one will come from fearmongering about electric battery fires. Again, just have a notice saying eBikes must not be charged on common property.
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It depends where you are.
In NSW there is legislation on the way to put building manager contracts on the same three-year limit as strata managers.
In Victoria they are thinking about doing something similar … some time … eventually … maybe.
And in Qld they’re talking about talking about it. But bear in mind that trade in caretaker contracts there runs to about $5bn a year, the official body for caretakers can get pretty feral when anyone says owners should have the right to choose who runs their buildings and the banks have a vested interest in keeping things exactly the way they are because they provide the loans so that caretakers can buy the contracts.
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There are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, changing common property to visitor parking is a change of use that requires council development approval. Strata by-laws can’t supersede superior laws like planning regulations and you could have this blocked by council.
Secondly, changes to common property require a special resolution unless they are for sustainability or accessibility improvements. Your OC might get away with a simple majority if they were creating a disabled space but that would have to be super-wide to qualify.
As a final thought, are any of the other owners using visitor parking for their own vehicles?
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I can feel the hate mail coming my way already but I am reliably informed that waterproofing roofs is the new embedded networks when it comes to scams, rip-offs and egregious over-servicing.
The myth propogated by some firms is that it is illegal to do a partial repair on a roof’s waterproofing and you have to do the whole area in one hit (very convenient for the contractor!).
However, I have spoken to some very senior people at the Building Commission who have told me this is BS and have heard from other buildings that as long as partial repairs don’t overlap then it is perfectly legal to patch waterproofing, as long as the patches are guranteed.
My own strata committee has been sucked in by this nonsense and, of course, since they are never wrong about anything, we are headed for a bill almost double yours and rising with every estimate.
My advice would be to contact the Owners Corporation Network (OCN.org.au) to see where they sit on this. And contact some other contractors and ask them a simple question first – “do you patch waterproofing on apartment block roofs” and if they say no, move on to the next one on the list.
By the way, there may be circumstances where a whole-roof re-waterproofing is the only solution. But it doesn’t apply to every situation and the excuse that they can’t get insurance has alarm bells ringing for me.
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If the issue is creaking beams, then it really should be investigated. We used to own in an old building in Bondi where an owners downstairs complained about a sagging floor. It turned out the corner of the building was only being held up by an arco-prop because of subsidence caused by the run-off from a blocked downpipe from the building next door.
Yes, buildings get creaky as they get old – they also get creaky before they collapse. You might need new floors and that’s an OC reponsibility, at least to investigate.
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Hmm. A typical and all-too-common passing of the buck there and it won’t wash if you don’t want it to. The Owners Corporation has a statutory responsibility to maintain and repair common property and the owner (but not the tenant) has the right to seek orders compelling them to do that.
Or, look at this the other way, the owner has the responsibility to the tenant to provide “reasonable security” whaich means they should be taking the necessary action to compel the OC to fulfil its duties, if need be by taking action at Fair Trading and NCAT.
The standard residential tenancy agreement says this:
LOCKS AND SECURITY DEVICES
32. The landlord agrees: 32.1 to provide and maintain locks or other security devices necessary to keep the residential premises reasonably secure.
Section 106 of the strata schemes management Act says this:
106 Duty of owners corporation to maintain and repair property(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.
(2) An owners corporation must renew or replace any fixtures or fittings comprised in the common property and any personal property vested in the owners corporation.
So your owner should be hassling the OC to fix the lock and they have the power to ask the Tribunal (NCAT) to issue orders compelling them to do so. The owner should at the very least be seeking mediation as a first step to seeking orders under section 106.If they don’t then they have breached the conditions of your lease and you are entitled to ask for a rent reduction. You might also tell other tenants in the building that they can ask for rent reductions too.Your rental agent has zero interest in asking the landlord to do anything except take your rent so you have to give them a form of encouragement, perhaps by telling them that if there is no sign of the landlord insisting that the lock be fixed, you will want a rent reduction and you are prepared to go to Fair Trading to get one, if need be.I would lay odds that your landlord isn’t even aware of this issue, so proceed politely and civilly, at least to begin with. And have a look at this page on the Tenants Union website which doesn’t refer directly to strata but the principles are the same.And when the rental agent says the problem is the Owners Corp, you can say no, the problem is the lock and that’s the landlord’s problem. If the landlord has a problem with the OC, it has nothing to do with you.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.
Cue “My Pink Half of the Drainpipe“
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There is a persistent myth in strata that the scheme is not liable for events not covered by strata insurance. Owners have to look at this another way; they have chosen a policy, probably cheaper, with defined coverage. Which mean that they are only covered for their statutory liabilities and up to the amount the policy allows. If the claims are greater than the agreed benefits, and the injured party successfully sues for damages, then the scheme has to find that money from its existing funds or additional levies.
This is a case you might take to a medical claims specialist lawyer or, preferably, reach an amicable agreement with the owners corporation and save both sides legal costs. So yes, you would have to initiate a separate action against the scheme if you thought you had been unreasonably inadequately compensated.
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Do you mean at an AGM or Committee Meeting it was decided to pay more for the service?
This is a perfect example of where it would be good for the OP to be able to respond directly. Is it too much to ask Flatchatters to register and log in? Perhaps.
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As we have all agreed to the new wall colour do we have the right to change the colour of our garage doors and guttering? Note that all the garages are undercover and only one garage door of our strata is seen by any visitors as each individual apartment has their own pedestrian entrance way.
I would be tempted to repaint your doors how you want and let chummy nexy door look like the goose he is. But be prepared for him not to pay his share because the paint job wasn’t to his taste.
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The strata plan has a note saying “No part of the building shall be common property other than common service lines”. I Googled part of that exact phrase in the hope I might find examples of other similar schemes, but about all I got was an un-requested AI opinion that ‘In NSW, the premise that “no part of the building shall be common property” is incorrect’.
AI can be notoriously unreliable when it comes to strata issues. It often scrapes the media for references from all over Australia, assuming we have the same strata laws in every state – which we most definitely don’t.
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