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The simplest solution is to put a notice (with permission) on the noticeboard.
The 2nd simplest solution is to inspect the Strata Roll at the SM’s premises.
All Lot Owners names and addresses should be there.
You are entitled to write down anything you like.
I too remember the days when local Councils kept a rates book.
Don’t know whether it’s just “progress” or the Privacy Act which means they no longer do or no longer allow ratepayers to look at it.
The 3rd solution is to get on to the LPI website. Pay for each search and you can find out a lot. Apparently money trumps privacy.
Although, in my opinion, a lot of people confuse “anonymity” with “privacy”.
Oh, I forgot:
The OC is quite entitled to remove a sign which is damaging common property.
It’s a duty under the SSM Act, and it’s a common law duty to “mitigate” damage anyway.
The Common Property is owned by a Corporation and common law property rights apply irrespective of whether there’s a By-Law.
Neither the Owner who’s selling, nor their selling agent, nor the sign-erecting contractor have the right to erect a sign without the permission of the OC. That would be trespass.
Having said that, a By-Law would spell things out clearly to Owners.
I see nothing wrong with a By-Law covering:
1) Types of “opportunity” (Auction, Lease, Rent or Sale) which are permitted.
2) Where the sign may be erected.
3) How long the sign may remain, in total, but also after contracts signed.
4) Maximum size of sign.
5) Manner of attachment.
6) Prescribed fee (to be paid in advance) for use of Common Property.
With number (6), you’ll soon find out whether selling Owners think such signs are worthwhile, or whether they are just enriching themselves at OC’s expense.
PC, selling Owners will only benefit once each, absentee landlords will benefit many times.
Nah, wasn’t the punctuation, I still don’t understand the situation.
Part of the unclarity is whether SM1 and SM2 are persons, perhaps working for the same SM company, or whether they are different SM companies.
Why is this a personal issue?
Exactly what do you think is the conflict of interest?
You seem to be running around in circles based on 3rd-hand assumptions.
If I were you, I would not be going to a CTTT mediation based on any assumptions, only facts, or you may end up with egg on your face. I’d get all of my ducks (ducts?) in a line first.
@OverIt said:
Thank you Whale and Kangaroo, this is what I also suspected I am so confused, what’s causing what, I have my managing agent who is very trusted and have been using for years not just on this property going out to do an inspection and take multiple photos on top of what is already taken and then we will take this issue and the multitude of other issues that I haven’t even touched on to mediation.
If your property manager is going out to do an inspection, why don’t you go with? Do you live in a different state or something?
You’ve already spent money on an unnecessary electrician. Most people of average competence can flip a switch and hear whether a motor is running and see whether the blades are turning.
Apart from the hankerchief test, a ventilation “expert” ought to have some sort of (non-toxic) smoke machine to see whether (and where) it comes out the other end.
Perhaps you could tell us more about the layout of the exhaust system. It may not be common property. The fact that the OC’s ventilation “expert” recommended that you upgrade suggests that it may be Lot property, otherwise they would have recommended to the OC that they upgrade.
1) Is it a communal system venting into a vertical stack?
2) Is it individual to your Lot venting horizontally to a grill on an outside wall?
I can’t answer your last question.
As Whale said, we’re not psychic, but neither are you.
Why don’t you go out to your investment property and take a gander yourself?
Tenants often do not adequately describe a problem (the exhaust fan’s not working).
Property “Managers” don’t personally inspect reported problems.
Your electrician obviously could see the ventilation fan blades turning and pondered whether there is a blockage.
The SP’s ventilation “expert” is no expert if he states it’s impossible to tell whether the duct is blocked or not. Wasn’t that why he was sent?
The SM is no “expert” in common sense to suggest you spend $1500 on a more powerful exhuast system if they haven’t positively determined the duct is not blocked.
Last, and not least, landlords seldom know what tenants get up to in their leased premises.
Perhaps the filter on the exhaust fan has merely been blocked by fluff from their fluffy luxurious bath sheets.
Perhaps they take hour-long conjugal sauna sessions in the en-suite.
As this is an en-suite, such activity would also fill the bedroom with steam, causing condensation on the window, so perhaps your other problem, the reported window “leak” is nothing to do with the nearby (?) downpipe at all.
In general terms, I applaud the Supreme Court decision.
For instance, it means that a new owner cannot demand that a 40-year-old building he bought into be upgraded to offer Foxtel, just because it’s the “modern” thing. It can be done, but only if the OC pass a Special Resolution (75%+).
I read of a case some years back, and I believe it was in QLD, where a woman bought a unit in an older walk-up block. Some time later she had an accident and ended up a quadraplegic. She sued the OC to force them to make the block wheelchair accessible. And won.
The only part of the recent decision I have a problem with is not being able to sue for damages for breach of statutory duty. What if you had a high brick retaining wall which was starting to lean, and the OC (stupidly) resolved not to repair or replace it. Then it collapses, injuring a resident?
I think renovations and upgrades are quite a separate issue to “maintaining the CP to a serviceable state” (not necessarily to a brand-new state or a “modern” state), and are already adequately distinguished in the Act.
I’m no lawyer, but I think what your OC has done is perfectly permissable.
The Act says that there must be a motion on the agenda for the AGM to set the number of EC members and a motion to elect them. These two motions are ordinary resolutions not special resolutions. And they don’t necessarily have to be in that order.
Whilst the Act, schedule 3 clause 4(2), also says that the OC (not the EC) must fill a vacancy on the EC, there is nothing to say the OC can’t hold an EGM, which you apparently did, to re-set the number of EC members, reducing it by 1 so that a new election was not required.
Any GM (AGM or EGM) can rescind or amend an ordinary resolution passed at a previous GM by way of another ordinary resolution.
Two more points:
1) For a block of 12, an EC size of 3 is probably sufficient, unless there are hordes of octagenarians dying (?) to get on the EC, in which case 5 should be more than sufficient.
2) There are no Strata Police driving around raiding random blocks, checking that everything has been done absolutely correctly, and it doesn’t sound like you have any owner who will complain to the CTTT that he/she was denied their rightful place on the EC.
Concrete cancer doesn’t arrive overnight.
How old is the block?
Did you follow up JT’s question – has the EC checked every other apartment, or is it just your apartment?
What reason did the OC give for not wanting to cover any of the costs?
For Waverton, might I suggest a compromise to avoid the legal arguments.
The OC could resolve to waterproof every unit’s balcony and then lay identical tiles on each balcony, in which case they would be common property, and every owner is effectively paying for their own tiles, and the appearance is consistent.
The only added cost is removing old tiles from the “some” balconies which have already been tiled, which would be a minor part of the total cost, and could be paid by the OC.
But, I have to ask, if it’s raining on everyone’s balcony, does it really matter if the lower ones get a little more water than the upper ones? Is there a problem when it’s not raining?
For everyone else, let me continue the generic debate.
JimmyT said
No by-law, no renovations: it’s really that simple.I don’t think it is that simple. If an owner asks for approval, that principle can be applied. The trouble these days is that many owners undertake additions/alterations (or renovations) without seeking approval. Either through ignorance, or more often through refusal to concede that there actually is a higher authority than themselves, or because of the “forgiveness is easier to get than permission” principle. There are various classes of such renovations.
1) The silent renovations that nobody knows about, such as extending the one and only TV outlet to every room by laying cable under the carpet, and then the new owner/tenant complains to the SM that one of their “extra” outlets doesn’t work, and the SM gets it fixed at OC expense. Even laying tiles on balconies can come into this category if the edge tiles are cut off-site.
2) The one-day renovations. The EC members go off to work, and when they get home they notice a new split-system air-conditioner compressor bolted down on someone’s balcony. It’s in exactly the place the OC would have specified if they’d been asked. What’s the chance of the OC getting that owner to pay for drafting and registering a retrospective SBL which is only going to make him responsible for ongoing maintenance. And what’s the chance that the CTTT would deny an owner his creature comforts and order it removed when the OC admits it’s in the right place but it’s just a “matter of principle”.
3) The audible long-running renovations, such as bathroom and kitchen renovations, which were notified and approved, but the scope gets “extended”. The owner forgetfully leaves his door open one day, and an EC member notices that a floating wooden floor is being installed as well. The EC member tells the owner that approval wasn’t granted for that, and is told to “rack off”. There are no “stop work” orders available, and the CTTT probably wouldn’t order it removed until it proves “too noisy”.
What I was trying to suggest was that instead of having different processes for approved renovations and the myriad of unapproved renovations, one single process of never ever approving additions/alterations might work if you had just one By-Law that unapproved renovations were the responsibility of the (current) owner, as long as the OC also had plans or photos of the lots “as originally built”. That would not make renovations “verboten”.
@JimmyT also said:
That’s why when you are selling an apartment these days you will probably be asked to sign a waiver saying you have not undertaken any unapproved changes to common property
I’m not a lawyer either, but I doubt that an OC could ever be held liable for a waiver (contract) between a vendor and a purchaser when the OC was not a party to the contract.
If there is any recourse, it would be by purchaser against vendor.
Which raises the question of which legal concept takes precedence: a waiver signed in “good faith” by an ignorant person, or “ignorance of the law is no excuse”.
Now if there was a Certificate of Unapproved Modifications required from the OC (after inspection) to be attached to every contract of sale, things might be different.
@JimmyT also also said:
Only until the lot owner sold, and then they would become the Owners Corp’s responsibility (and they would have had no control over the work that had been done).Using the same reasoning as above, that the OC was not a party to the contract, how can what was an “unapproved modification to CP” suddenly become common property? A contract of sale, to which the OC was not a party, cannot impose a benefit or a liability on a third party, the OC.
OK, just had my first call from a friend who has switched to NBN, so let’s sum up …
Each NBN optical fiber, which is thinner than a human hair and can carry 40,000 simultaneous telephone conversations, needs a 23mm conduit to each household.
Compared to your current 110mm x 70mm telephone wallplate, you will get a 180mm x 125mm NBN box.
Which must be near a power point.
But it can’t be behind furniture, because you need to look at the indicator lights.
You also need a UPS, which is about the same size, so two big boxes on the wall.
You need the UPS because, unlike copper wire, there’s no electric current in the fiber, so your corded phone now won’t work in a power outage, for instance to call 000 to report the fallen tree that cut off your power.
But the NBN UPS will only power the NBN box. Your corded phone will then work in a power outage, but not your cordless phone.
It’s not compulsory to connect to the NBN, but copper wire telephone and ADSL services will be switched off 18 months after NBN is installed in your area.
Optical fiber communications can’t be tapped, except that GCHQ and NSA does that in spite of the “facts”.
And NBN doesn’t have clue-one how it’s going to be implemented in multi-dwelling units (25% of the population) or how much it will cost.
Can’t wait!
Suggestions:
1) Don’t invest in a copper mine. There’s gonna be a lot of recycled copper coming on to the market.
2) Cancel your CND (calling number display). A call from a VOIP user (maybe 50% of NBN customers) doesn’t send it.
How the hell are we going to explain all this to the elderly pensioners who’ve downsized to a strata unit and already think the Secretary is a janitor who is available at a moment’s notice to come and get their tin of cat food down from the high shelf for their dinner?
Perhaps they should all be shipped off to a retirement home where there’s a red phone box from which they are permitted to make one call to family per week.
Sorry for that, most of you probably don’t know what a red phone box is.
@JimmyT said:
Smart OCs and owners would negotiate a mutually agreeable formula with owners who have unapproved expensive tiling whereby the lot owner would pay the excess over the cost of the replacement cheap tiles and the OC would pay the rest – in exchange for agreement of a catch-all SBL to make all previously unapproved tiling the lot owners’ responsibility henceforth.Wouldn’t smart OCs never ever approve lot owner’s additions/alterations to CP?
Then all additions/alterations would be unapproved and the lot owner’s responsibility.
You wouldn’t need a big long register of SBLs.
And the OC may even be able to charge the lot owner for removal of unapproved tiles stuck onto CP when they have to get at the waterproof membrane.
Under what circumstances would an OC ever want to agree to being responsible for a lot owner’s changes to CP?
Where in the Act does it say that unapproved additions/alterations to CP suddenly change status and become CP when the lot changes ownership?
Caveat emptor, I say.
Also, lot owners should be careful tiling balconies for the first time, or re-tiling over existing tiles, as this alters the effective height of the balcony rail, and may therefore breach building standards.
I don’t know where you saw the expression “bad debt unrecoverable”, but to me it means the debt has been officially written off, so should not make you unfinancial (if you’ve paid your levies).
Not out of the ordinary.
Attempted mediation is a prerequiste step to any dispute other than the OC asking for a fine to be imposed after a Notice to Comply with By-Law has been ignored.
Mediation costs time and money, especialy if the SM has to attend, and it is not compulsory, either party may decline to attend.
If either party believes their case is iron-clad, why go where you are expected to compromise?
What is the nature of the dispute?
@just get on with it said:
Lets hope that the new Act will be consistent with the 21st century!Let’s hope the new Act will be legislated in the 21st century!