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You might also get an audit and a report on the lift from professional lift consultants (just google “lift consultants” for your location). In NSW we’ve gotten quotes for auditing and then preparing a report on the lift from “AAA Lift Consultants” and “JCA Lift Consultants” who might have a Melbourne branch, or can recommend someone. The cost for an audit of our lift and a report was quoted between around $1k to $2.5k, which is reasonable, when you consider the cost of replacing a lift.
This is a difficult area – strata law is generally about the building, and doesn’t really help with difficult residents. However there are some things you can do to help improve your situation:-
(1) Put it in writing. Complaints and so forth should be in writing, and so then become “official”. Basically send emails to your strata manager or strata committee, and ask for a response in writing too. Be brief, specific, and polite.
(2) Use shaming to get results. Put motions on the agendas of the strata committee and general meetings to shame the committee and strata manager to do the necessary work. Be constructive and polite. Rather than complain, request a specific result. Eg-
“Motion: the strata committee should report on progress with repairs to (WHATEVER), and advise the estimated cost, the estimated completion date, and any delays and the reason for those delays.”
“Motion: the Owners Corporation should carry out urgent repairs on (LIST CRITICAL PROBLEMS) within the following month, and normal repairs on (LIST LESS IMPORTANT ITEMS) within the following 3 months, and should try to obtain 3 quotes, but may accept 1 quote for the urgent repairs, and 2 quotes for the normal repairs.”Residents who are creating problems can’t really be dealt with under strata law. But the owners of the Units who house them, would probably not be happy with their behaviour, and likewise their agents. The strata register lists the agents and owners, and should include their phone nos, and email addresses. Again, report any problems to the owner and agent, again being factual, brief and polite, and remind them that the value of their investment is at risk. Check to see if the owners are financial (the AGM agenda will include that information), and if they owe levies, then propose a Motion to urgently recover the money owing, including putting debt collectors to work…
If you can afford it (or this is a big enough issue that you need to do something), use a lawyer, particularly a strata lawyer. An initial consultation might be free or at a set cost, and they can give you a reasonable idea of your chances of success, and what needs to be done. Then if you engage them, they will handle it all for you. And they will give you the costs involved before you get very far. Remember that once a lawyer is involved all the interested parties take it a lot more seriously.
Or, since living in strata building means living in a community, then organise! On your own, you have fewer options and it takes more effort, than in a group. So approach your neighbours and check if the noise really isn’t disturbing them. Do you know your neighbours? If not, then this is a good excuse to remedy that. You can slip a (very polite) notice under everyone’s doors (include the recalcitrant resident, as someone will involve them anyway) saying that the noise of the barking dog in Unit XX is disturbing you, and ask if anyone also thinks so. If so, email me at XXXX – and then set up a group and have a Zoom meeting about it. Take the results to the strata manager, and point out that several people are upset. Make sure you are very polite, and very factual – keep in mind the problem residents will read it too. There’s a good chance that once the recalcitrant dog owners realise that the building is organising against them, they will take things more seriously.
You can take this further. Visit the strata manager and make a copy of the strata register, with all the owners emails and details. If the dog owners are renting, then send a very polite email to the owner or their agents, explaining how the barking dog is distressing you. (Renters need the owners permission to keep a dog, and not all obtain this). Contact the owners as well as the residents… Point out that the barking dog devalues their units, and could drive tenants away… Organise, but be nice about it.
If nothing else, a problem shared is a problem reduced. And you will probably make some allies, for the next issue that crops up in the building…
I’m assuming you want the Strata Committee to carry out some service around the building – such as organise a gardener to come regularly, or to paint the stair-well, for example?
Don’t underestimate the effort in organising these types of things. But if the Committee is dragging their feet, the best thing is to embarrass them into doing the job.
For example, you can email your strata manager to ask for an update on the work, pointing out, and quoting the agenda item and minute from the general meeting, and drawing their attention to the time that has elapsed?
The strata manager does work as the agent to the committee so their hands are tied if the committee won’t make decisions. Make sure they respond in writing (managers often tell you things on the phone they can’t put in writing, because it isn’t strictly legal, or might embarrass the committee members.) So make sure all correspondence is in writing – ie email. Keep a log, and keep up the regular correspondence.
Then at the next General Meeting, you submit an agenda item, pointing out that the task hasn’t been carried out, and laying out a time line of reminders, responses, and purported reasons and excuses. And request that the task now be done as an urgent task, and you can even suggest the approach – ie, that the strata manager should take on the role of selecting the contractors to do the job, that they should get 3 quotes within a month of the meeting, select the best one, and commence the work within 2 months, and report to the owners their success…
I bet, the strata manager will be encouraging the committee to do their job, and as soon as your agenda item arrives, the committee suddenly will organise the job… The strata manager and the committee is relying on the owners not paying attention, and letting the task lapse. Ten minutes every fortnight, for an email or two, and a time line, will let them know you won’t forget about it, and once they get this into their heads, they will do their jobs…I’m more on the side of your strata committee – there isn’t a lot that can be done in a practical sense to solve this problem. But there are some things you can do to improve matters.
Firstly, you haven’t mentioned your by-laws… What do they say about this problem? There should be a detailed by-law in place setting out the parameters that govern your visitors parking spots. Is there a definition of “visitor”? How long may a visitor park? Can residents use these spots – or in other words, are residents clearly prohibited from parking in these bays and on the common property? You mention that workers to the residents are parking there – they might be considered a bona-fide “visitors” – especially if you don’t have a clear-cut definition of that in your by-laws.
So, I’d suggest your first step should be to review your by-laws and then, if necessary, suggest editing them to make the problematic parking clearly a breach of them. You might want to suggest suitable changes, and submit a motion for your next General meeting, to update your by-laws. Note that this will cost your building money.
Secondly, you say that you’ve asked the strata committee to fix the problem… What do you expect them to do?
They can basically only do two things – issue a breach of by-law notice to any resident or owner who is actually, and clearly breaching a by-law – hence my first point above.
Otherwise, they can put in place some physical means of managing your visitors parking spaces. Such as a boom gate, CC TV cameras, bollards, chains, signage etc. This will all cost money, maybe a lot, for just 6 Units… So you need to get the other owners on side if you want to proceed in this direction. They need to convince them that this is a problem that can be fixed, (which you indicated may not be easy), and they need to then decide to spend the money.
The suggestion about getting your local council to fine people is basically a non-starter. My strata committee approached our local council about this, but they aren’t interested in getting involved. I’ve asked around, and as far as I can tell, no council is doing this, apart from in special cases, where certain large commercial buildings have public parking bays. Even so, they would require the right signage to be displayed, etc, which will cost money. And council inspectors cannot determine who are visitors and who are not – they can police people overstaying the time limits, but that doesn’t seem to be your problem, and you may not have this specified in your by-laws, anyway.
So, have a big think, and rather than focus on the problem, you need to focus on a practical solution, and then work to bring this about…This is complicated, and you need to learn and provide more information, to know the best answer in this situation. But generally, if the building’s facilities need replacing or repairing then all the owners must fund this, according to their unit entitlements. It doesn’t matter that only some of the owners benefit from that facility. There is a legal duty under strata law to maintain all the building’s facilities. For example, if the building has a lift, then all owners fund its operation, even though some may live of the ground or lower floors and so not use it. If the building has a swimming pool, then all owners must maintain that, even if they don’t use it.
Nevertheless, this situation might be affected, if the aircon was installed by the owners themselves after the building was built. Of if the Owners Corporation passed a by-law about the aircon in the past, or if the commercial owners have specific by-laws affecting their properties. So you should check your building’s current by-laws, for any of these special arrangements.
You will probably need to raise a special levy, or arrange a strata loan, to fund these repairs. Or if your funds are adequate, use those, with an increase in your future levies to pay that amount back. From experience, loans are difficult to organise – some owners will object to the interest charged, and investors have different views on how the funds are raised to owner occupiers. Best if you involve your strata manager in discussions about how to raise the money, I suggest.
I’m not sure what you mean by “balcony capping”? is this the balustrade or roof? Anyway, speaking generally I am not sure if you can do anything about this, under the Strata laws, at any rate. You might have by-laws that apply, so you should check those carefully. But if you have the default by-laws, I doubt if any would apply to this situation. And in reality, there is always some risk of objects falling from balconies. While pot plants on the top of the balustrade might increase the risk, whether this is actionable depends on several factors – if the balcony and capping are strata property or owners property, on the design of the balustrade and balcony, if other residents are doing or have ever done something similar, and what is below that area, for example.
I would suggest you raise the issue at the next strata committee meeting – ask your strata manager or strata secretary to add an item on the agenda about the problem, and see what the discussion results in. Also, in that agenda item, ask that the residents be put on notice in writing that they are responsible should any damage or injury results from a pot from their apartment falling on something or someone below.I suggest you create a specific email for the role – such as “SecretaryOfSP1234@gmail.com” and use that for general strata matters. It means that when you cease being Secretary, or Chair or Treasurer, you can pass the email address and its password on to your replacement, who will see a history of the ongoing matters for the building. Register this email on the HUB. You can also share the email and its password with other Committee members, and provide its details and password to your strata manager, so if you busy or unavailable, others can step in if required.
As for a phone number, this isn’t absolutely necessary to provide, unless the building pays for a mobile service to be used by the Secretary or Committee (an increasingly common practice). As long as some kind of communication contact is provided, the HUB is serving its purpose.
I am not sure you are correct about the Common Property Memorandum over-riding other by-laws that set out what is minor, major or cosmetic in a building for renovations. The Note in Reg 27 says:-
“Any common property by-law or a by-law made under section 108 of the Act prevails over the by-law adopting the Memorandum if it is inconsistent with the Memorandum (see section 107(3) and (4) of the Act).”
So, in other by-laws you can re-define what may be a minor renovation, in accordance with Sections 107 and 108. But you can’t modify the content of the common property memorandum in the by-law that adopts the memorandum, apart from excluding specific items.
This is not uncommon – certifiers are no longer employed by government bodies, but are private companies, being paid by the body requesting the certification. There is an unfortunate tendency to find whatever best suits the body paying for the job – or some certifiers will strictly follow the law and provide a complete report. And also the laws are sometimes unclear and two competent certifiers will come to different conclusions because they have different interpretations of the law.
From your description, I’d guess that having the same company certify the fire doors as installed them was a mistake. On fire doors, there must be a “tag” or compliance plate, fixed to the door – it’s normally on the edge of the door near the hinges. A missing or hidden (ie, painted over) plate means the door needs to be re-certified (expensive) or replaced (expensive). Sometimes the doors are provided with the right tag, but after installation, the owners corporation has them painted to match the building’s décor – and painters often don’t realise the compliance plates must never be hidden. If that’s happened, then a razor blade to very carefully scrape the paint off the tag might be a good thing to try (as long as it doesn’t damage the printing on the plate or make it seem to have been tampered with.)
The rules about locating the smoke detectors are complicated and open to different interpretations. In our building smoke detectors that were installed by a reputable fire safety company were faulted at a later inspection – the interpretation of the rules had changed – the government had cracked down on the rules, because of injuries and coroner’s reports. It happens. The main thing with fire regulations is safety – better to comply strictly than to regret the corner cutting when you are choking in a smoke filled apartment…
The practical approach is to have another, second, company do a compliance check, and to provide a written report to the owners corporation. I’d be concerned that the existing report does not detail the problems, and perhaps you should request the company that produced the report to put all the problems in writing. If they were the ones that did the work to install the doors and alarms, then there may be a reason why they are reluctant to do this? Anyway a second opinion should resolve or clarify the issues, and then you need to resolve them. If the original company is negligent then consult a lawyer about taking action against them. But if the painting of the doors was a separate task, then the strata committee that allowed the fire doors to be wrongly painted would be a fault. And the rules about locating smoke detectors (and the right type allowed) seems to have been tightened up in recent times, so that may just be that it’s something you need to live with.
I wonder if it’s as clear cut as you say? The body corporate has a responsibility to maintain the common property, and the walls, floor, ducts, ventilation and plumbing in each apartment is common property, and is where vermin and pests live and spread.
The pest controller will need to access apartments to treat these areas, and if a mouse chews through an NBN cable inside an apartment, the body corporate would be at fault for failing to have controlled the pests. In fact, as said earlier, for a proper pest control treatment to protect common property there will need to be application done inside each apartment, as well as around the more accessible common property areas.
That’s why commonly the body corporate will subsidise the treatments inside apartments, because the treatment benefits the building as a whole as well as the owner of the apartment, and it is hard to quantify who benefits the most. But I think it is wrong to assume that the treatment inside an apartment only benefits that owner, and they must pay for it entirely. The building as a whole benefits when pests are eliminated and cannot spread. So if you take action as you plan, the body corporate could make a good case that if was to the general good to carry out treatments throughout the building.
If working out how to divide the costs between owners and the building is too hard, then it is reasonable that the building covers the whole cost. You need to check the scope of the work – if it says that the pest control is to concentrate on treating pests that interfere with the common property, and spread between apartments, then you may not have much of a case.
I can see both sides of this issue. One party can commence legal action, even if they suspect the action wont be successful, and it is the action itself that is the penalty, and what causes the other party to submit. The stress, time and money involved in defending a legal action, even one you will probably win, is often sufficient to persuade you to go along with whatever they want.
The response to that strategy is to not engage with them. You do not have to pay for legal representation. You do not have to spend time and resources on defending the action. What you can do, is spend a half hour putting together a short explanation of your side of the argument, and just send that off at every opportunity. Something like,
“I believe that by-law #4 “Keeping of Animals” is an invalid by-law because of S137B of the Strata Schemes Management Act, which states that a by-law like #4 “has no force or effect” because it unreasonably prohibits the keeping of an animal (in my case a dog) in a lot. Therefore, because there is no by-law in force about keeping animals, in this building, I will be keeping the animal, until the owners corporation adopts a valid by-law that covers the keeping of animals. My keeping of an animal will not cause any unreasonable interference with another occupant’s use of a lot or common property, as set out in Regualtion 36A, and so I believe that my keeping an animal even when a valid by-law is adopted, would still be permitted. ”Then send that off, in your own name, at every opportunity, to answer any lawyer’s letter, to any NCAT mediation or hearing, and submit it to any owners corporation meeting. Don’t pay for lawyers. Don’t attend hearings. Just do the minimum. If some loophole occurs that lets the other side succeed, then that will be years away, and in the meantime you will have had a pet with you. It is a principle of law that costs and so forth should be awarded fairly. If you spend $10 on your argument, for a few stamps and printing out of letters, and the other side spends $100,000, the court would not make you pay for their costs even if they win. And we know they wont win. The Courts and Tribunals are aware that people use money to influence the law, and don’t like that happening. So you need to be resolute, and not get sucked into the game. Don’t engage, don’t spend money, but do express your position briefly, clearly and whenever it helps.
In NSW the strata law is being amended to make it easier to keep pets…
“Pets – From 24 August 2021, an owners corporation will not be able to have a by-law which unreasonably prohibits the keeping of an animal on a lot. Further, it will be deemed reasonable to keep an animal on a lot unless keeping the animal unreasonably interferes with another occupant’s use and enjoyment of the occupant’s lot or the common property. Those changes codify the decision of the NSW Court of Appeal in Cooper v The Owners – Strata Plan No 58068 [2020] NSWCA 250 in which it was held that a “no pets” by-law is unenforceable. ”I suggest that after 24 August you write to the strata committee stating that you wish to keep a budgie in your apartment, and that keeping it will not interfere with any other occupants use and enjoyment of a lot or the common property. Ask them to respond within 14 days, and you should get a go-ahead. If they refuse, write back, and draw their attention to (new) Section 137B (which codifies that requirement) of the Strata Schemes Management Act.
Of course, that requires you make sure that the bird does not interfere with another resident’s enjoyment; by making excessive noise or mess. So be extra vigilant that the bird behaves itself, especially initially. The strata committee might ask you to consent to reasonable conditions, such as controlling any noise or mess, and if those conditions are okay, then agree. But if they try to force unreasonable conditions on you, then refuse, and wait. No strata committee will take legal action which they are sure to lose, because of S137B. The wording of new S137B defaults to allowing you to keep the animal – the strata committee has to prove that keeping the animal is unreasonable. Which for a caged bird that is being looked after, would be hard to do.