[ozzy]

Thanks for the responses and sorry for the belated acknowledgement. I ticked the box for notification of follow-up replies, but that does not seem to be happening, even after I updated my email address (which had changed).

It is definitely Strata Title not Community Title, and yes, the outlines of the individual houses are shown in dotted/dashed lines on the strata plan. Perhaps at the end of the day, it is not really that much different to Community Title.

Their biggest admin fund costs are insurance and gardening. I’m not sure what the arrangement is with the latter. There are some hedges and beds on common property, but the gardeners employed by the OC, who happened to be on site one day when we were there, appear to also tend to individual lot areas adjacent to the driveway.

The houses each have a small switchboard in their garages, but there is a main board where the letter boxes are on the street. That is where all the electricity meters are. Based on when it was constructed, I doubt that the original meters would have supported the two-way metering required for solar.

Please stop beating me up about AI. I did not seek an AI opinion, it was thrust upon me, and as I said before, I only took it as a hint that strata schemes like this are not very common. I still think that they are relatively rare here in NSW.

[ozzy]

Thanks, for responding.

UberOwner, I subsequently found someone saying that schemes like this are not uncommon in Victoria.

If my understanding about this scheme in NSW is correct, then if it was decided to replace doors on more than one lot, it might be possible to get SM on behalf of OC to arrange it. However, the quote and invoice would have to give separate cost for each lot, and the owners would contribute according to that. I’m not sure how it would be done if it was expensive work that could cause cash-flow trouble – maybe the owners would have to pay up-front. That did not seem to happen for the relatively inexpensive painting that we saw. We sighted some quotes addressed to the SM for much more expensive roof repairs, but unfortunately don’t have the accounts for that period to see how it was done.

I don’t see why an individual owner could not just get their door replaced, subject to not running foul of any by-law, like the usual NSW model “appearance of lot” one, which they have adopted.

The capital works portion of the levy is indeed low. That was one of the first things we noticed, before we understood the CP situation.

We were also surprised to see that a request to install solar panels sailed through a general meeting with no reference to a common property rights by-law (they don’t have such a by-law). That made more sense when we realised that the lot roof is not CP. Strictly speaking, they might be turning a bit of a blind eye there though, because solar panel installation usually requires at least some work on the main switchboard, which is CP.

Perhaps neglected maintenance would be covered by “appearance of lot”. Dunno, I’ll have to think about that and maybe read through the by-laws again with my now-changed CP viewpoint.

Jimmy, sorry I didn’t want to mention the exact number of lots, but it is more than ten, so no, not a two-lot scheme.

I only mentioned AI because I took the response as a bit of a clue that such schemes are a bit rare, to the extent that AI confidently declared that they don’t exist at all in NSW. Actually I have close to zero confidence in AI. Every day I see that AS (Artificial Stupidity) is generally easier to achieve.

Thanks again, still more for me to consider.

[ozzy]

I remember seeing a variation in conversion factor up to around 50%, but it was not something I used to really monitor. Not currently in a place with that sort of system.

I have seen some people saying that it could somehow vary depending on whether there are any freeloaders in residence. If gas is not used for other purposes, people might move in and never sign up with a gas supplier. The wholesaler has no way to cut off the hot water supplied to individual users and according to some this can somehow push the price up for the other users. Sounds unlikely to me, but I don’t know.

Main issue I had with the set up was the assumption that the water would be delivered at the same temperature to all users, which definitely does not happen if the system is undersized, and/or if some units have excessive usage, and the system cannot keep up with demand. It might turn out than when you need hot water, the temperature could be be way down, yet you pay the same as somebody else who uses the hot water at a different time.

[Author]

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