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I suppose people don’t see paint as being separate from common property.
Think of it like wallpaper. Common property is the wall or ceiling (the cement, bricks, wood, gyprock). What you add to it (paint, wallpaper) is not part of common property. It is part of the lot.
The lot owner in question, who is also a member of the strata committee, has said that more than one quote would only need to be presented if the quote is above 30K as per law.
Whenever someone says it is “the law” to do something, I like to check. I google searched “Strata Schemes Management Act 2015”. Scroll down to “Section 102 Limits on Spending by Owners Corporation“. Paragraph 1 says:
(1) An owners corporation must obtain at least 2 independent quotations for proposed expenditure for an item or matter that is more than the amount prescribed by the regulations for this section.
That lead me to google search “Strata Schemes Management Regulations 2016”. Section 25 says:
25 Limits on spending by owners corporations
For the Act, section 102(1), the prescribed amount is $30,000.Conclusion: the strata committee is not legally obliged to obtain a second quote. However, as Jimmy explained, owners can call a general meeting and vote in favour of getting multiple quotes. (The procedure for calling a general meeting is explained the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015.)
Would Owners’ attending Fair Trading mediation be able to make a case for more than one quote and for it to be accepted or do we just have to be strong-armed into this quote that the strata committee seems bent on.
One strata committee member has convinced the other members of the strata committee to approve $20K worth of work on their own lot. Are you concerned that this strata committee has abused their position? Is the service provider a friend/relative of that strata committee member?
Refer to the minutes of the last Annual General Meeting. At every AGM, there should be a motion passed to show if there are any limitations on what the strata committee can do on behalf of the owners corporation. If that motion has no limits on what the strata committee can do, I think it will be hard to stop this work.
For future reference, it is really important to read every motion on the AGM agenda. If you want to put a hard limit e.g. $1,000 on spending by the strata committee, owners can vote on it at the next general meeting. The argument against setting a limit is that the owners corporation would have to stop everything and call an Extraordinary General Meeting for jobs costing more than a certain amount. Owners would have to decide what is a reasonable spending limit for the strata committee.
(1) Must a strata mgr or committee inform ALL owners of a NCAT dispute for which a hearing date has been set?;
Yes. Read Section 228 Notice of Applications to Tribunal (2) of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW). I copy / pasted the paragraph here:
(2) On receipt of an application, an owners corporation given notice of an application for an order must—
(a) immediately cause a copy of the application to be prominently displayed on any notice board required to be maintained by or under the by-laws on some part of the common property, and
(b) so display the copy for the period specified in the notice for the making of submissions, and
(c) immediately serve a copy of the application on each owner of a lot in the strata scheme except an owner who is a named party to the application.(2) Must a strata mgr or committee mention in any submission to the STRATA HUB my NCAT application against the OC? Must the STRATA HUB be informed about an owner’s complaint to NSW Fair Trading against the strata mgr? Or can these matters be concealed from the STRATA HUB?
No. No. Yes. I logged into my Strata Hub account. I see no place for NCAT actions to be recorded. Here is a link to NSW Government page showing what kind of information is accessible to owners: Read under “who will have access to this information”.
Strata Hub is new. They added some new things in the past year. I think it would be a great idea to have NCAT applications (past and present) documented. However, there could be a privacy issue.
Here is a scenario: Imagine a cyclone has damaged the roof. The ceiling is stained with water but there is no hole in the ceiling.
When the owners corporation sends a tradesperson to fix the roof, one of two things happens during this scenario:
- There is NO FURTHER damage to the ceiling. It is merely stained by the water from the cyclone event. Lot owner pays for re-painting the ceiling.
- During the roof repair, the tradesperson pokes a hole into the ceiling. Now the owners corporation is responsible for fixing the hole in the ceiling and re-painting over the repaired hole.
If the water stain happened at a different location from the hole poked by the tradesman, the owners corporation may argue that they still don’t have to re-paint over the water stain.
Tell your neighbour to keep that strata committee email and store back ups on a cloud (e.g. dropbox, google drive), USB stick and paper. If she ends up applying to NCAT for an order about this, this email should be part of the supporting documentation.
Paint on the ceiling and walls is lot owner responsibility. The actual ceiling itself is OC responsibility. OC repairs the leak. Lot owner repaints the ceiling.
The lesson for you is that you should have left the ceiling unpainted before asking the OC to pay for the repaint. The Owners Corporation / strata manager needs to see that it needs the repaint work.
OC may reject your request because they have no evidence of what it looked like and they cannot determine how much that job should cost.
You can never have exact calculation for something you want to do in the future. When the time comes to do the job, you have to find a contractor to provide a quote. Everything in the capital works plan is a guess of what the work will cost (adjusted for inflation).
kaindub has the right idea. The capital works plan is simply a list of works you hope to complete in the next ten years. Beside each work, you guess how much it will cost. Since you won’t be doing everything in the next twelve months, you would assign some jobs for 2025, some for 2026, some for 2027 etc. The cost for jobs beyond 2025 have to be adjusted for inflation. Again, you have to guess the inflation rate.
I have already set up such a spreadsheet. next to each piece of work, I write the number 1, 2, 3 etc to show how many years into the future we want to do that work. That number helps me to adjust my cost for inflation one, two or three years away. Then I set up a second sheet to take a total of all the work I plan for each year. That would be a list of years 2025-2034 with how much we expect to spend.
I can adjust the estimated cost and the year I want to do the work. The capital works plan worksheet recalculates itself.
If you really want more info, I can explain the cell formulae in the spreadsheet.
The outstanding debt is $1,208
The debtor (brother) is paying $450 per fortnight.
Brother can pay this off in three fortnights, including interest. Here is my calculation.
Assume 10% pa interest added to it. I will add 3 fortnight’s worth of interest at 10% pa (but this is really an OVERestimation). With each payment of $450, the outstanding interest should REDUCE.
Interest for three fortnights = $1,208 * 0.10 / 365.25 * (3 * 14) = $13.89
Total required repayments over 3 fortnights
= debt + interest
= $1,208 + $13.89
= $1,221
If brother continues to pay $450 over the next two fortnights, he only has to pay $321 on the third fortnight:
$450 + $450 + $321 = $1,221
Ask you strata committee why they cannot wait six weeks for the entire debt to be repaid?
Even if, in six weeks’ time, another levy could have been invoiced, your brother has shown a willingness to get on top of it. A debt collection agency is unnecessary. I fear that your brother is being bullied.
I’m just a small unit owner and was browsing to find some assistance. I’m shocked every time I receive a quarterly bill from Netstrata — the fees just keep soaring!
Normally the strata levy is fixed for a full year. It should not change every quarter. Has NetStrata added interest because you did not pay all of the previous quarter’s levy on time?
To understand why levies are necessary, you should read the financial documents which accompany the agenda for the annual general meeting. Those documents show how much money was collected in levies and what they spent it on. They also tell you how much they need to spend in future years. The levies are based on that.
The levy amount you pay may not be the same as your neighbour’s levy. Each lot in the strata plan is assigned a Unit Entitlement number. People with a higher unit entitlement pay a higher levy and have a bigger vote in meetings.
Where can I get help with these constantly rising fees each quarter?
I googled “help paying levies” and found this: NSW Government: help if you cannot pay levies
It’s not that I need the strata notices to be sent to my address as I already have access to them but more that i would like my name included with hers as Owner. You see the names of the owners listed in AGM’s, extraordinary meetings when it comes to attendance, levies, etc.
As everyone else said, you cannot be listed as an owner because you are NOT an owner.
However, the owner can appoint you as their proxy for a defined period of time. Look up Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 Schedule 1, Part 4, Division 2 Section 26 “Appointment of proxies”
When you are a proxy, your name will appear on the minutes of the annual general meeting, extraordinary general meeting etc. It will not appear on any financial reports.
I am looking ahead and wondering who is going to provide the strata committee training?
Will it be an on-line course provided by Fair Trading? Read some slides. Answer ten multiple choice questions and print my PDF certificate?
I fear it is going to be an accredited course provided by Strata Community Association and it will cost thousands of dollars.
If Flat Chat provided strata committee training, I would do it.
I enjoy listening to you and Sue talk whilst pottering around my home.
There was one memorable statement about the NIMBYs. If you want to live somewhere quiet, don’t choose Circular Quay.
I absolutely agree with hanging laundry on the balcony. A clothes dryer uses electricity and takes up space in the home. The sun and wind dries clothes for free.
In Japan, it is pretty much mandatory to leave your shoes in the front vestibule of the home. My Japanese language teacher said it was quite a shock to come to Australia and see people walk straight into their carpeted homes with shoes on.
Nowadays, I put my shoes away as I enter my home. I put on a pair of house slippers. It keeps the floor clean.
This reminds me of the hanging laundry outside your home argument. I worry there is racism behind this “by-law breach”.
Jimmy: Just to be pedantic, the SSMA S146 says that the owners corporation can pass a resolution to issue the NTC. The strata committee can also pass a resolution. The strata manager can be delegated by the owners corp to issue a NTC.
I wish owners would read the financial papers and other correspondence about their strata plan.
When people ask me why they have to pay levies, I explain that there are ongoing costs which are shared by all owners. e.g. building insurance, water, electricity, gardening, bank fees, stationery and Strata Hub. Then there are the costs which don’t repeat: repairs, maintenance, improvements. We have to set aside money for both these purposes. They’ll respond by saying “I didn’t know that”. Two weeks later, they ask the same question again.
Some owners think they have to gouge as much repair work from the owners corp as they can in order to recoup their levy payments. They have no idea about common property and think it is reasonable to “take a chance” and ask strata to fix something in their home. If they don’t get what they want, they scream “why am I paying levies?”. Rinse and repeat.
Hi quirky, I don’t know if you are addressing the original poster (Newyboy) or me. You appear to be addressing two people as if they are one. Newyboy has not left their strata manager. I left five years ago. I was reflecting on my own experience to give others hope.
Strata management is complicated, …
I notice in this (and other) threads a little bit of push back from the strata managers. It is the same old tactic of saying that strata management is so complicated that mere laypeople like me could never do it.
Instead of telling the layperson to back off and let the strata manager take over, why not EDUCATE the layperson? Encourage them to read the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 so that they know the rules.
… and from this history, you and your fellow owners have muddled though only from luck, and stumbling across people who voluntarily helped, like a bank employee.
Who’s history? Mine or Newyboy’s? We’ve already become self mentioned. The bank manager provided me no material support, except to open a bank account. That’s their job. In my earlier post, I detailed what was needed to open an account to inform anyone who wants to know what to do.
I have not stumbled across anyone to help me. The only voluntary helper is me.
I find it offensive that you suggest I muddled through only from luck. I spent hundreds of hours recording every financial transaction into finance software, going back 50 years (probably overkill), setting up spreadsheets to produce financial reports for the AGM and levy notices for the owners. My reports look exactly like the ones produced by the strata manager. I studied every line of Schedule 1 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 to make sure I prepared the meeting notice, agenda and minutes completely.
In the midst of Australia’s “cost of living crisis”, our strata levy remained the same for the past five years. Our costs have decreased. With the money saved, we completed two significant capital works projects and we’re now saving for solar panels and solar batteries. All the other strata plans in our neighbourhood complain that they can’t get repairs done because they don’t have the funds.
It’s not luck. It’s hard work and brains.
A building with 8 Units is quite large, and I have to wonder if you can self manage the plan with your lack of experience. It sounds like you plan to embark on a program of repairs and improvement, with the increased investment in the building, and doing that without good strata knowledge is going to be a struggle.
From my experience: our strata manager’s capital works plan was not worth the paper it was written on (and we paid $400 for it). I compiled a new one on a spreadsheet. I can move projects forwards and backwards in time and the capital works budgets adjusts itself automatically. It is important to get the owners involved in the decision making. Together we choose the projects which have the greatest need or benefit.
I understand you not renewing with your present strata manager. But it might be better to find another one, perhaps one that is not part of a slick huge corporation.
Newyboy has not quit their strata manager yet. I have been self managed for five years.
You can negotiate with a strata manager for them to take over a limited set of duties – the committee can do all the quote getting, contract reviewing and bin cleaning, and leave the strata manager to manage the accounts and provide advice about the complex stuff, like fire safety Orders and Schedules, insurance, by-laws and so on.
Good luck with that. Our strata manager had a term in their contract which allowed them to spend up to $500 for repairs without seeking the consent of the owners corporation. Every repair, no matter how complex or simple, would cost $495 or $490. We voted to instruct them to stop doing this and a couple of of other questionable practices. They terminated the contract.
- Fire safety is not complex. You can google it.
- Insurance is more expensive when sought through a broker. You can google strata insurance, find a cheaper provider and avoid paying the 20% brokerage.
- By-laws: are explained in the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015. To update by-laws, I took the Certificate of Title, the minutes of the meeting and the updated by-laws to the Land and Property Information Office and registered them personally. Cost $146. If we let the strata manager do it, $550. (Nowadays, the registration of by-laws has to be done via a brokerage service.) Nobody told me how to do this. Certainly not the strata manager. I figured it out with google.
Be aware that some other owners might take advantage of your inexperience, and act up, since none of your committee members know anything much about strata laws, I assume.
Yes and No. They try to act up. They also know that if they go back to strata management, that’s $10,000 per year down the toilet. Owners can be entitled and abusive. I don’t like verbal abuse but I hate wasting money even more.
Strata laws: The Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 and the Strata Schemes Management Regulations 2016 are on the internet. They are the bible for any self-managing strata committee. Web sites like FlatChat, Fair Trading, Owners Corporation Network and various strata lawyers are good too. I prefer to check what the law says first. I also read judgements from past cases in NCAT.