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Generally, if lot property is damaged by a common property water leak, for example, then its the Owners Corporation responsibility to make the damage good again. So your new strata manager is probably right. But there are other considerations. Was the damage small, and you wanted the whole ceiling repainted, instead of having a touch up or a small patch? In that situation, the OC might prefer to patch, or contribute 5% (say) of the cost for the repainting. You should put it to your strata committee that the OC should contribute to the repairs, and see what they say.
The strata manager is the agent for the Owners Corporation, taking action on the instructions of your strata committee. Are you and your fellow owners concerned about fire safety on your committee? If so, instruct your strata manager to obtain 3 quotes from 3 independent fire safety companies (or find some yourselves), and then pick a better one for next time. If not, add a motion for the next strata committee meeting to do this, or add that motion to the agenda of the next general meeting for all owners to decide about.
If your strata manager is from a “vertically integrated” strata management company – ie, the strata management company, the fire safety company, the contractors, etc, all have a financial connection (owned by the one entity), then this will be resisted. Perhaps look at changing strata managers then, to an independent company, if freedom of choice is important to the owners…
I suspect the strata manager is correct. Payments having to be made by the owners corporation are funded according to the unit entitlement of each owner. I am confused about what you are trying to do? Take our a loan to cover for owners who do not pay the special levy? That’s not going to work, if that is the case.
In your shoes, I’d either take out a loan for all the work, and negotiate that it can be paid back early, as levy amounts come in. Or skip the loan, and raise it all by a special levy, and leave it up to individual owners to get loans for their part of the money. Keep in mind that the special levy is like other levied amounts, and owners who fail to pay are charged interest at 10% annually, which would occur regardless of loans etc…
Valid point from Sir Humphrey. But you should check the exclusive use by-law wording, as there might be a prohibition there. The exclusive use would have been recorded as a by-law so obtain a copy of your building’s by-laws and see how they are drafted. But strata law is leery of preventing any restriction on preventing commercial letting and restricting access to lot property. Efforts by Owners Corporations to prevent short-term renters from accessing Units, or car spaces has been ruled invalid when legally challenged, and this is a similar situation.
If your by-law does seem to have a restriction as you were told, then the building’s owners can amend it. You don’t need a lawyer to be involved – you can come up with revised wording, and the owners corporation only needs to pay the registration fee, (and your strata managers time for attending to the recordal), which isn’t much. It sound like you have majority support.
I can’t be sure from what you have mentioned, but I suspect you are out of luck. An extraordinary general meeting is not a forum for discussion. At the meeting, only resolutions submitted before the meeting can be voted on. If you did not submit any motions a couple of weeks earlier (the agenda goes out at least 1 week before the meeting, perhaps earlier if owners don’t accept emails), then you are out of luck. You don’t mention submitting motions to the strata manager or strata committee secretary, so there is no way anything you want to discuss will be brought up. And you have to submit motions to achieve things, not points of discussion. Your mediation will not result in anything changing, I expect.
But you can approach the strata manager and secretary, and ask if they will arrange a forum for owners to discuss things generally? Then submit motions for the next general meeting, that have broad support.Dont relay too much on NCAT – they are sometimes clueless, or give out too general information. You do need to prove the basic facts. But the strata plan should show the wall having the window is common property, as is the window itself. The Owners Corporation has a strict duty to maintain, and repair, and replace its common property. You can represent yourself at NCAT, and if you can put together a good case, such as with photos etc, with copies of quotes for repair, NCAT should rule in your favour. The strata committee is not likely to contest this, as their case is very very weak.
At the AGM the Owners Corporation, determines the number of members to go on the strata committee, and then asks for nominations to the committee. If the number of nominations is less than or equal to the number of members determined for the committee, then they become members of the committee (or otherwise there is an election, and the owners with the most votes form the committee). The office holders of the committee are not elected at the AGM, but at the first strata committee meeting following the AGM. That meeting often is called (with an agenda, with this as the main item) immediately after the AGM concludes.
Signing the strata managing agent agreement, involves affixing the Owners Corporation seal to the agreement. That is governed by section 273 of the Strata Schemes Management Act (& Reg 17A). For schemes with “more than 2 owners” the seal must be affixed in the presence of the secretary of the OC and any other member of the strata committee, or if there is no secretary, then in the presence of “2 persons, being owners of lots or members of the strata committee” that the OC determines for the purpose of signing that agreement.
Since your OC hadn’t determined any member to be the secretary, then 2 owners, or 2 committee members can sign the agreement, provided that is approved at the meeting, and so noted in the minutes, as being authorised by the meeting to do so.
There might be an issue if the 2 persons signing when the seal is affixed are co-owners of the same lot? But s.273 states the 2 persons need to be “owners of lots” (plural), or members of the strata committee. If they are co-owners of a single lot, then they may not be sufficient to sign and properly affix the OC seal.
But I wouldn’t stress about this. The main issue, is that the owners at the general meeting approved the appointment of the strata managing agents. If the seal isn’t properly affixed, that is more a problem for the strata managing agents – there is case law that says they will be the ones with the bigger problem if the seal isn’t correctly affixed on their agreement. (Their agreement might not be valid, and they might have to pay all the money back they were paid by the OC…)I might add to my earlier post, that once the membership of 3 members was confirmed, then I assume that all 6 owners nominated themselves to be committee members? As you have 6 nominations for 3 positions, then there would be an election. Each owner present (in person or proxy) wrote the names of the 3 owners they want to go on the committee. This would (I assume) would have resulted in a tie again? All 6 owners would each have 3 votes.
If you then demand a poll vote (based on Unit entitlement) then the 2 owners with 18% would be elected, and there would be a tie between the owners with 17% unit entitlement. The strata manager would then (if one or other did not drop out) decide the winner by tossing a coin. But this would mean the strata committee had a least one owner from each faction… Did that occur?I think the strata manager made the correct decision. The number of owners that comprise the strata committee is set out in section 30 of the Strata Schemes Management Act, which states “s.30(1) The strata committee of an owners corporation is to consist of the number of persons determined by the owners corporation…” At your AGM the motion to set this number at 3 failed, and to set this number at 6 failed. As Jimmy T points out, a tied vote is a failed vote. But your owners corporation had previously set the number at 3 at your last year’s AGM, so that number prevails. The SCM Act does not require the number to be reset at each year’s AGM, but allow the owners corporation to do so if they wish.
It’s kind of a grey area. But it’s up to the Owners Corporation, in the form of the strata committee, or the owners acting collectively at a general meeting, to require a renovation by-law. If they do not do so, then the Owners Corporation (in theory) continue to be responsible for the future repairs and maintenance of the common property, that was affected by the renovation. Keep in mind that the warranty that covers the renovated pipes and fittings attaches to the owner who purchased them. Thus, if they are faulty, and there is no renovation by-law, it gets complicated when the OC has to do the further repairs, while the owner is sitting on the warranty.
In practice, it’s worth treating each case separately. Registering a renovation by-law costs money, and must be done within 6 months of the general meeting that approved it, both for the fees for updating the by-law, and often legal costs in drafting the by-law. So this is more commonly done for expensive and extensive renovations. Renovation by-laws can be applied for retrospectively too. And the warranty issue means that even without a by-law the OC can pressure the owner into funding any additional repairs.
Under strata law, if you are repairing the carpet, then you need to replace like with like. So as your old carpet lacked safety treads, then so should your new carpet. If you are upgrading and improving common property, which adding stair treads to the regular carpeted stairs, would most likely be considered to be, then that requires approval at a general meeting as a special resolution. If the repair was approved at a general meeting, as an ordinary resolution, and was described as a “repair” then you would not have justification for spending additional money on improving the stairs. Repairs are paid from the Administration fund, while improvements usually are paid from the Capital Works fund, too.
Nevertheless, if your building should arrange for a Work Health and Safety Report, and in that report the stairs are faulted because they lack treads, then you would be obliged to quickly install the treads, and improve the building’s common property. I doubt that a WH&S inspection would fault stairs without treads, as this is the commonest situation, unless there are some special circumstances involved. If some owners are keen to add treads, then they could arrange for a WH&S inspection and report (which strata buildings should be doing regularly), and make a case to the inspector that the stair are unsafe in their current condition. The inspection may or may not be convinced…@tina, you make valid points. Huge kudos to you (and I’ve had a similar trajectory, although my large building is not self-managing, but over the years as a strata committee member, and more lately, secretary, my strata knowledge has expanded in leaps and bounds). Nonetheless, you still make my point to @newyboy. I urged caution when moving to self-management, especially with a largish 8 Unit apartment block.
And @tina you very ably set out the course that @newyboy and fellow owners will need to take. Not many owners want to devote so much effort as you have, and some may not have the ability or time to do so. But @tina’s type of effort is what will be needed it you want to self-manage your building.
I also need to point out that strata managers will take on buildings with only a limited set of management duties contracted to them. The larger, often corporate, strata management conglomerates will insist on their management contract being accepted exactly as presented. But other strata managers certainly will negotiate their management contract individually. Just go shopping!Note, that you can’t assume an agency with a unique name is an independent strata manager, as big companies are gobbling up smaller agencies, and keeping the original name – you must ask if the agency you are dealing with is independent, who owns them (and if it’s a company not the agents in the office, be careful!), and if they will negotiate a specific set of duties for your building, and then work through the agency agreement and strike out the tasks you want handled by the strata committee and leave those you don’t!
Yes, in NSW the chair has no exemptions, and no special functions. Each owner present at the meeting for a NSW strata building can only have the maximum number of proxies used to vote. But if there are 44 lots in the strata plan, and twelve of them assign their proxies to the owner who is (or was – since at the AGM all committee members and offices become vacant) the chair, then he can only vote 2 of them, as well as voting for himself. If he is the only owner at the meeting, then, surprisingly, there is a quorum, which is a quarter of the owners (ie, more than 10) present either in person or by valid proxy. But the chair can only have 3 votes, himself and the maximum permitted number of proxies (5% which is 2 in this example). If he is the only owner actually present, then the agenda items will be passed, as 3 votes for and none against. But if you organise 4 other owners to attend, and they can roll the chair, as their 4 votes will beat the chair’s 3.
Or even easier, ask your strata manager! They are trained to interpret strata plans, which can be tricky for inexperienced owners to do. They will also (probably) do this and report to the owners corporation for “free” – ie, under their regularly contracted duties.
If you are planning to purchase in a new strata building, and you can’t work out if the levies predicted are reasonable, then you can approach an independent strata manager, and pay them to review the predicted levies, and report to you if they are realistic or not. It’s best to approach a strata manager that is responsible for similar buildings in the same area, and they will normally be able to tell you what the expected range for the levies will be. It will depend on the facilities in the building, and a lift, or 2 lifts, pool, gym, embedded networks, centralised AC or hot water etc, will affect the amount you would expect to pay.