I got into my first Twitter war last week when I tweeted that tenants can take their strata plan to the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal to get common property repaired.
“Tenants should take their landlords to the CTTT,” tweeted @TUNSW (the Tenants Union of NSW), “because the landlord should have taken the owners corp there in the first place!”
I was confused. This wasn’t what Fair Trading told me. But it turned out we were both right.
When tenants are suffering because of badly maintained common property, they have two choices. They can apply directly to the CTTT to make the building’s owners corp do repairs. Applications costs $74.
Alternatively they can go to the tenancy section of Fair Trading, pay $36 and apply to have their landlord ordered to take the building to the CTTT to make them fix problems. Not only is it cheaper, they could also get compensation.
It’s your choice: pay half the fee, force your landlord to do what they should be doing anyway, and maybe get some compensation; or pay double, cut out one step in the process and avoid a direct confrontation with your landlord.
Sometimes the right thing isn’t the best thing – but don’t Tweet me on that.