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My understanding of the issue would be that changes to the Community Management Statement (i.e. By laws) would be paid by the Owner’s Corp for the simple reason that the Owner’s Corp would have to have approved the new By law before it was registered.
To change a By law or create a new By law a special resolution is needed, which means no more than 25 per cent of votes are cast against the motion at a general meeting of the owners corporation. In your situation 3 out of 4 Lot owners would need to vote for the new By law.
By-laws are changed or created by the Owner’s Corp for the better enjoyment or management of the strata scheme as a whole.The By law would not therefore be paid for by only the early adopters. The ‘wait and see’ Lot owners, or future owners of these Lots, would still have the option of installing solar panels at a later time, albeit not in the most ideal location on the common property roof.
Notification of any new or changed by-law must be given to the Registrar General’s Office. This can be done by lodging a ‘Change of By-Laws’ form, which is available from the Land and Property Information website at http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au (see Starta Scheme Forms) and
This link may help to answer your questions:
https://greenstrata.com.au/case/solar-power-common-property-personal-use-wallisview
As already noted by others on this forum it would not be fair to leave the one apartment, which is vacant, out of the process. They may opt not to participate but at least your endeavours to include them will be on the Minutes and should prevent any future negative blow back.
Best of luck with your solar plans.
With all due respect you may have misread my comment about the noise issue of the adjoining apartment wall to your apartment being separate from the structural issue. I was specifically referring to your particular issue and not noise in general.
The example that you cited of an upstairs bathroom being re situated in a Lot above the bedroom of a lower Lot has extended the issue further than the original issue.
The original issue merely concerned removing a wall between a kitchen and a lounge room whereas your example went further than that. Your extended example may cause confusion to the readers of this site.
Re-locating a bathroom would trigger more than structural change by-laws issues. It would trigger other issues such as flooring types, which usually has its own by-law provision. It would also trigger common property issues with plumbing, and possibly common property slab and wall intrusions.
It is very unlikely that a downstairs Lot Owner would not be aware of a bathroom being installed above your bedroom before this renovation actually occurred.
Even if a committee was to approve such a change then this would be noted in the Minutes. The Minutes should be supplied to all Lot Owners in a timely manner – usually 7 to 10 days after the Meeting. Within that time frame no action is to be taken so as to allow any affected Lot Owner to mount a challenge to the Committee decision.
It is the Lot Owner’s responsibility to read the Minutes to ensure that the Committee is acting reasonably in decisions that impact the Lot Owner.
If it is the opinion of any Lot Owner that they will be negatively impacted by any of the Committee’s decisions made at a Committee Meeting, or that the Committee has not acted reasonably in making that decision, then the Lot Owner can challenge the Committee decision.
It is the responsibility of the Lot Owner concerned to provide evidence to the Committee that the proposed work would cause a nuisance, hazard or interfere unreasonably with the use or enjoyment of their Lot.
I live in QLD where a Committee and Body Corporate’s responsibility to “act reasonably” is covered in at two sections of the BCCMA.
Incidentally, in QLD it would possibly be unreasonable for a Committee to deny an upstairs Lot Owner an approval to lay a tiled floor merely based on noise from the tiled floor if the Lot Owner acknowledged that they were prepared to undertake and comply with all acoustic impact systems and to provide the maximum underlay and floor preparation to minimize any noise transference emanating from their Lot.
Re your comment about being forced to sell up …. It sounds as though you would not have had a happy time living next door to your partying neighbour whether the wall was removed or not.
The original question from ‘chesswood’ was about structural walls and it appears that your partying neighbour jumped through the necessary ‘hoops’ with regard to the wall removal, (although I personally would have requested a structural engineer’s report rather than rely on a report by a builder).
The party noise issue that you experienced is a totally separate issue and one that had its own processes and remedies via by-law infringement notices etc. Did you try this avenue before you moved?
Although building designs endeavour to have quiet areas of Lots abutting each other both vertically and laterally, as you suggested, there is no mandatory requirement to retain a bedroom as a bedroom. A bedroom could be re-purposed and changed to a playroom or a rumpus room or a lounge room. That is for the Lot owner to decide and not the neighbouring Lot owner.
Also, a crying baby in an adjacent Lot’s bedroom as an immediate neighbour, or a loud snorer, or an argumentative couple may create similar noise problems.
What to do about these types of noises that are not covered by by-laws or legislative regulations? There are no remedies except for the following: Speak to the neighbour; buy earplugs; install sound proof particle board insulation in your Lot; move your own bedroom to another quieter room ….. or move.
High rise apartment buildings often have structural pillars which support the slabs. Very often the walls between the pillars are not structural. The structural pillars cannot be interfered with but the walls, in most cases, can be.
I am planning to renovate my 40 year high rise apartment in Brisbane soon and this includes removing a wall between kitchen and lounge room. I obtained a structural engineers report which cost me $700. The report indicated that the wall was not structural.
My building by-laws indicated that the engineer’s report and the scope of works needed to be submitted to the body corporate before the renovations take place. If the engineer’s report, which was undertaken by highly skilled professionals, gave the ‘all clear’ then the body corporate committee (who are not highly skilled structural engineers) cannot overturn it. The committee would be acting unreasonably if they were to do so.
Committees must be mindful of the scope and limitations of their responsibilities.
In QLD the by-laws (i.e. strata laws) cannot be changed to exclude short term rentals. An Adjudicator’s Order of Sept 2016 found that a by-law such as that would be void. The Adjudicator based the Order on the following BCCMA legislative provisions:
[s180(3)] If a lot may lawfully be used for residential purposes, the by-laws can not restrict the type of residential use.
And
[s180(4)] A by-law can not prevent or restrict a transmission, transfer, mortgage or other dealing with a lot.
Examples—
1 A by-law can not prevent the owner of a lot from leasing or mortgaging a lot.
2 A by-law can not prevent the sale of a lot to a person under or over a particular age.
The Adjudicator made this comment: “Adjudicators have consistently held that by-laws which attempt to prevent the short term letting of lots (including where there are local government or building classification concerns regarding short term letting) were invalid.”