Good strata advice and where to find it

The recent story about the elderly couple hit with a “cruel” special levy, the costs trebled by fighting an unwinnable case in court, has highlighted the importance of good, reliable advice for apartment owners.

It’s one of the many ironies of apartment living that the people at the bottom of the totem pole – the tenants – generally get the best advice.  Just search online for tenants.org and you will get straight to the Tenants Union website for your state.

There you will find all the fact sheets, information, advice and forms you need to negotiate the often murky waters of residential tenancy laws.

We often advise landlords who are in dispute with their tenants to consult their Tenants Union website because that’s where they will find the facts of rental life laid out in simple terms.

Which invites the question, where do investors and resident owners go for advice on strata issues?  And the answer is, of course, it depends where you live. 

Strata laws differ greatly from state to state but NSW apartment owners are probably the best looked after. 

The slick new Fair Trading strata website looks good and has a lot of easy-to-find information.  However, if your problem lives in one of the many grey areas of strata law, you might not find a solution and there is no easy avenue for asking questions.

The independent Owners Corporation Network website is steadily building its members forum, where owners and committee members can share advice and opinions.  OCN is coming up to its 20^th anniversary; its longevity an indicator of its value to the strata community.

Strata Community Association (NSW), the strata managers’ and service providers’ umbrella organisation, has an owners section, which conducts online training courses for committee members (and others) at $50 a pop.

Sydney lawyer Amanda Farmer has a popular website (yourstrataproperty.com.au), Facebook page and weekly live podcast where she answers members’ questions and discusses the latest issues. Soemwervices are free, some require a monthly subscription.

Marrickville Legal Centre will provide free strata advice for low income owner- residents in strata in NSW. And for straightforward information on the state’s strata law you can’t go past strataman.com.au. And for a good solid lsection by section guide to the NSW strata Act, you can’t go past strataman.com.au.

In Victoria, the Consumer Affairs Website offers limited advice.  Meanwhile website welivehere.net is gradually overcoming some early setbacks, including being a failed single-issue campaign against short-term holiday lets, and having the dot-com version of their web address linked to a porn site.

In Queensland the snappily named Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management has FAQs.  Meanwhile, the Unit Owners Association is battling to have the law changed so that apartment owners can choose their own building managers rather than having those rights sold and resold for periods of 25 years or more.

They are also struggling to get local councils to enforce their own laws which forbade short-term letting as a condition of certain residential development approvals.

Elsewhere, individual strata management firms and strata lawyers have websites and newsletters that contain information about the latest twist and turns of strata law.

Nationally, there’s lookupstrata.com.au, which is run by a strata management firm but carries good (if a little dry) advice and information from strata managers and lawyers.

Or you could just google “body corporate” and your state but beware; there are websites popping up all over the internet, presenting as owners’ support portals but often turning out to be little more than baited hooks for real estate agents and strata managers.

However, if you want a rambunctious, opinionated website where you can ask questions that will be answered mostly accurately but always entertainingly, by strata professionals and owners alike, you’re already looking at it.

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