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Yes, it’s understood that the council’s lep, dcp or even the particular development consent for the building may actually be the mechanism to limit short term/holiday letting.
I believe Get It Right may not have experienced holiday rentals in any of the beach suburbs and or when it has gone seriously wrong.. Imagine coming home from a hard day at work to find your foyer, stairs or lift coated in beach sand, be kept up all night with partying groups, wake up to go to work and the foyer has been redecorated with vomit, beer/wine bottles, general rubbish left at the front door including those prawn heads… And what can the OC/Strata Manager do about this? Very little because the “tenants” change each couple of days or at most couple of weeks. Sure you can write to the “tenants”, owner and council, but to what effect?
It would be good to do the comparison of with/without holiday letting in a building… I know of two very similar buildings where there is holiday letting occurring in one and not in the other… There is a noticeable difference in the maintenance costs for the cleaning of CP, call outs for the lifts, repairs to the common areas and much more… And who picks up this tab?? All owners in the building are paying for this one owners privilege…Is this how it should work?
Infocus,
Have a look at the Smoke Free Environment Act and also s117 of the strata act.
There is some great case law on this also… Have a look at Salerno’s case.
Good luck
McCully,
Have you offered the OC consideration for these proposed rights?It is amazing how offering some $$’s can assist in persuading the OC.
You may wish to look at getting a basic form of a licence/deed drawn up detailing what you propose to do and where.
Good luck
Ok Teys so what is the solution for an OC??
It would be very easy to establish the exact negative impact on the remainder of the building.
Why do the rest of the owners have to be burdened by this??
What is the negative impact on the value of adjacent units?? Can owners take legal action against those owners doing the short term letting for the loss in their apartment value??
How does the OC recover the additional maintenance costs due to the impact on common property, higher than normal water consumption etc etc etc.
Residential apartment buildings are not Hotels and typically owners in residential strata buildings are not prepared to pay what would be the outgoings on such a building.
How about being the answer rather than creating a bigger problem??
Davkat,
The OC could have the power to do this depending on what resolutions they have passed… But more importantly it makes sense as to the approach being taken regarding this pest control. With pest control, it is only as good as the weakest link.
If you do not treat the total building, those creepy crawleys living inside people’s apartments that are not treated will have a nice little safe haven to live and bread in, only to reinfest the rest of the building sooner rather than latter.
There could be a further purpose to this pest treatment, including doing a pest inspection of all of common property to ensure there are no unwanted pests chewing their way through the building… Not that there would be much to chew in a modern building
Get it Right,
You have a bigger issue here… You may want to do some research on the OH&S requirements re pressure vessels.
We had gravity feed hot water tanks in the ceiling, being the original hot water tanks in the building. On behalf of our OC I investigated our options at length, searching for the most cost effective, and possibly energy efficient option (see Jimmy tomorrow at the Green Forum), as the hot water tanks are common property in our building. So I looked into solar, gas boosted solar or just plain gas, together with the concept of placing mains pressure electric tanks inside the laundry of each apartment or otherwise mains pressure electric tanks in the ceiling, or gravity feed in the roof again. Any plumber I spoke to about the mains pressure in the roof clearly stated this should not even be considered unless you are ok with having a bomb in the roof. It is an extremely risky situation as they are a bit of the out of site, out of mind, so no one will keep an eye on them until something goes wrong… And when if that happens it could be seriously disasterous.
Interestingly, we ended up replacing the 8 gravity feed tanks with a reticulating gas hot water system. The other owners did not wish to go with the cheapest option (after the government rebate) being the gas boosted solar system. Also, though we were replacing 8 tanks with just 2, when I investigated government rebates (at the time) we were only eligible for 1 rebate instead of 8…
In long and short, the owner’s have done the wrong thing and should agree to correcting this, and paying all costs associated, or if not be prepared to remove the hot water tank from the ceiling space. There are two sections of the act that are relevant, being s52 and s65a.
In theory the garage door should ordinarily be considered common property and any damage to it covered under the OC’s building insurance. You may need to clarify if the garage door opener is original or if this has been installed by the owner (and if there is an exclusive use by-law).
From past experience you will need to submit a claim on your car insurance, explaining the situation to them, though you may wish to speak with the OC’s insurance broker about submitting a claim on the public liability policy.
I suggest trying to talk with the opposer and trying to find out what the objection is before taking the matter further.
It is best to approach any changes with full transparency and consultation so owners know that it will not affect them in any way.
Chilliblue,
As the OC only pays tax on interest earnt on the funds that they hold, the OC can not claim depreciation….(the OC doesn’t pay much in the way of tax)
Whale,
The more important question is whether or not the leaking toilet repair is claimable on your OC’s insurance policy. If it is a matter of maintenance then this will not be claimable on the OC’s insurance.
The only time that I have seen a successful claim for the replacement of a toilet pan is when it was impact damaged (accidentally of course).
I believe the question needs to be asked “how was the pan cracked?” and is the occupant responsible for any amount of excess?it is all good to suggest these things, but how do you really make a difference??
I suggest that if people really care they should actually pull their finger out and create the change that they are wanting… Put in your time to the relevant industry body.. Be it OCN or Strata Community Australia (ISTM)… Research how to campaign on how to get legislative change…
We also need educated and experienced people being employed by OFT… Everyone should have a look and see exactly all the different things that they deal with… But ask yourself the question.. Would you work there?? Receiving little thanks and lots of cranky people, blaming them for all of their problems?? Sounds like fun.. How much is it worth??
I believe that many Strata owners are not aware that the change to the by-laws implemented last year was a whole stack of media hype over nothing… The change was only made to the by-law contained in the residential scheme’s model by-laws, which means that your owners corporation would need to change the existing registered by-laws, and if you don’t have registered by-laws, than your scheme is under the schedule 1 by-laws contained in the act, which haven’t changed… So Struggler, if your OC has not changed the by-law at a general meeting and registered the change, than you may be operating under the wrong by-law…
Now onto the real issue, yes it should be reasonable to expect that you should not have to be dodging individual owners washing lines out on common property to get to your own front door, though tread lightly, as this is still a matter of democratic process… At the end of the day it is down to what the majority of owners find acceptable.
I always find it a valuable experience to go for a drive through some of those wonderful C suburbs and see how other cultures choose to live, and it makes me appreciate my own home!
Whale,
Have you considered dealing direct with the insurers (take out the brokers) though keep in mind that it is likely that the brokers are able to benefit from some significant buying power, which in turn will be providing your insurance at a highly competitive price!Unfortunately the GFC, floods in Queensland and an earthquake in Japan and New Zealand seem to have had a massive impact on insurers.
The issue with dealing direct is you will be doing the leg work to get the comparative quotes for the insurance renewal and then you have the issue of trying to interpret and compare the various different insurance policies and their wording.
Heads or tails,
Keep in mind that in effect you are part of the owners corporation… So it may assist you and the owners corporation to start obtaining quotes for what is involved in fixing the source of the issue. It may be prudent to first obtain a quote from a consulting engineer to inspect and advise what is causing the problem, provide a specification on the suggested works etc.
This will assist in keeping matters moving forward.
Jimmy,
The responses we are seeing are typical beauracratic buck passing!!!
Doesn’t council enforce the floor space ratios that they set for the initial development of the building??
Auburn Council definitely had no problem issuing fines and orders on owners in a large development in the heart of Auburn where this was previuosly an issue, and for those that still kept up with this act, took them to the L&E Court, as they should have!!