[Mr Strata]

Chopsuey,

The clothes dryer inside your apartment is considered an appliance within your apartment and hence a lot owners responsibility.

A dishwasher or a stove/cooktop is considered to be a fixture within the kitchen and if the reason they need to be replaced is due to an insurable loss (eg fire/burst pipe) than the OC’s insurance may cover their replacement.

[Mr Strata]

Sallyk,
If you are on the ec and or are the secretary, you can ask for a copy of the strata roll from the strata manager and should not need to pay for this.

Also to call the EGM, you need either 25% of unit entitlements of owners signing a requisition for a general meeting, or the executive committee need to resolve (at an ec meeting) to convene a general meeting to resolve to terminate the current SM and appoint a new SM.

Keep in mind that it is optimal to obtain the tenders for strata management before resolving to terminate your existing strata manager.

Most professional strata managers are happy to assist with clarifying this process. Most ethical strata managers will set you on the right path, but under the Property Stock & Business Agents act ( the licensing legislation) can not do this for you until they are appointed and have an agency agreement.

Good luck

[Mr Strata]

All,

May I suggest in the first instance it should be agreed by the OC and lot owner to engage the OC’s plumber to investigate if there is a leaking or burst pipe in the wall or if the waterproofing of the wall needs attention.

Keep in mind if this is caused by leaking taps inside the wall then this would be the lot owners responsibility. If the waterproofing has failed or was non existent (older buildings were not always built with ‘shower trays’) then this needs to be considered on two parts, the internal wall is the lot owners responsibility, while the floor and an external wall is OC’s responsibility.

If there is a burst or leaking pipe inside the wall this could be claimable on the OC’s insurances, excess dependent.

Hope this helps add clarity

[Mr Strata]

Whale,

You need to be very careful about this approach, but also the fixing of the pipe could be considered to be an OC responsibility. If it is a burst pipe this may be covered by the OC’s insurance and the resultant damage.

I would suggest trying to make contact direct with the resident to try to gain the access rather than the property manager or owner.

In theory an OC should seek mediation and apply for an order for access, but realistically what will happen if the OC forces access to fix common property? Answer is not a lot, the owner would need to take the action, but what would the result be, very little, as long as the OC was just fixing common property.

The OC should not do work on lot property with the intention to charge it back to the owner without getting a written agreement from the owner as a minimum.

Good luck.

[Mr Strata]

Jimmy, great post/column.

Maybe we could add some more questions, such as:

1. Who is responsible to notify the owners corporation that I am an owner or have changed my address?

2. What happens if I don’t pay my levies?

3. How do I get permission to do renovations?

The quiz could go on!!

[Mr Strata]

Villageidiot,
You have indicated that your SP was registered in about 1964, are the ac units installed in the balcony window structure?? Under the original strata act balcony wall, door and window structures were considered lot property (not common property). But this does not address the matter of compliance with the by-laws, being in particular appearance of a lot.

From past experience at Fair Trading, you will need to mediate and then seek an order, but they are likely to issue an order, but this could involve the OC being made to pay for the work to correct the situation, as they had not acted sooner.

[Mr Strata]

Hi Jen,

The first place to look to see what you should be getting from your Strata Manager (SM) is your agency agreement. If you have a good SM they will be using an istm agreement and the agreed services will be listed in schedules A1 and A2 of the agreement, firstly showing what authority they have to do what services and secondly showing what is included in the management fee and what can be done for an additional cost.

You must also be cognizant of the old saying ‘you get what you pay for’. If you have a low management fee, your strata manager is likely to need to manage a bundle of buildings to be profitable.

SCA otherwise known as the Institute of Strata Title Management is offering executive committee training, which will help to explain what an EC member’s role is and also role of the SM. Also local council’s are providing informative sessions for owners in strata, such as the one being run by Sutherland Shire Council in August.

In the first place, it may be worthwhile talking to the Licencee of your current SM company to see if they may be able to offer EC member training, as most are very happy to help keep their clients very happy.

Hope this helps!

[Mr Strata]

Whale,
It seems odd that the fan is shown as a lot owners fixture on the strata plan… Very unusual…
It would be interesting to see the excerpt from the plan that illustrates this.

Is there an exclusive use by-law that governs this? It may refer to the OC’s ability to fix it and recover the cost from the owner.

Now for the bad news, unless you seek an order from Fair Trading you can not get the work fixed and recover the cost from the owner, unless you have their prior written agreement. Even if you get the written agreement I suggest getting the money upfront (prior to doing the work). Nothing worse than chasing an owner to pay for something twice.

I have obtained several written rulings from Fair Trading about this very matter, where property managers have put to me an invoice for work they have had done to common property without OC consent and seeking recovery. The law is on the OC’s side.

[Mr Strata]

Billen Ben, some good suggestions!! It may be worth taking it a little further… It would be good to see some reasonable qualification requirements for Strata Managers of large buildings, especially when you consider many large buildings have millions of dollars in their annual finances.

Jimmy, I am reliably informed that in the state north of the border, they have the option to complete a voting paper, indicating their vote on each motion, or appoint a proxy, or attend the meeting….the voting paper must be sent direct from the owner to the secretary or strata manager otherwise it is invalid. If an amendment is moved for a motion at the meeting, all of the voting papers votes on the amended motion become a ‘no’ vote.

This seems to encourage getting the agenda right to start with

[Mr Strata]

Congratulations Struggler, well done!! Keep up the great posting.

[Mr Strata]

Jimmy, yes you are right, the ATO sees income earnt by an OC in the way of rental income, or sale of common property, assesible income in the hands of the individual owners (see tax ruling IT2505). I know of several buildings that have come under this situation.

[Mr Strata]

Hi All,

You may also wish to look at the case of Whitlam v Hannah in relation to this particular matter… This was an extremely good court decision that supports owners being able to act where an owner is doing the wrong thing.

[Mr Strata]

Billen Ben,
This is just the issue, and it is partly being discussed in the Holiday & Short-term rentals thread… The strata act is not designed to control this issue, but the Council should be proactively managing these issues. The council, when and if they choose to do something can fine owners instantly, and I have seen them take owners to the Land & Environment Court. Otherwise this is a Residential Tenancy matter, in that the lessee has breached the lease etc. The question does get raised, what happened to the regular tenancy inspections?? If the owner/property manager is clever about it, they use to be able to get 4 inspections in during a year. This would surely go a long way to catching this before it got so out of hand.

[Mr Strata]

Levy arrears charges need to be the fine balance between encouraging owners to pay their levies on time and covering the OC’s costs in chasing delinquent payers.

It is funny how when people buy into strata they expect everyone else to be responsible for everything, including those things that they as owners can only be responsible for.

Levies are very simple… They should be the same amount each quarter and only varied at the AGM or an EGM. With the benefit of Internet banking it is so easy to set up your direct deposits for the year in advance.

In a past life I personally delivered a good portion of levy notices to local buildings, where there were owner occupiers. It was very interesting to get those phone calls from owners when they received the levy reminder notice and stating that they never received the original levy notice.

If you look at the impact on the OC’s cash-flow in having outstanding levies, especially when you have a building manager and strata manager trying to get repairs done, but limited by late levy payers, how do you account for this cost, and or on charge same to the delinquent owners??

One option for OC’s is to look at offering the 10% discount on levies if paid before the due date per s79(4). If an OC does this responsibly they would need to budget for the amount of the discount, but again, this relies on owners realizing that they need to pay their bills on time.

[Mr Strata]

Guys, it’s worth looking at the Trades Monitor website. This is a company that several strata management companies use to assist in tracking contractor compliance and as a result has a massive benefit for clients for a relatively minimal cost (about $70pa).

Contractor compliance is a never-ending job… It is all about making sure the contractors working on any particular property have the correct licenses, insurances, OH&S documents in place. Without this an OC is at risk of fines from Workcover, potential liability if anything goes wrong, or if a contractor is injured or worst case dies (lots of touching wood).

[Author]

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