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@Whale said:
…Have you considered an instantaneous electric system installed wholly within your Unit, just to supply hotwater to a shower during periods when the communal system is out-of-service? They’re < $200 and no O/C consent or SBL would then be necessary...You could have your own electric water tank installed between the hot water coming into your unit and the cold water coming in. I assume you would have a tap you can close on the hot and cold water lines coming into the unit? If the tank were on the unit side of the two taps, you could close the tap to the building hot water system whenever it is coming through cold or there is no flow, and open the tap to your tank. Then you would have hot water to every hot water tap in the unit.
If the communal system is more trouble than it is worth to try to fix, you could suggest that the OC resolves to not fix it and all implement your system. It would cost individual units to install their own water tanks but they would have a commensurate saving on OC levies that don’t have to provide for repair and maintenance of the communal system and energy costs to heat the water.
Yet another option would be to replace the communal system with a solar hot water system on the roof. The cost to replace the old system would be recouped in energy cost savings over time and lower levies in the long term.
Solar on the roof could be combined with individual tanks in units in line and the solar system could be left without boosting for winter. When there has been ample sun the hot water in a unit’s tank would be replaced with hot at no cost to the unit owner or the OC. When there has been less sun the hot water would be replaced with not-quite-hot-enough water that does not take much boosting in individual tanks.
A side benefit also would be less water waste. Individuals would not need to run the taps for as long before the water comes through hot.
Damage due to an insurable event should be covered by the OC’s building insurance. In the ACT, perhaps not elsewhere, the OC has to pay the excess due to the way the Act is worded requiring the OC to have full insurance but that is not available; all insurance offered to strata properties has an excess payable.
I would expect that unit owners might be liable for such a charge but not tenants directly. If there is a sound basis for charging for hot water provided to a unit, then the OC would bill the owner. I would expect that the owner then may or may not be able to pass on the cost depending on what is in the tenancy agreement.
I can see an advantage in having all the pergolas maintained the same way at the same time by the OC, but the cost should then be levied back to the 75% of owners who have them.
I think the 75% taking a decision that clearly benefitted themselves to the detriment of the 25% could be challenged as an ‘oppression of the minority’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_oppression
We have carports that are used by the majority but not all owners and something like a NSW bylaw in effect that has the OC arrange for maintenance when required (eg. repainting them all) but the costs are then recouped from those owners that use those carports.
@JimmyT said:
…Self nomination, however, is different under NSW law. Self nomination, however, is different under NSW law. You can’t nominate yourself if you are a co-owner (but your co-owner can nominate you provided they aren’t standing for election). [Edited]In the ACT there is virtually no guidance or requirements on how an EC election is to be conducted. Self-nomination is not prohibited. In practice, by tradition, our general meeting have always had EC candidates nominated and that nomination seconded before being considered.
Most often we have 7 or fewer nominees and the chair just calls for a vote to appoint all nominees as the EC. I only recall one occasion when someone was nominated but did not get on the EC. That year someone wrote on his proxy form that his proxy was directed to vote against me and one other EC member if we were to stand again. For this reason, the chair called for a vote on each member one by one. I was re-elected that year along with my colleague on the EC but a third person did not get majority support to join the EC.
We also have a tradition that has no basis in the Act but it serves us well: We have 5 distinct areas on a large site and the chair generally calls for nominations area by area. The intention is to encourage the formation of committees with at least one ‘representative’ of each area. It does not always work out. Often there will be at least one area from which no-one has been nominated. However, most of the time it works out so that most people live close to at least one EC member and are more likely to know that person already.
The geographic spread of EC members also means that some matter that needs attention is more likely to be noticed sooner by someone on the committee or brought to their attention.
If the nominated person believes themselves to be a worthy candidate, then I see no reason for false modesty. I would vote for myself along with voting for any other candidate I consider appropriate.
[In the ACT] We are proposing some rules (aka bylaws) amendments to our next AGM that includes the following clause:
- A unit owner must at the owner’s cost repair and maintain any other item installed on common property and used only for the benefit of the unit. The unit owner must ensure that the item does not unreasonably interfere with the reasonable use and enjoyment of the common property by other unit owners or cause any significant adverse effect on the appearance of the common property or the safety of occupiers of the units or of the public, regardless of whether that installation has or has not been authorised by the OC. Examples of such items include, but are not limited to, air-conditioning systems, hot-water systems and awnings.
I am in the ACT but I am inclined to agree that if a unit owner (party A) has damaged the property of the owners corporation (party B), then the OC can seek reparation for the costs of rectifying the damage. It does not seem relevant to me for this argument that party A is a member of the OC. Party A and party B are separate legal entities. This would be the same if the damage to the common property were caused by a ‘party A’ who was entirely unrelated to the OC?
For an alternative argument, I assume you would have a bylaw along the lines of ‘A unit owner must not unreasonably interfere with the reasonable use and enjoyment of the common property by other residents.’ Damaging the common property would be an unreasonable interference, I would have thought, and this could be used to invoke the dispute resolution mechanisms associated with breaching a bylaw.
@Stevecro said:
…There isn’t much the OC can do without concrete evidence of a breach of by law…Agreed.
My impression is that it would be rare. Never happened where I live. Our EC members get reimbursed for expenses such as the purchase price of a light bulb to replace in common property lighting but not paid for the service of putting it in.
Is is possible that the complainant is being super-sensitive or, dare I suggest, obsessive? I know of someone who wanted his EC to do something about his neighbour’s air conditioner noise. He acknowledged that he had had an acoustics expert measure the sound level and that it was found to be below the level that would invoke any grounds for complaint at his boundary. An EC member kept checking to try to hear and later measure the sound level but never found it operating. The claimed noise level was the same as the measured ambient noise from a light breeze in the trees, birds etc. Eventually the EC just had to say there was nothing they could do. The complainant put in double glazing, which is a good idea for thermal insulation where we are, but he did it to deal with the noise, even though he could not be in a quieter location while living in town. The same guy writes regular letters to the paper complaining about the supposed health effects of inaudible noise from wind farms.
In the ACT, perhaps elsewhere there are similar provisions, the chair of the EC is also automatically the chair for general meetings unless that person is unavailable or declines to do it. In that situation the meeting has to elect a chair from among the members present. That situation could occur at the start of a meeting (chair hit by a bus on the way to the meeting), or at a resumption of an adjourned meeting (chair can’t make it on the later date) or part way through (chair suddenly taken ill or storms off in a huff).
There is no budget proposed to the AGM and approved? An EC is obliged to keep reasonably close to the budget and have a good reason to depart from it.
When we bought our unit there were levies and local rates due. We paid the purchase price and part of the job of our conveyancing solicitor was to deduct the levies and rates from the amount passed on to the previous owner. Then the levies and rates should have been paid from that residue.
The solicitor had done everything correctly and our file had two cheques sitting on it ready to pay rates and levies from the solicitor’s trust account. Just after the sale when through but before the cheques were mailed off the solicitor’s accounts were frozen and the solicitor hauled off for some sort of wrong-doing unrelated to our unit purchase. The consequence was that the rates and levies didn’t get paid until the law society or bar association or whoever had sorted out whatever the issue was with this solicitor.
Meanwhile, we had no money and were fortunate that the EC and the local government were generous in waiting a while for the matter to be sorted out. Eventually the guy’s accounts were unfrozen and the payments were made. it was clear though that the debt was associated with the unit (lot) and therefore us, not the previous owner. If things had dragged out longer we would have had to find the money to pay the debt and then try to get compensation from the solicitor.
Hi,
Sorry I missed this one. I am from the ACT and yes there is an equivalent Act. It is the Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011. Further information is available here: https://www.justice.act.gov.au/review/view/17/title/unit-titles
The Act itself is available here: https://www.legislation.act.gov.au/a/2011-41/
Quite a few details differ from NSW while many broad principles are pretty much the same.
I had to look up what s.65a does in NSW. In the ACT things are a little different. The things that seem to be covered by s.65a are spread out over several sections of the ACT Act.
A key difference is that in the ACT a unit owner can obtain a ‘minor use’ of the common property just with the approval of the EC subject to various conditions. We don’t need special resolutions and by-laws to enable a unit owner to do something relatively trivial. On the other hand something more major, say gaining exclusive use of a common property parking space and permission to build a carport over it, is a ‘special privilege’ and requires an unopposed resolution. So, depending on what you want to do, it is either easier or harder in the ACT than in NSW.
Was there something in particular you were interested in?