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Thanks giggsy – that’s what I thought, because an Owner’s proposal to undertake any renovation that involves a change the appearance of the Lot, or that are structural, or permanent, or that are likely to have a significant impact on the amenity of other residents must be considered at a General Meeting of the Owners Corporation, who in order to properly consider such a proposal would need to be provided with all relevant details, some of which you are at this stage still considering.
I assume by your use of the term “strata” that you’re referring to the Strata Manager, who as I’ve outlined above does not have the authority to be “happy” or otherwise about your proposed renovations, or to state that they “should be OK”.
Without knowing the extent of your renovations and in particular if your “opening up” of the kitchen area involves structural changes to your Lot, the removal of floor tiles already constitutes a change to the Common Property (floor) albeit possibly minor, and your proposed laminated floor certainly has the potential to cause impacts to the amenity of other residents (and you recognise that), so there’s no doubt that your proposal should receive the prior written consent of the Owners Corporation (O/C).
Whether the granting of that consent needs to be considered at Executive Committee level or at a General Meeting is unclear to me right now, but what you need to do is to firmly decide upon what it is you want to do in its entirety (i.e. including with the kitchen), who is is that will be doing it, and re the flooring what materials will be used and the specification and installation method of the acoustic underlay, and then put all of that including the Contractors’ insurance details and before your Executive Committee Secretary (or your Strata Manager if they’ve been delegated the functions of that position).
In that way it’s then up to your Executive Committee to decide upon whether it has sufficient information to make a decision, if it can actually do that under the relevant provisions of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act, and if not whether it will instead refer your proposal to a General Meeting.
Finally, the post-construction installation of timber (floating) floors and particularly noise transmission from cheaper laminated variety has become such an issue that proposed changes to NSW Strata Laws would have placed an O/C’s consideration of those in the same category as renovations involving changes, alterations, and additions to the Common Property, where a vote in favour by a minimum 75% of those present at a General Meeting is required for consent . Similarly, FlatChat has a whole Forum devoted to that topic and to the ramifications arising from Owners getting it wrong; check HERE for just one of those.
Oh… just noticed that you were online while I was typing this, so let me add that, even though you don’t sound like someone who would settle for a written form of that proverbial wink-and-nod from Strata, I’d still urge you not to, as it will come back to bite you if despite your best efforts the near neighbours complain, or if at some future time when your Lot is under a contract of sale, you’re lumbered with a pre-settlement condition to restore everything to its original state. So do your homework, make your choices, give the details to your Sec. and leave the decisions up to your O/C. Whale 1355hrs
Boronia – NO it wouldn’t, as unlike the previous matter discussed here, works associated with the installation of a floating floor don’t involve an addition, change, or alteration to the Common Property of the Plan.
However (there’s always at least on of those in Strata) the installation of timber floating floors, and the cheaper laminated versions in particular, often leads to significant problems with the transmission of noise to other Lots both adjacent and below, and with the extent of that being largely dependent upon the structure of the building and how the Lot’s residents conduct themselves.
For that reason the Owners Corporation’s prior written consent to such works should always be sought via its Executive Committee who should at least be provided with details of the product, the type, specification, and performance standard of the acoustic underlay proposed, the Contractor who’s undertaking the works, their insurance coverage, and the time/s and date/s of their proposed works.
It’s worth noting that our lawmakers and strata aficionados so recognised the impacts that I’ve discussed here around post-construction timber floors, that the then proposed reforms to NSW Strata Legislation placed changes of that type in the same category as those involving structural changes to a Lot, thereby requiring all requests for consent to be put as Special Resolutions to a General Meeting of the Owners Corporation.
Further to your due diligence approach, for which you’re to be commended by the way, could you please advise by what process your Strata / Owners Corporation decided that it’s happy for your renovations to proceed?
Has the Agenda for the AGM been issued as yet, because if not, you could yourself add Motions requiring the most recent quotations to be provided in support of the E/C’s Motion, and to have the letterboxes attended to?
If the above is not possible, then you should immediately write to the Secretary of your E/C to formally request that it “exercises its function by causing the Owners Corporation’s (O/C) property within Lot *, specifically the ceiling in (location), to be put in a state of good and serviceable repair within 2 months of (letter’s date) and in accordance with the advice already received from its Contractors and as given in their reports”.
If that’s not done in accordance with the past advice and reports commissioned on behalf of the O/C, and you don’t receive a written explanation from the E/C as to why that’s the case, then you can apply for Orders under Sect 138 on the basis that your E/C’s inaction has caused the O/C to breach Cl.2(b) of that Section.
I know that this saga has been going for 2 years, but your E/C has been responding albeit in an effective way, so you have to put the “acid” on them in the terms suggested above so that Orders of the scope allowed under Sect 138 can be successfully sought.
Once resolved, only then try having the letterboxes attended to using that same approach.
Pam – if you’re in NSW then your Owners Corporation (O/C) doesn’t have to meet in order to resolve to “borrow” money from its Sinking Fund, but the General Meeting would be necessary if no funds are allocated for that specific purpose (legal expenses) in its Administrative Fund, or if those proposed expenses are anticipated to exceed the equivalent of $1K/Lot or $12,500 – whichever is the lesser amount.
So I gather the circumstance at your Plan is the first of the above, where your O/C is meeting to seek approval from a majority of Owners to make a payment for Legal Expenses from its Sinking Fund that should otherwise be paid from its Administrative Fund, and if you don’t want that to pass, then you need to lobby or to otherwise gain sufficient support from like-minded Owners to vote-down that proposal (i.e. by their personal attendance or by granting you their proxy).
So far as the means of reimbursement for that amount to the Sinking Fund is concerned, your O/C doesn’t have to make that payment within 3 months but rather has that timeframe in which to determine how that payment will be made, and over what period.
Sect 71(3) of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act (the Act) applies.
As unfair as it seems, if a majority of those Owners in attendance at the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) resolve in favour of using Sinking Funds to meet legal expenses against you, and to reimburse that amount to the Administrative Fund by way or a Special Levy or as Peter suggested by way of borrowing, then YES you’ll need to contribute to that by way of your own Levy Contributions UNLESS you can be successful in having that component of your personal Contributions ruled “excessive” or “unreasonable” under Sect 149 of the Act, or if your matter is before the NSW Civil & Administrative Tribunal you can be successful in having an Order for costs in your favour; that is against your O/C.
4atRW – I noticed that you logged in earlier today, so as you’re obviously looking for a response I’ll jump in (sorry DaveB).
If the floorboards are those originally installed when the Building was constructed and they’re now defective, then the replacement of those is the Owners Corporation’s (O/C) responsibility, but if the circumstances are (as I suspect) otherwise, such as where the Owners of the Lot just want to replace them with flooring of the same or a different type, then that’s their responsibility, and YES those Owners will need to put that to a General Meeting together with whatever else they’re proposing by way of renovations to their Lot, and including details of precisely what’s proposed (i.e. plans & specs.), who’s doing the work (i.e. names / license & insurance details), and an written undertaking by them to be responsible for the ongoing maintenance, repairs, and replacement of all works comprising their proposal (see last para.).
The above requirements are covered by the provisions of Sect 65(A) of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act (1996), where a minimum 75% of those present at that General Meeting, both personally and by proxy, would need to vote in favour by unit entitlement (i.e. a “poll vote” as opposed to one determined by a a simple majority vote) in order for the Lot Owner’s renovation proposal to be Consented; that’s the Special Resolution referred to in Cl.1 of that Section.
That Consent (if granted) would normally include Conditions such as noise levels during the works, permitted hours-of-work, disposal of building wastes, the movement of materials around the Common property, and the parking of contractors’ vehicles etc etc.
The making of a Special By-Law doesn’t always follow the passing of a Special Resolution, but in this case it should in order to meet the provisions of Cl.3 of Sect 65(A), where the O/C must use that means to at least assign to the Lot Owner the absolute responsibility to properly maintain etc their renovations wherever those involve its Common Property, and in this instance something about max. permissible noise levels transmitted to other Lots (such as yours) post completion of the works.
A Special By-Law of this type should be prepared for the O/C at cost to the Lot Owner, and be presented to the General Meeting concurrently with the Lot Owner’s Proposal, together with that undertaking that I referred to (in para 2) in order to satisfy the provisions of Cl.4(a) of Sect. 65(A).
I hope you’re now better aware of all the procedures involved in an O/C properly considering a Lot Owner’s renovation proposal, but let me tell you that if an O/C gets it wrong or decides that even some of those procedures are unnecessary or just too hard, then there can be (and usually are) undesirable consequences.
Those are for both the Lot Owner who, if a Building Approval is required will need to provide Council with a copy of the O/C’s consent or at least have any required Plans stamped with the O/C’s Common Seal, and if the works are otherwise undertaken will suffer the consequences of a Strata Inspection at the time of a future sale picking-up un-consented works, and further undesirable consequences for the O/C itself who will be lumbered with maintaining works that it neither commissioned nor undertook, at the behest of both the current and all future Owner/s of the Lot involved.
All the more reason for your O/C to get some legal advice, at least on the drafting of that Special By-Law that could by the way be specific to this Lot Owner’s proposals (where they pay) or be generic if your O/C anticipates further proposals of this type from other Owners in the future (where the O/C pays); talk to your Strata Manager and/or to one of FlatChat’s sponsors HERE.
Tess said… I’m presuming it would only be an Owners Corporation responsibility if the wall was part of common property?
Correct, and as Dave said only if the tiles are the original ones fitted at the time of the building’s construction, because if the bathroom’s been since renovated then everything comprising those works is the current Lot Owner’s responsibility.
Tess said… water leaking from shower recess through wall into bedroom in same unit.
This is the Lot Owner’s responsibility, and before someone picks it up, there are a couple of provisos here that I’ve not discussed because they’re uncommon, and would only serve to confuse at this stage.
So that’s the letter-of-the-law approach, but it seems to me that as your Owners Corporation (O/C) has in the past accepted responsibility for similar leakage problems, perhaps it could do the same with this one by offering to share the costs with the Owner concerned; only once though and on the record lest your O/C sets a long-term precedent
….and just to clarify, if the Owners Corporation of simone42 ‘s 33 Lot Plan is not required by its By-Laws to have a Notice Board or if for some other reason it doesn’t have one, then the Agenda for Executive Committee Meetings must be provided to each Owner at least 72 hours beforehand, and the Minutes of such Meetings must be similarly provided within 7 days of their conclusion.
Reference: NSW Strata Schemes Management Act / Schedule 3 / Clauses 6(2) and 16(3).
renjay – you seem to be confusing how the voting majority to pass a special resolution is applied, where it’s not ≥75% of Owners in the Plan who need to vote that way, but rather ≥75% of those in attendance at the Meeting, both personally and by proxy.
Further, you only need a simple majority vote when it comes to electing members of the Executive Committee (E/C), and as those members’ tenure automatically expires at each Annual General Meeting (AGM), if/when the vexatious Owner nominates for re-election at your upcoming AGM, a vote against that by >50% of those in attendance would defeat that nomination.
So whilst you’ll probably still have to do some more lobbying in order to have like-minded Owners attend the AGM or to provide you with their proxies in order to obtain the >50% to vote-down the unwanted E/C nomination, be conscious of the fact that in circumstances where it’s often difficult to have people even nominate for election, there’s no minimum number required to form an E/C (only a max. of 9) and that individual Members once elected can hold multiple positions.
Renjay – I’m a little confused, but assuming the Meeting was the one to change Strata Managers, then even though there were only three (3) attendees, if that was was a quorum (albeit as you state barely) then I don’t understand why there was no vote on the Motion, because in that way you could either have adjourned it, defeated it, or found out if the instigator really did have those proxies and thereby passed it and put the whole saga to bed, and have your easily-manipulated majority suffer the consequences!
Anyway it’s too late now particularly as there’s an AGM on the way, but again I’m confused about your statement that you’ll “never have the necessary 75% in attendance at AGM or EGM to even attempt a motion to exclude”; exclude what?
If you mean to vote-down or to defer the Motion to terminate one Agency Agreement and to commence another, then that’s determined one way or the other by a simple majority vote, where you only need 51% of those in attendance at the Meeting (including by proxy) to decide upon the outcome.
Quite frankly, other to again urge you and like-minded Owners to also letterbox drop in order to encourage a majority to attend the AGM or to at least sign yet another proxy (as a replacement for any given to the instigator) including their explicit instructions regarding a change of Strata Manager at item 3, then I don’t know what more I can suggest as a means to have your Owners Corporation make an informed decision on this issue.
Perhaps print all the responses here and distribute that with your letterbox drop, together with a blank proxy form.
Good advice from DaveB, and in addition to perusing the Strata Community NSW Website and linked publications, also have a look at the Strata Scheme pages on the NSW Department of Fair Trading’s Website HERE.
I’ve been managing all aspects of our Strata Scheme for almost 10 years now, and with the benefit of hindsight my only regrets are that we began the process too soon after voting that way at the Annual General Meeting, where everyone was so enthusiastic to proceed and soon thereafter even my fellow Executive Committee Members (E/C) were reluctant to even slightly participate, that all our records as kept and maintained for so long by the outgoing Strata Manager were so inaccessible (i.e. all on paper) and poorly maintained (i.e. not indexed) that it took me months to just get my mind around that, and that I didn’t anticipate those few whinging owners that nobody could please – one of those sent me 35 e-mails during Dec and Jan when a real Strata Manager would have been on holidays!
So… if I had my time over, I’d have moved from a full Agency Agreement with our then Strata Manager to one called a “Record Keeping Agreement”, where as the name implies a Strata Manager records the correspondence in and out (incl e-mails), arranges the insurance, collects the levies, follows-up late payments, prepares draft budgets, prepares meeting agendas and records the minutes, organises quotations, and then only with the prior approval of the E/C acts on correspondence, pays the bills, finalises proposed budgets, convenes meetings, engages contractors, and arranges site maintenance and repairs.
Then after 12 months or so of that arrangement while the E/C looks around for the “tools” to then collectively take-on responsibility for its finance and administration activities and considers some training necessary to thereby progress to self-management, assuming it still wants to, then it can take that step on a fully informed basis as opposed one where it just sounded like a good idea at the time.
Don’t get me wrong though, because in our 27 Lot Scheme’s circumstances almost all of our owners say that it’s the best thing we ever did – but then I’m not blind to the fact that those opinions largely driven by the average $12K per year that we’ve saved over the years, the property improvements that we’ve then been able to fund, our now healthy sinking fund, the progressive lowering of levies, and of course the fact that I do all the work for free.
Some things to think about!
Waz – an Owners Corporation granting the type of consent that you state is in your Plan’s By-Laws is quite unusual, and as your proposed works would have required a vote at a General meeting as a Special Resolution, where an opposing vote by only those two Executive Committee Member/Owners that you’ve referred to would, depending upon their unit entitlements, have seen your proposal defeated in that forum, I’m wondering if you actually have the type of consent that’s required for the scope of works that you propose.
So before I and others head down a blind alley, could you please advise the nature and content of the By-Law that you’ve referred to, and by what process it came into being?
Honestly… my original post (#2) commenced with “My Mate Peter won’t agree but…”. Then I thought nah, there’s no mention of solar and only a casual reference to electric vehicles so he won’t find this one, and why confuse all our casual flat-chatters with oblique in-house references such as the one that I proposed, so I deleted it.
You’re amazing Peter – you never fail to add-value to discussions here especially (like all of us) around your pet topics, but for the record, when reviewing the Mitsubishi iMiEV, one of our largest motoring organisations concluded that “compared with a similar petrol powered small car, the MiEV is $30k more expensive, and a $30k price/$700 savings per year = 43 years to make up the difference in price (not counting finance, opportunity costs, etc)”.
Anyway, back to refurbishing my 1987 Jaguar Sovereign with that wonderful 5.3 litre HE (“high efficiency”) V12 engine, with its Lucas electronics that could probably power a iMiEV on its own.
OK, but it would be a lot easier on those here who are trying to advise you if the story wasn’t revealed drip by drip.
Anyway, on the basis of all that advice in the context that you’ve now revealed, I’d be comfortable with letting your resident complain all they like because there’s been no change to the Common Property within the scope of Sect 65A and there’s been no unauthorised expenditure (in fact there’s been none at all).
My faucet is now closed!
I hope that you weren’t aware of that further detail at the time of your first post, because if you were, then fair dinkum…. what were you worried about?