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Mini – I don’t think matters are as complex as all that.
It’s increasingly common these days for the original dwelling on a parcel of land to be retained whenever the site is subject to a multi-unit development; this usually (but not exclusively) occurs when the dwelling is heritage listed.
When the completed development is covered by a strata title, the original dwelling, often refurbished to the extent permitted by its Listing together with a defined area around as “garden space”, is given a lot number and a unit entitlement in the overall Plan.
In your example the By-Laws grant “exclusive use and enjoyment” and as that type of By-Law usually applies to areas of the Common Property that can be enjoyed, I doubt that the intention is segregate the responsibility for the overall maintenance and repair of the buildings themselves. As other posts have alluded to, this would give rise to the complexity of differential levies, and as I’ve said, I don’t think that’s the intention.
So no Mini, I don’t think that the Owner of the house would be individually responsible for external maintenance and repairs to that house or that they could make alterations such as those you mention (e.g. solar panels, water tank etc) without Owners Corporation (O/C) consent.
Rather, it’s more likely that Proprietors’ Contributions to the Plan’s Administrative and Sinking Funds and the expenditures from those would function in the normal way across all the Common Property, except those covered by the Exclusive Use By-Laws – where the Owner of the house wouldn’t contribute to the costs of overall grounds maintenance (i.e. gardening and grass cutting around the building), and the Owners of the other Lots wouldn’t contribute to those activities on the “garden space” of the house.
I hope I haven’t made this (even) more confusing Mini, but if you’re serious about purchasing the house, ask your Solicitor / Conveyancer to arrange for a Strata Search, and if the Plan is operating (i.e. a functioning O/C) specifically request commentary on the operation of the Exclusive Use By-Laws, and if it’s not operating, request a Legal Opinion on how it would operate.
Hello again Ruffy, don’t worry – slanging matches rarely occur on FlatChat, and if matters head in that direction then the Moderator swiftly puts and end it!
So back to your subject – it’s not pets per se that are a problem in Strata Schemes, but rather that dogs almost always are for the reasons that I gave earlier.
That said, you’re correct in your assessment that the By-Laws “should balance the needs of the current owners”, but achieving that balance is problematic when a significant number of residents are not owners; that’s too often the case.
In order to progress matters without getting your Executive Committee (E/C) off-side, why not find out who the E/C Secretary is (your Strata Manager can tell you) and have an informal chat with them about the matter and flag your desire to raise it informally with other resident owners and perhaps with some of the long-term tenants (if any) prior to the upcoming AGM.
Even if that doesn’t go over well, at least you can then make an informed decision about whether to gauge support prior to the AGM in an effort to get that ≥75% support, to submit a Motion for the Agenda of the AGM, or to do nothing at all (for now).
By the way ….. have you read the precise wording of that Special By-Law, because in an ideal world such documents should be instructive rather than strictly prohibitive, so there may be an “out”?
Ruffy, a Special By-Law can be repealed using the same process that created it, that is by ≥75% of Owners present personally or by proxy voting in favour (to repeal) at a General Meeting.
That said, dogs simply don’t belong in apartments – it’s not fair to them or to the human residents who invariably have to tolerate barking that echos throughout the corridors every time the dog’s acute hearing detects a noise, and have to suffer those inconsiderate owners who allow their dogs to defecate on the Common Property because they’re too lazy or time-poor to take their animals to the dog park.
Sorry, but I don’t think you’re being reasonable by buying your apartment armed with the knowledge that the Special By-Law excluding dogs was in place, and by now even considering an approach to your Owners Corporation to repeal that Special By-Law simply for monetary gain.
As CBF suggested, perhaps you should reconsider your position by renting to a non-pet owning tenant.
P of M – Good Move!!
Your first post indicated that you moved to self-management “because of high unit management fees”, but I suspect that you also want some control over how your money is spent.
If my suspicion is correct and your neighbour feels the same way, then I’d suggest that for the time being at least you keep a tight rein on the delegations given to the Strata Manager by the Owners Corporation (i.e. both of you).
You don’t want to “hire a dog and bark yourself”, but your Owners Corporation (O/C) can insist upon things such as a minimum two quotes for common property works and for insurance accompanied by recommendation/s by your Strata Manager, and that no expenditure may be made for other than routine items such as utility charges and grounds maintenance without the prior approval of the O/C.
Once your O/C is confident that the Strata Manager is providing the service that you require, then you can back-off a little and perhaps ask them to just advise you about what they’re doing as opposed to seeking the OK before doing it.
VNL, with regard to the performance (or lack thereof) of the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal (CTTT), my experience with the Strata Division is very similar to yours, although I had two (2) wins out of five (5) hearings once I eventually negotiated the adjudication talk-fest.
Even then however, in both instances the residents in breach of our Plan’s By-Laws didn’t comply with Orders, and based upon uncollected mail left behind when one of those was eventually persuaded to vacate, didn’t make penalty payments either.
As I can’t afford to deposit $1M to Jimmy T’s lawsuit fund, I’ll limit my observations to the suggestion that members of quasi legal organisations such as those dealing with strata, industrial relations, and planning matters (where I’ve also had some less than memorable experiences) didn’t all gain appointment to their positions on the basis of their legal knowledge or even their practical knowledge of the matters they adjudicate upon.
Yet even on the basis of my own experiences and my appreciation of your frustrations with the CTTT, I will never concede that circumventing their system or any other is a means to overcome its shortcomings, rather it merely makes those who put it in place think that it’s all okey-dokey.
So what to do?
Well, it seems to me that as Minister Roberts (Fair Trading) seems fair-dinkum about his Government’s Review of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act, and as there were earlier balloons flown by the Premier about “rationalising” the locations of the CTTT (at least), that a Submission to that Review and a letter to the Minister about the latter in your case would be well received.
I’ve done both of the above, and suggested amongst other things that Owners Corporations (O/C) should be regarded as “persons” in the Tenancy Division of the CTTT and thereby be able to bring actions to terminate the Leases of unruly tenants, and that O/Cs should be able to issue prescribed penalties to residents who breach By-Laws, and suffer the consequences of not following procedures and thereby getting it wrong.
No response from the Minister on my personal representation, but I’m confident that I’ll receive something; eventually.
Jimmy T has already answered most if not all of your questions, and it seems to me that you’re heading for a whole heap of trouble if you don’t heed that advice and/or if you take notice of what your “casual” neighbour wants to do!
I’m not in any way having a go at you, but perhaps you should have sorted out all the issues involved in strata management before making the decision to self-manage – a task that’s not as easy to do correctly as some might think!
I’m not in the business of pushing other peoples’ barrows, but nonetheless I’d strongly encourage you to contact a Company called Our Body Corp who has recently established an on-line service with all the tools (including advice) to enable Strata Plan’s to self-manage, and at a quoted cost of $84 / Lot / year.
Have a look, because unlike listening to your casual neighbour, it can’t do any harm.
I know that the NSW Office of Fair Trading (OFT) provides an on-line licence checking service for persons such as Strata Managers whose activities are covered by the Property, Stock and Business Agents Act 2002.
So maybe try that, and if substantiated complaints aren’t listed (as I know they are for tradespeople), then contact the OFT directly as I don’t see why general information about the numbers of complaints, and the numbers of those that have been substantiated / upheld could not be disclosed in the consumers’ interest.
Whilst I don’t subscribe to the view that people behave inappropriately on purpose, but rather because they just don’t know any better, Juan’s posts don’t fit that model in my opinion.
Juan, I think that for some reason you’re regularly and deliberately making contentious statements, some with obscure references that most don’t follow (unless they’re South Park fans), and too often feigning anger and indignation.
I don’t need to know the reason, but if you can’t add value to the discussions without the aggro then I think it’s time for you to take another “I’m outta here” holiday, lest Jimmy T takes out the red card, because I for one have almost had enough.
Those who read my posts will know that I don’t curry favour with Strata Management Companies, but I think you’re being a bit hard on them with regard to the advice provided to your neighbours.
Most Strata Managers will happily convene Annual General Meetings (AGMs) in the evenings or even on weekends, but they’ll likely charge the Owners Corporation for the use of their rooms and/or their time, which in my opinion is fair enough.
Advise your neighbours to check their Plan’s Agency Agreement with their Strata Manager, where they’ll almost certainly find a schedule of fees including those for meetings held after-hours. They’ll then be in a position to assess whether meeting convenience is worth the cost.
With regard to Insurance, I doubt that the presence of BBQs etc would impact upon your Plan’s insurance cover, but that would depend upon the content of the Policy Disclosure Statement applicable to your Plan’s policy; you should read that.
Remember that the Model By-Laws only apply if they’ve been adopted by your Owners Corporation (O/C), and in any case By-Law 18 about the “appearance of the lot” is a little subjective, and is really more applicable to permanent alterations than it is to portable items such as BBQs.
If your O/C wants to manage BBQs and similar items purely from the perspective of fire safety and there are possible impacts at your Plan, then By-Law 11 may be of some benefit, but……
In my opinion, the best option would be for your O/C to manage the issue rather than to prohibit it, and the way to do that is for Proprietors to Specially Resolve (i.e. ≥75% in favour) at a General Meeting to create and register a Special By-Law to specifically manage the placement and use of BBQs / Gas Bottles / Gas Heaters on Lots.
Two comments here for jlong and daphne…..
1) I earlier today posted the name of company called Strata Match whose ad I heard on a Sydney radio station yesterday. I know absolutely nothing about this company, but they appear to provide a service that’s similar to those companies who match / compare private health insurance providers. They list a phone contact on their website, so maybe give them a call in the first instance to see if they provide the type of service that you’re looking for.
2) Careful about changing strata managers without first reading the termination clause of your Plan’s Agreement with its current provider. As Kiwipaul said you’ll need to resolve to do that at a General Meeting, and that may need to be convened at least 3 months before the desired termination date, as most Agreements require that period of notice to terminate without penalty.
Here’s another example of a poor performing Owners Corporation (O/C) and of a large Strata Management Organisation whose Strata Manager’s practices encourages and indeed perpetuates that poor performance
Almost two (2) years ago, my Son and Daughter-in-Law purchased an investment property in a large Plan (of townhouses) where the maintenance of the Common Property (grounds) is extremely poor and where enforcement of the By-Laws is ignored, particularly with regard to parking on the Common Property.
As they’re aware of my involvement in matters strata, they asked me to attend the 2011 Annual General Meeting (AGM) as their Proxy.
So I sent the completed proxy to the Strata Manager, and as I know that this Organisation doesn’t provide Notices of the Meeting, I asked my Son to ring him to ask when the AGM was to be convened, and where, and as a new Proprietor to ask for a copy of the Minutes of the last AGM.
Luckily, the timing of the AGM gave my Son just enough time to submit an “expertly” worded Motion about addressing the poor standard of grounds maintenance and about the flagrant breaches of the By-Law 2 (parking on common property).
The date of the Meeting arrived, so I attended and met with the Strata Manager and with the four (4) Proprietors in attendance.
No Minutes of the previous AGM and no Quorum, so we had the customary “meeting” to discuss the Motions, including the one about the grounds maintenance and the parking breaches where I explained the O/C’s obligations to properly maintain its Common Property and to enforce its By-Laws, and those in attendance also offered some considered comments on the Proposed Budgets which the Strata Manager had simplistically based on the preceding year’s budget instead of that year’s actual expenditure.
After “meeting” for around 45 minutes no further Proprietors arrived, so the AGM was then adjourned, to be reconvened after the prescribed seven (7) days. I told the Strata Manager that my Son would likely attend the reconvened Meeting in person, whereupon he advised that it would be easier if everyone just completed a Proxy Form in his favour so that he could “have the reconvened AGM with himself”; despite my protest all 4 Proprietors complied.
As almost twelve (12) months has passed, I mentioned this year’s AGM to my Son. We both went through his papers and found that the Agenda for the reconvened 2011 AGM had not been provided, so he didn’t attend.
Furthermore, the Minutes of that reconvened AGM revealed that the 4 proxies provided after the adjourned AGM had been bolstered by a further 32 proxies in the intervening 9 days to the date of the reconvened AGM.
So a quorum was achieved, and the Strata Manager had the “meeting with himself” to resolve to approve everything, including the original Budgets as simplistically proposed, and the referral of the Motion regarding the Grounds Maintenance and the Parking Breaches to the Executive Committee, the 3 Members of which didn’t attend either the adjourned AGM or the reconvened AGM in person or by proxy but are shown as being “self-nominated” and “duly elected” in the Minutes (??), and who have never met at anytime between the re-convened AGM and this date (!!)
My Son has submitted the original Motion for inclusion of this year’s AGM, together with his advice to the effect that they can “do this the easy and cheap way – just make the required decisions – or the hard way, which is to waste time and money fighting it, and end up having to do it anyway (probably even more expensively, given that a Statutory Manager will err on the expensive side of caution when it comes to paying for the work” (J.T.).
The Consultation Feed-Back recently received by the Minister for Fair Trading (NSW) must have suggested that many Proprietors are disillusioned with the service provided by their Strata Managers. I can’t think why (much), but there seems to be some opportunistic advertising and websites popping-up lately that purport to assist Proprietors in their selection of a (better) Strata Manager – I heard this one advertised on Sydney radio yesterday.
Self-management works best for me!!
Yes.. an Owner can submit a motion to rescind or amend a resolution taken at a previous General Meeting, and the motion to do that would need to be submitted in writing to the Executive Committee Secretary within a timefame that would permit him/her to include it on the Agenda, and then distribute that Agenda to Proprietors 7 days before the date of the Meeting.
Yes.. an un-financial Owner can submit a motion, but they cannot vote on it at the subsequent Meeting unless they are then financial (i.e. on the day of the Meeting) unless the motion being voted upon is one of the few that requires a unanimous resolution like terminating the Strata Scheme or rescinding an Exclusive Use (Special) By-Law.
Section 62(3) of the SCMA only makes reference to a Special Resolution, and if the Minutes of the Meeting include a statement that the Resolution about the transformers will “remain in force until otherwise resolved by proprietors at a general meeting”, then I believe that’s sufficient. If those words or some similar aren’t included, and the matter wasn’t again specially resolved at each AGM since 2006, then in my opinion the status quo applies and the O/C is responsible for the transformers etc.
If you opt for the 240vac adaptor, then you’ll never need a transformer ever again.
Jimmy – always feel free to nit-pick; after all you’re the man!
To explain my logic though, I was suggesting that whilst the O/C may have made an expedient decision to do works that would otherwise be the responsibility of residents, if it included the costs of those “private” works in its administrative fund budget, then it may be seen as accepting the legal responsibility for those works and any consequences arising from them, for all time.
It’s analogous to what I do with pest inspections and treatments at my Plan, where I arrange for the contractors working on the Common Property to quote for and provide a concurrent service to my Proprietors on their Lots.
The O/C and its Proprietors both get a cheaper service whilst the contractor’s on-site, but as I don’t want the O/C to be forever lumbered with works that are the legal responsibility of residents, I pay the contractor and then include each Proprietors’ share of the costs as a separate line-item on their Levy Contributions Invoice.
What do you all think about that approach?