Forum Replies Created
-
Replies
-
That is very interesting. And I note it’s also a crime to offer a ‘benefit’. So both sides are in breach of the law.
Yes, I think the training is problematic.
It risks being legalistic and about compliance. And if SCA gets near it, it’s about doing things that are convenient for agents.
What’s really needed on committees is a commitment to wanting to live in a well-run community and being willing to do your bit to make that happen.
So maybe some training that puts the emphasis on that, and on how to reach consensus decisions.
Our adversarial legal and political system gets us used to black/white, good/bad options.
The legal obligations have to be there, but I think it’s critical they’re framed as a way to ensure you have a harmonious, safe, well-maintained home. Which, by the way, will maintain its market value.
As for paid committee members, we started doing that years ago in both the buildings I’m involved in, using the honorarium provision in the legislation. You wouldn’t make a living from it, but the amounts are enough to acknowledge the time involved and have been approved without dissent at each AGM.
@timSP,
Another suggestion: get a copy of the strata roll from your strata manager (and yes, the law requires them to give it to you) and write to other owners pointing out this is unlawful.
If you want to make it really stick, pay a lawyer to do this on your behalf.
Good luck!
Hi timSP,
The relevant part of the legislation is Schedule 1 to the Strata Schemes Management Act and the Strata Schemes Management Regulation. [not sure why but I can’t put a link to this here…]
You’re right. You can’t vote on the committee electronically. per s14A(a) of the Regulation: ‘an election must not be determined by pre-meeting electronic voting.’
The notice of meeting must include a call for nominations per s 5(1) of Schedule 1
A nomination may be made in writing before the meeting or orally at the meeting per s5(5).
This is reiterated in the Regulation s 9 and 10.
So decide your timing carefully. If there is a physical/electronic meeting at a particular time and place (as there needs to be to elect a committee) you could simply ensure you are there, nominate orally and point out that any pre-meeting electronic votes for the committee are invalid per the Regulation.
Note also that, per s9(e) of Sched 1 there must be a ‘…motion to decide the number of members of the strata committee’ as well as a motion for their election per s9(f).
Hope this helps! Good luck!
I’d just sound a note of caution regarding company title. If you think a rogue strata committee or manager can wreak havoc, a rogue board of directors can do worse with their unfettered power to make ‘house rules’.
With no general meeting approval. No requirement that rules aren’t oppressive.
A (real) example: prohibit any kitchen or bathroom renovations in the name of ‘heritage’ – after the directors have done their own renovations.
And, as noted in the article, any serious dispute has to go to the Supreme Court.
This cuts both ways, as a rogue resident can be equally challenging.
@lovetheview Here’s a suggestion: get a suitably qualified telecommunications technician (which includes most electricians) to check the connection on-site. You’re likely to have a main telco box somewhere where the incoming lines terminate. There will then be one or more cables going to a termination box somewhere near the lift. In this box there should be a connection between the line and the physical phone in the lift. It’s likely this is the link that’s missing.
A tech will be able to, at a minimum, confirm where the line gets to and where it stops. They may be able to reinstate the connection.
If it can’t be reinstated, I would get a written report from the tech and forward it to the lift company with a very specific order to complete the connection, noting that if they fail to do so they will be in breach of their contract with you to maintain the lift and, no doubt, in breach of legal requirements. Maybe get a lawyer to draft it for you.
Good luck!
I’ll weigh in on self-management. We (well, I) manage my 14 unit building in Sydney’s inner west.
The economics of strata management really don’t work well for small buildings. Many of the tasks (paying routine bills, issuing levies, budgets, organising and running an AGM) take pretty much the same time for a 6-lot plan as they do for a 150-lot plan. So a good, conscientious manager charging reasonable rates will cost each owner a chunk of money.
A sloppy, third-rate manager (as you seem to have) will charge much the same and resent you because the opportunities for exploitation aren’t as good as a big building.
I’m most familiar with the Strata Schemes Management Act, while an NA is governed by the Community Land Management Act 2021 . Looking through it quickly, it seems to mirror the SSMA, but do check.
The key jobs of a manager are:
- Financial: preparing the budget, setting and collecting the contributions and paying the bills. Keep this simple, with all regular bills paid by direct debit and a single annual contributions notice. Owners can pay monthly or quarterly with automatic payments.
- Managing maintenance: Find good local tradespeople and give them regular tasks. For example: we have our plumbers do an annual check of gutters/roof, balcony drains, flexible hoses and hot water systems (all sources of past problems) and a more frequent check of our sump pump. While they’re in the building, owners get tap washers and trickling toilets fixed – for the marginal cost of the extra time (i.e. no callout fee).
- Statutory: You need to maintain a roll and hold an annual general meeting with some required motions.
One of my key recommendations to potential self managers is to know your limits (of knowledge and time) and use outside experts. Lawyers, accountants, building consultants will all know more about their respective fields than even the best strata manager (who would often engage these for you, and, quite reasonably, adding the cost of their own time).
My other recommendation is to sign up for sites like Flat Chat and join the Owners Corporation Network [disclosure: I am a director of OCN] so you have access to resources and advice.
This is a bit rough and ready, but I hope it’s helpful.
Good luck!
What a pain. Can this person not see that routine breaches by a committee member undermine the whole governance of the building.
Maybe a personal approach of the ‘Mate, you’re putting me and the committee in an impossible position by blatantly breaking the by-laws. Please knock it off.’ However he responds, you can simply point out that the building is unmanageable if you can’t rely on everyone following the rules. Either way, it should get to a point where he either acknowledges this and agrees, or he outright says ‘Stuff that, I’m on the committee so I can do what I want.’ In which case, you know where you stand with him.
Or perhaps you need a few more by-law breaches (perhaps someone else parking in visitors’ spots; piling stuff up in their car space; leaving things in the foyer or hallway…get creative). When they come before the committee you can ask ‘how can we ask one person to comply when we’re not asking everyone?’
I’d be declining to be on the committee with them at the next AGM. It’s hardball, and depends on how much others in the building value your role, but I’ve done it successfully when a serial late-payer and pain-in-the-neck owner nominated for the committee. He got smart and withdrew his nomination before it was put to a vote.
Of course, whatever you do, you can save it up until the ‘critical infrastructure’ matter is dealt with. Then just tell this person: ‘Now that we have X dealt with, stick to parking in your own spot.’
Perhaps make sure your other committee members don’t see taking action as ‘inflaming’ the situation. Their flouting of the rules has done all the inflaming. And it will be obvious to everyone in the place.
Good luck!
Just to clarify a few things for you: If you have owners who have 25% or more of the total unit entitlements, you can make a ‘qualified request’ to the secretary of the owners corporation to convene a general meeting. They must do this as soon as practicable, and in not more than 14 days. This is all in s19 of the Act.
You do not need the strata manager to convene the meeting. Although they likely have ‘delegated authority’ to act as secretary, the actual secretary can still convene the meeting. There has to be 14 days notice to owners.
For a meeting to be valid, it needs a quorum of at least 25% of the owners or of the total entitlements.
The ‘perfect’ solution might be a fully-fledged common property rights by-law. But you don’t need that. Per s112 of the Act, an owners corporation may grant a licence to use common property. It needs a special resolution, which means that not more than 25% of the votes cast are against the resolution, per s5 of the Act.
Note these percentages: you need 25% (in your case, 3 owners assuming all are roughly equal in unit entitlements) to require the meeting. You need at least 3 to attend the meeting. However many attend, if no more than 1 in 4 oppose the motion, it will pass. You don’t need 75% agreement.
So draft a motion along these lines: ‘That the owners corporation specially resolve to grant a licence to all owners to use the common property marked on the attached plan for X and Y, further, that the owners of lots A, B and C may use the marked portions as a garden or barbecue area…’. You get the idea.
Check all the meeting rules in Schedule 1 of the Act. It’s fussy, but quite intelligible.
Good luck!
Be warned that NCAT takes time (our building went through one last year – it took from January to November) and a lot of energy.
I would suggest you share the entirety of the email chain with your fellow owners before the meeting (if you don’t have all their email/mail addresses, get it from the strata manager and don’t take any nonsense from them about ‘privacy’: you are entitled to see the strata roll per s182 of the Act. Again, ignore any nonsense about the ‘privacy’ or ‘confidentiality’ of the emails. They are records of the owners corporation, and are thus open to all owners, with the possible exception of legal correspondence subject to privilege.
If there isn’t time to do this, turn up at the AGM with your completed NCAT application and, ideally, all the emails compiled. Make it crystal clear that if it can’t be reasonably discussed between owners – perhaps asking others how they would feel if they got this sort of runaround – it will be put before an independent person at NCAT who will make a decision under the law. Remind them that this will incur considerable unnecessary cost on the part of the owners corporation and will not change the outcome. s105 of the Act, which governs common property repairs, imposes a ‘strict liability’ on the owners corporation. This is legal talk for ‘you can’t get out of it’. If the damage was caused by the failure of common property, there’s no question it is the owners corporation’s responsibility.
If other owners are unsure or they haven’t had the time or opportunity to consider your material, the decision can be deferred by agreement to another general meeting to be held in, say, a month.
One more thing you might want to have up your sleeve is a cost estimate from a lawyer to prepare for an NCAT hearing, let alone conduct one. I think your fellow owners will quickly see that fighting you in NCAT could well cost more than the actual repair.
Make sure you nominate for the committee, and perhaps get some other like-minded people on board.
If you do end up at NCAT and they seek leave to be legally represented, oppose it (unless you are a lawyer or know one!…actually if you are a lawyer, definitely oppose it!).
One more thing I’ve just realised: this sort of damage is often covered by insurance. Is it in this case? And if not, why not?
Good luck!
Thanks Jimmy. Yet another story of strata managers not acting in the interests of their clients. And they want to be accorded ‘professional’ status.
SCA (NSW) amended its constitution in 2021 so strata owners can no longer be members and are no longer represented on the board.
When I noted these items on the SCA AGM agenda for that year, I emailed the then-president to ask how this was consistent with the national SCA’s assertion of itself as:
“… the peak body for Industry Managers Lot Owners, Tenants and Stakeholders living in or affected by Strata Title, Body Corporate, Community Title and Owners Corporations.”
And “SCA proudly fulfils the dual roles of a professional institute and consumer advocate“. My emphasis.
I received no reply. The constitution change went through.
They’ve now changed the first part I quoted above to describe themselves as “the peak industry body for Strata and Community Title Management in New South Wales.” But they haven’t changed the second one.
I guess they have a different definition of ‘consumer advocate’ from me.My guess is that ‘Toxic’ has a really effective business development unit. They probably also lowball the price, planning to make their actual profit from lots of hours, insurance ‘commissions’ and other kickbacks from suppliers.
The worst strata manager I’ve dealt with worked for a big, supposedly reputable firm – who’d given us a good tapdance at one point. What made him ‘worst’? Literally no communication with the committee – didn’t reply to emails or respond to phone messages; sacked our cleaners to appoint his mate; didn’t pay any of our bills (we found out when we got the ‘notice to disconnect’ from the electricity supplier).
Talking to ‘management’ got nowhere until I phoned the CEO’s office and made it clear this had to be sorted out. But even then, they wouldn’t own the screwups, offered pathetic compensation (waiving their fee for a month…after months of frustration and inaction).
Sadly, that’s the business model: sign ’em up and give ’em rubbish.
Jimmy, ‘dual key’ is used to describe a single apartment where two parts can be locked separately. The ones I’ve seen are effectively a one bedroom apartment plus a studio. So you can live in it as a two bedder, or close a hall door to create the one plus studio. Have a look at developments like Central Park and City Quarter in Sydney.
Believer: Unless otherwise noted on your strata plan or by-laws, entry doors and their locks are common property. Be wary of changing the lock, as fire regulations only permit certain locks. You can, of course, have the lock re-keyed, which is a straightforward job for a locksmith.
Hi all,
I use Urbanise to run our self-managed building, so know the back-end pretty well.
It has a payments “Approval setup” screen with comprehensive options including:
• Set a $$ threshold for approval
• Set the number of committee members needed to approve
• ‘Whitelist’ suppliers with individual $ thresholds (so, for example, regular bills like power and cleaning don’t need committee approval).
So I recommend compiling the budgeted items you’re happy to have paid without approval; set reasonable limits on others and requirements for committee pre-approval on any categories you want to eyeball first. Approve plan as a committee and send it to the SM.
@newb, just wanted to give a few words of support from another self-manager.
We had a similarly disastrous strata manager (a large firm that had taken over our previously-good small firm), and initially went self-managed as a trial.
It’s now been three years and everyone’s happy with the arrangement.
All the best with it.