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absolutely stratas should be run as businesses. it cost me approx. $150,000 to resolve a strata dispute.
to cut a long story short the OC refuse to communicate with me, simply ignoring any request I make. it began when i first purchased the property over 25 years ago when they refused to renew my fence with the others because it’s leased. luckily the strata manager at that time insisted they did.
in fact over the years all the strata managers have resolved my issues until the last one who has now resigned. they’ve not followed engineering recommendations and how dare I query it and so it goes on.
i believe they’ve paid for things for works inside the lot of an owner who they like etc etc. there’s a strata law that an individual can’t spoil someone’s quiet enjoyment of a property but no strata law that an OC can’t do the same. they also intimidated my long term tenants until they left.
one of the top strata lawyers told me she often tells individuals not to go to court to resolve issues unless they have plenty of time and money – how fair is that?
i also owned a commercial strata which was run as a business, no favoritism. I only buy freeholds now.
i had a similar problem. there was an old disused mechanical ventilation system – fan in my garage and smoke stack in my courtyard. Hadn’t been used for 40 years. the OC don’t like me and refuse to communicate with me and eventually it cost me $150,000 in legal fees to have it removed. there’s a law that a resident can’t spoil quiet enjoyment of a property but no law that an OC can’t. basically if an OC wants to they can make your life hell for no reason. TIME TO CHANGE THE LAWS
been through all this recently. most strata managers weren’t up to speed on this 6 months after the legislation began. i was led to understand that if a common property wall etc was involved any change had to be done under a class 2 license and I was also led to believe this included waterproofing however our strata managers wrote and said that any waterproofing had to be done by a tradesperson who was a master builder and not all master builders hold the class 2 licence. the general rule seemed to be that only if it was an internal reno say a new bathroom or kitchen a class 2 license wasn’t required but what if say a hole needs to be knocked into an outside kitchen wall for an exractor fan. THE WHOLE THING IS A MINEFIELD AND NEEDS TO BE CLARIFIED. When I originally contacted FT in Jan this year they knew nothing about it.
It doesn’t really matter if they attend mediation not. Mediation agreements aren’t binding even if signed by the strata manager, which happened to me.
Even worse if you go to NCAT, which costs a fortune in lawyers, the adjudicators don’t necessarily have legal training. There’s also no law against an OC not allowing the quiet enjoyment of a property to a resident.
The law only mentions a resident not allowing quiet enjoyment, from memory. The entire system needs a complete overhaul.
At the moment if the member of an OC doesn’t like an owner they can made their life hell. TIME FOR CHANGE