Take two buildings in the same strata scheme – one is tall, the other is small. The tall one contains 36 units and has lifts to service the upper floors and the underground garage.
The small one is only two storeys high, including the ground floor, and has no lift; instead it has external stairs to access the three apartments on the upper floor.
One of the owners on the upper floor has proposed installing a lift, paid for by the three upstairs owners plus the strata scheme.
But one of the three owners upstairs people doesn’t want to pay for a lift, so it would be paid for by the other two owners plus the strata scheme, each having to pay one-third more than they would otherwise have been billed.
Our Flatchatter wants to know if this is fair and if not, what can be done about it. Our response is that it’s not remotely fair on the other owners who are going to have to stump up one-36th of one-third of the cost for a lift that they don’t need and can’t used.
The numerate among you will have worked out that’s about one-hundreth of the total cost, which is estimated to be about $90,000. So, would you pay $900 so that your neighbours didn’t have to carry their shopping up a flight of stairs?
More to the point, should the strata scheme be contributing to anything that only benefits three owners who presumably knew there wasn’t a lift when they bought in?
And how much more valuable will their units be when the lift is installed? It’s not just a convenience, it’s an investment tht will soon pay off.
If that pushes your buttons, you can comment HERE.
How to ask and answer questions
Anyone can read our posts at any time, but you must be registered to ask or answer questions. However, there are so many easy ways you can search, access, ask questions and reply to others’ queries once you have registered using the green “register and sign in …” box on this page.
The best way may be to click on “Forum: Your Qs & A’s” on the top menu bar or on the drop-down menu (three lines) on the screen on phones and tablets, under the Strata Choice ad. Then click on the topic title that interests you, and off you go.
Alternatively, you can click on the new “Latest Qs and As” Forum button on the top right of a computer screen or the link on the “hamburger” menu on a phone.
Or look at the list of “Your latest questions and answers” under the ads on the right of the page on a computer screen. Or at the bottom, after the ads and stories, on a tablet or phone.
finally, you can go “old school” and go to the Forum Home Page and work your way through the topics there.
Whichever route you take to get there, the best way to keep up to speed with what’s happening is to register (if you haven’t already done so), then login and subscribe for free to the topics that interest you most. That way you’ll get an alert whenever the discussion moves forward, and you can also chip in with your own comments and questions. Have a look HERE at our instant guide to getting online.