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Waking someone early can cause them tiredness, sleepiness and feeling unproductive the rest of the day, especially if on a daily basis. They might need extra sleep during the day just to try to cope.
Your brother-in-law is asked to sacrifice only a minute of his time by considerately parking his car on the street and walking down a driveway.
Maybe your neighbour should change their entire lifestyle to accommodate your brother-in-law by sleeping earlier, or shifting their bed to another room? Maybe they should install expensive noise insulation in their interiors? Then your brother-in-law won't have to go to the Herculean effort of walking down a driveway.
Who's being ridiculous?
Here's the process:
1. Mediation application & hearing (usually through Dept. of Fair Trading). Mediation fails.
2. An application & reply is filed with the CTTT. Based only on the written application, a CTTT Adjudicator makes an Order.
3. An appeal application is filed in the CTTT against the CTTT Adjudicator's Order.
4. A brief directions hearing is held by a CTTT Member. The Member hears the matter briefly, but doesn't make a decision. This is your first opportunity to present your case orally in the Tribunal.
5. A full hearing is heard by the CTTT Member. This is the most important stage, because a final Order is given with no more appeals (except in very limited cases). The hearing often goes for about an hour, and you both present your cases orally (either in person, or by teleconference). The Member makes an Order that same day. It's very important you attend this hearing, preferably in person or otherwise by teleconference.
From what you wrote, I don't know which stage of the process you're in. Stage 5 is the only stage that matters, because appeals and delays are common in the CTTT process. Some people abuse the system by delaying it by seeking adjournment after adjournment. The CTTT don't like this, but if they refuse an adjournment request they risk opening a new can of worms for litigious people to lodge further appeals, so it's easier to acquiesce.
Anyway, don't be intimidated of your neighbours having legal & real estate industry training. Unlike the court system, the CTTT's designed for ordinary, unrepresented people, so the Member takes an active role in asking questions from both sides in an investigative fashion.
If you hire a lawyer for a CTTT matter, bear in mind that you must pay your own legal fees even if you win. The only exception is if your opponent filed an appeal application that was frivolous, vexatious, misconceived, or not a CTTT matter.
Finally, the CTTT don't have the resources to visit your building. They don't even have the resources to read an application more that are more than a few pages long. This is why oral evidence in a hearing is so useful. The onus is on you to provide as much relevant evidence as you can so that they don't have to visit your building, and lack of evidence may cause you to lose your case. Include photos, diagrams of the strata plan showing they've built on common property, written real estate valuations stating it's diminished in value, etc. As long as the evidence is relevant, the more evidence the better.
Can you obtain your own quotes? It'll then be easier to pressure them to take action.
The standard bylaw 5(5) requires the owner of the apartment to maintain and repair locks and safety devices without claim on the owners corporation.
The CTTT *is* an affordable dispute resolution process. If the person taking the action is a pensioner, the entire process from mediation application to appeal decision costs only $15 ($5 mediation application, $5 adjudicator application, $5 appeal application).
To be awarded legal costs, the onus is on the Owners Corporation (as Respondent) to convince the Tribunal to award them, and the onus is high. Costs are awarded by the Tribunal *only* in limited circumstances.
The circumstances are when:-
(a) the application or appeal is frivolous, vexatious, misconceived or lacking in substance, or
(b) a decision in favour of the applicant or appellant is not within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal.
(Section 192 Strata Schemes Managing Act).
It's not about whether you win or lose. It's about whether the appeal was nonsensical, and few appeals are, even when they lose. So provided this appeal has some substance to it and the matter's within the Tribunal's jurisdiction, the Tribunal will not order the Appellant to pay the Respondent's legal costs.
Even if costs are awarded, the Respondent can't just ask for any sum it likes. It must be reasonable. The Tribunal has in the past ordered only a portion of the Respondent's costs to be paid when the costs seem unreasonably high, especially when it's not a complex matter (in which case only about an hour's worth of legal fees is reasonable).
If I remember the facts correctly, there's a NSW court case where a unit owner replace their apartment's standard floor tiles with far more expensive marble(?) tiles, at the owner's own cost. The unit was sold. Later the tiles needed repairing and litigation ensued between the owners corporation and the new owner. The owner's corporation was finally required to pay for the repairs. This is because it's still common property even if you've ripped out the original property and replaced it with an expensive substitute, and the owners corporation granted consent (which can be expressly given or implied) to the renovation.
I heard the story at an Owners Corporation Network workshop on building defects.
@Billen Ben, good point. In THAT case if the vacancy is valid, the empty seat is filled by the following ways:-
1. OC in a general meeting passes an ordinary resolution to appoint the person: cl 4(2), Sch3.
2. EC passes a resolution to appoint a person provided a general meeting has not removed this power from the committee: cl4(2),Sch3. The EC has authority to do this based on s21(1) and cl17, Sch3.
3. The strata managing agent records a decision in the OC's minute book appointing a replacement, and only if the managing agent if the managing agent has been expressly or impliedly delegated the power in the agency agreement or resolution of appointment.
The detailed procedures of nomination and election, detailed in regs 17,18, don't need to be followed in options 2 and 3 above.
Source: pages 102-3 of Alex Ilkin's book, NSW Strata & Community Management & the Law (4th).
Garages are usually common property, which would make the owners corporation responsible for repairing the door. Owners corporations delegate these kinds of matters to the executive committee (a committee of 1-9 people), who sometimes delegate their authority to building managers and strata managing agents.
You could ask anyone from the above how much they think it would cost to fix the door. If the sum is small, it'll be easier to reason with them to fix the door, because the cost of repair is taken from an administrative fund that all strata owners have to contribute to four times a year anyway. If you obtain your own quotes on the cost of repair, and the sum is low, it could be an added incentive for those in power to fix. I say could be, because some buildings are run by personal interests who take umbrage at the idea of having common property repaired at competitive prices by outsiders, or the very thought of serfs encroaching on power wielded within the fiefdom.
In the unlikely chance that it's not common property and belongs to an individual person, I think it'll be harder to compel the individual owner to fix it, because they'll have to pay the entire repair themselves, which won't be pocket change.
What's your landlord's take on all of this? If you're a good tenant, the landlord may be sympathetic and be willing to take up your cause, especially as the problem isn't going away and will plague future tenants regardless. An owner taking up a cause tends to enjoy more respect than a tenant.1. If like most places that building has adopted the standard bylaws, someone's breaching bylaw 2 on parking of vehicles on common property.
2. First, a motion is put to the secretary or strata manager to issue a Notice to Comply with a Bylaw on the offender.
3. If the motion's resolved at an OC meeting, EC meeting or by the Managing Agent (if delegated that function), a Notice to Comply is served on the offender.
4. If the offender contravenes the Notice to Comply, another motion is put to the owner's corporation.
5. If the motion's resolved, the owner's corporation then files an application with the CTTT requesting a fine be imposed.
6. The Tribunal hears the evidence, then decides on whether to issue a penalty on the respondent, which largely depends on the detail and quality of evidence given by the owner's corporation.
Sounds invalid to me.
To elect an executive committee, the chairman must first announce the names of the candidates of the executive committee (Reg 17(1)). Only eligible people may be nominated, and ghosts aren't eligible.
After the chairman declares nominations have closed, the owners corporation votes on how many seats will comprise the executive committee (Schedule 3, Clause 2(2).
You have seven valid nominations, but eight seats reserved. Each nominee has secured a seat because there are more seat vacancies than nominees. The eighth seat is cancelled, because it was not filled by a valid candidate (Reg 17(4)(a)). The executive committee is now finalised: it comprises seven seats by seven people.
* Also note, some people occupy several office bearer positions (ie. chair, secretary, and/or treasurer) of the executive committee in the mistaken belief that this gives that one person two or three votes. It doesn't. On the executive committee it's one head, one vote, and no ghosts.
Yes you can add more seats to the executive committee during an extraordinary general meeting held before the next annual general meeting.
My textbook says this is done by the following procedure: a special resolution must first be passed by the owners corporation to terminate the office of all executive committee members (Clause 4(3) of Schedule 3 of the Strata Schemes Management Act).
During that same meeting, a new motion is included in the agenda to elect the number of members of a new executive committee and who will be elected. The executive committee then decides on its own who act as the office bearer(s).
It seems unduly complicated for first terminate everyone and then re-appoint them just to add one more person, but that's all I have for now.
I think that you'll feel more confident and better informed by visiting a number of different strata management agencies, large and small, and then deciding for yourself which one to nominate in your CTTT application.
What I like about small agencies is you generally get to speak with your potential manager from the moment you walk in their door, so you can gauge how confident you'll be in handing that person basically dictatorial powers to run your building. This is what led me to choosing my new agent, because I got to know him as a person and it didn't feel too corporate, and I visited him several times before deciding to nominate him.
However unlike with larger strata management agencies, if you end up not liking your agent you can't call their boss to complain because they are the boss. They might also not be members of reputable strata management organisations to pressure them in case they're doing something wrong, which is a benefit of reputable large agencies.
With large agencies you'll likely speak to a nice spokesman and not the specific person they'll assign to run your affairs, so you might not really know who you're really handing power to unless you ask to speak to the potential agent before deciding you'll recommend them to the CTTT.
A different situation where no parking's provided is in some inter-state property investment scams selling strata lots in low-density areas in woop woop that you never visit yourself, because such 'luxuries' cost extra and it's up to you to ask if it's included. The spaces are probably built in the existing complex though.
Another situation was illustrated on Today Tonight or ACA where a bloke bought a unit with a car space. The car space however is registered on a separate title of land adjacent to his building, even they look like a single block of land. To his disgruntlement he now pays council rates for two separate properties; one for his apartment and one for his car.