Podcast: Insure bets and hot seat questions

I know we already have two posts up on the website but we couldn’t let the news that an insurer is going to offer a 10-year warranty on new apartment blocks pass without comment.

This is a huge deal for apartment buildings in NSW and, you would have to think, for the rest of Australia too (if their state governments can get over their instinctive and deep-seated contempt for apartment owners and residents).

This is exactly what Building Commissioner David Chandler set out to achieve – get the trust in quality of apartment block construction to the point where insurers were prepared to back them. 

---

LISTEN HERE

---

What follows next is that potential buyers will avoid the blocks that aren’t insured. Then the developers whose reputations mean they can’t get gold star approval, and therefore insurance, will go out of business.

And this time it will be for good – not just until they can take another $200 company and start ripping people off all over again.

That said, the main part of this week’s podcast is the first part of Lawyer in the Hot Seat where strata lawyer (and Flat Chat sponsor) David Bannerman answers your questions, fired at him by yours truly.

In this, the first of three parts of our Q&A, David answers questions about mould, including who can claim what from whom, and possible NCAT orders if you or your tenant discovers mould. 

And on the broader subject of defects, we’ll be talking about what is actually the start date for the window in which you can claim against your developer for repairs and remediation.

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap..

TRANSCRIPT

Because I have recorded different parts of this at different times, and then split the Lawyer in the Hot Seat webinar recording into three parts, there has been a lot of cutting and pasting.  That means the timings will definitely not relate to the audio and some of the transcriptions may not be as accurate as usual.

Please bear with us and, hey, maybe this is your opportunity to receive this as it was intended.  Just click on the play arrow under “Listen Here” and let your computer or phone do the work. – JimmyT

Jimmy  00:00

Do you know what the word decennial means?

Sue  00:02

Is it every 10 years or something like that? Yeah. Why do you seem so surprised?

Jimmy  00:08

Well, I didn’t know what it was. I kept reading about David Chandler, the building Commissioner talking about decennial insurance. And I’m going, what is the decennial, and why does it need to be insured? I asked him why? He doesn’t mind a bit of jargon, Commissioner Chandler, and he loves an acronym. He loves initials and the sometimes you read his stuff, and you think I’m gonna have to send this to ASIO to get decoded.

Anyway, we will be talking about the decennial insurance and how that’s the final piece of the new building gold star iCIRT – there’s another acronym –  approval system and how it’s going to, or it should make a big change for people who are buying new apartments, especially off the plan. And then the rest of the podcast will be devoted to a big chunk of my Lawyer In The Hot Seat session.

Sue  01:15

Great. So that’s answering lots of questions about lots of different things.

Jimmy  01:19

Yes, lots of different things.

Sue  01:21

So Jimmy, talking about the commissioner liking acronyms, I seem to think to seem to remember that you made a speech the other day, and you mentioned a number of acronyms that were particularly pertinent to strata.

Jimmy  01:33

Well, yeah, that may be my made-up fun ones. Like, WTF means “where’s the finance?” And AC/DC means “Anyway, Call David Chandler”. LOL: “lower our levies”.

Sue  01:52

That is not the only one, isn’t it?

Jimmy  01:54

Well, yeah, no, it definitely not the only one. I keep getting people coming on the forum and using acronyms. And I’m going to have no idea what you’re talking about. And I have to look it up. But we have a list of acronyms, now. Here we have a glossary.

Sue  01:52

Oh, good. On the Flat Chat website. Right, we’d better get on with this. I’m Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.

Sue  02:17

And I’m Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.

Jimmy  02:20

And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

So I covered this at some length in the column in the fin review over the weekend, and it will be on line on the Flat Chat website, [here and here], for anyone who wants to read it. A company called Resilience Insurance. Not Braziliance, as you said earlier. It’s funny the way they’ve worded it because Victor Dominello and David Chandler, Victor Dominello, being the minister have everything to do with I think it’s Customer Service, Digital Innovation, Fair Trading and Small Business, the way they’ve worded this is that they have accepted an application by Resilience Insurance to provide 10 year warranty for new buildings.

Sue  03:20

Fantastic. So did the building Commissioner put it out to tender kind of thing?

Jimmy  03:24

I don’t know if it was as formal as. And I think there’s still some steps to go through that they have to put legislation in place, but it’s going to be part of the building bonds scheme. And I think their hope is that eventually buildings, that get to their gold star rating of three or more will get insurance, and they might not need to put a bond in. Okay, whereas buildings that don’t get the gold star rating, will still need to put the the 2% bond in place

Sue  03:59

And that will be a big thing for buyers of new apartments, won’t it? If they kind of if they can see that the building is going to have insurance? Yep. There will be much cleaner, I would have thought to buy those apartments rather than the apartments that don’t have an insurance.

Jimmy  04:13

Yeah, it’s almost like a negative effect. It’s a reverse effect where the buildings that don’t have insurance that don’t have the gold star rating, then you would look at them and go Well, really, I don’t really I don’t want to buy these I don’t want to deal with these developers. And I think the eventual outcome will be that the buildings, the good developers will get the gold star rating. And then the insurers will say, well, we want to, to cover them because there’s money to be made.

Sue  04:45

Yeah. And then the other insurers come into the market. I would imagine this is just the first one ,maybe.

Jimmy  04:50

You know, David is quite smart in this way. You know he wants competition, because he knows that competition drives prices down. And if there’s no competition, if there’s a monopoly, then people can charge whatever they want. So this is just the first. But you know that that they put themselves in a good position, Resilience, because they will become the by-word for insurance of big buildings to begin with. But I believe that there are other insurers just looking very carefully at the options. Now, so you’ve got your people with the three poor more gold stars who are listed, but not the number of stars, they’ve got just the fact that they’ve got the stars, yeah, they’ll get insurance, you would assume.

And then you’ve got the people who have never got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a star rating. And then you’ve got the ones on the fringe, you’ve got the people who are pretty good, and they’re aware that they’re gonna have to lift their game, but they haven’t done it yet. And they’re faced with the choice of either we’ve got to get this rating or go out of business, because the ones who don’t have a rating, who can’t get insurance, eventually they’ll just go out of business, because you’d have to be very, very, very stupid to go and look at two apartments or two developments and go, I’m gonna go the one was the one that can’t get insurance. Yeah.

Sue  06:09

Because you’d know that there was some issues with those buildings. That’s why it hasn’t got a three star rating or more. Yeah. So it might be kind of structural issues, or it might be the kind of partners that they have in their finance world. So yeah, I mean, owner occupiers wouldn’t be keen and investors wouldn’t be either. I mean, they don’t want to be hassled with building problems.

Jimmy  06:32

They don’t want to or at the point we now are getting to  very rapidly, where if you go and buy from a developer who doesn’t have a star rating, and doesn’t have insurance coverage, when things go wrong in the future, which they almost inevitably will, the government is going to say, you’re on your own. We’ve done everything we’ve done everything we possibly could, because that star rating is it’s not just how good they are at their building and how how well built it is. It is, as you mentioned before, have the directors been in trouble before? Have they have they been bankrupted before? Have they been involved in companies that have Phoenixed that you know that they’ve closed them down deliberately, so they don’t have to meet their responsibilities. All of that is taken care of, in the assessment, not just the directors, but the members of the families so that you know, this thing of you know, that a lot of these dodgy companies, it’s, you know, Auntie Jezebel, from Wagga Wagga has the name on the on the company title, she’s not probably not even aware that she’s a director as a company. But Equifax because they are basically a credit rating agency. They’ve got access to all this information, and they can track these people down and make the connections for you. So really, it’s one step. But it’s a huge step.

Sue  07:53

It is.  I mean, I didn’t ever think we’d get to this point.

Jimmy Neither did I.

Sue

But it’s incredible, really. I mean, that’s when he came into his into office. Mr. Chandler, this is the point at which you said he wanted to reach and I think everybody thought, Oh, no chance of that. But in fact, he’s doing it,  all credit to him, really.

Jimmy  08:09

And when you think where he was just a couple of months ago, on his way, I couldn’t deal with the minister of the time, I was being told to go and talk to developers that he had shut down their work for very good reason. And he realised then that all of this was on the verge of happening, and it was all about to be snatched away. And you know, it was a very brave thing he did. Both he and John Minns, the Property Services Commissioner just said, Alright, we’re off. Put their jobs on the line for it. Really?

Yeah.

Sue

And it’s to the credit of the government that they said no, they backed the right person. Yeah. And that’s been proven by Resilience Insurance. 

Jimmy

These insurers, we will have checked this very, very, very carefully. So it’s great. It’s a big step forward. It’s big news.

Sue  09:02

Yeah. And it’s interesting because you think those people who are in the property industry kind of just marginally thinking, you know, what, I could become a developer I’m sure it’s not I’m sure it’s easy in big money to be made. And they just kind of go in buy a site, contract builders and don’t really have much of a reputation well don’t have any, you know, don’t have any background in developing at all. Those developers must be thinking now actually, I think it’s a really much more difficult industry to get into there’s much more regulation now. Yeah, and a much less straightforward end result if I don’t do the job properly. So hopefully it will deter any newcomers who just chancers, really.

Jimmy  09:43

David Chandler refers to them as people with a mobile phone and a credit card.

Sue

And a ute.

Jimmy

Yeah, and you know, like they’ll go off into other industries for which they’re better suited like drug dealing.

Sue

Now, Jimmy!

Jimmy

When we come back, we’re going to give you the first part part of lawyer in the hot seat, which was from a couple of weeks ago when I logged on to Zoom as did about 200 other people, and I fired questions at Strata lawyer David Bannerma. That’s after this.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

And we’re back. A couple of weeks ago, I logged into a zoom session with strata lawyer and our sponsor, David Bannerman, for what he calls Lawyer In The Hot Seat. The idea was that his clients and our readers could send questions in about strata law. Originally about 300 people, I think registered. And during the course of the Zoom call, at any one time, there’s about 160 people listening in, which tells me a couple of things. Not everybody who wanted to take part actually managed to find the time to get on line. And I also think there’s a lot of our readers who would not necessarily be comfortable with the Zoom webinar thing.

So for the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be putting David Bannerman’s Lawyer In The Hot Seat on this podcast. Now, the topics that we will get to this week as a lot about mould, which is quite relevant, because there’s been a lot of water around a lot of apartments that have never suffered mould in the past are now dealing with it or trying to, and we’re talking about burst pipes. We’ll be talking about typical NCAT orders if you discover mould or if your tenant discovers mould, what you can do. And getting back to defects, we’ll be talking about what is actually the start date for your warranty. So the sound quality is not too bad this time because we told David to go and buy a microphone after the last time. So enjoy that and enjoy that. And we’ll catch up with you in a minute.

David  00:00

Thanks for coming along and listening to myself and Jimmy Thomson. Jimmy Thomson has run Flat Chat Wrap for Domain forever. He is a frequent contributor in the AFR now. And so we’ve put together some topics and some questions that are frequently asked, to try and help the strata community get on top of the issues and make life run a bit smoother. So okay… We’ll kick off now. All right, fire away, Jimmy!

Jimmy  01:02

Okay, we’ve got so many questions to get through, we might have to put this on speed replay at 1.5. Thanks for inviting me to do this again, David. So let’s get to the first question, which; we’ve got a whole bunch of questions about mould and I’m guessing that’s partly because there’s just so much rain around and you know, we’ve come out of a cold and rainy winter and that’s when mould is at its worst. So question number one ‘what are the typical defences available to dispute a mould claim?

David  02:09

From an owners corporation point of view, a lot of people will ask the strata manager to address whatever mould concerns that they have. Some of these male concerns have no correlation with the failing in the common property, which is where the strata manager and the owner’s corporations liability arises from. If there is a liability there, for the owners corporation through a failure to repair and maintain the common property, well then, there is many a mould claim running through the Tribunal at the moment; many decisions have been issued. The defences though for that, are that well, it’s not a common property failure, so it could have been any of a number of things. It could have been the fact that it’s been cold, and people haven’t been opening their windows, and there’s no air circulation and so the condensation just builds up internally, and therefore, the mould grows from that. Another defence might be that, well, the owners corporation is actually trying to get the defective particle on property fixed and it’s taken an action against the person who’s responsible; for instance, a builder or developer. And whilst that action is in place, and so long as it doesn’t affect safety, then that’s a valid defence for not having to address the mould. Another might be that there’s a shared facility that’s causing water entry, that they are getting contribution from others, towards fixing the item of common property; that there’s an easement or covenant, transferring obligations. That there’s a bylaw more commonly, that gives a right to somebody to exclusive use of, or a special privilege over common property and that’s registered by law and it says that they’re liable for the problem that’s causing the water entry. Quite commonly, regarding mould, what we see is there’s a burst lot owner pipe in the unit above; it’s not addressed properly… The water travels through the common property slab, which it’s supposed to do. So concrete isn’t actually waterproof. The water travels through the slab, goes into the unit below and does property damage, through deteriorated ceilings and furnishings and whatever else that might be damaged. And that’s actually not an owners corporation fault; that’s the owner above’s fault. And there could be an action and nuisance against that person for that; for allowing that water to escape their property and go through the common property and then cause the problem for the owner below.

Jimmy  04:47

We get a lot of discussion on the Flat Chat forum, about; let’s say it’s a burst pipe inside an owner’s lot, so it’s their responsibility… Can you take action against the person, in whose apartment that pipe was burst? Or is that just one of these things; it’s an accidental thing, so people can’t be held liable for it?

David  05:20

Well, it’s actually enshrined in the statute in Section 153 and it applies equally to smoke drifts. So if you’ve got something in your property, that you’re permitting to drift into someone else’s property, whether it’s smoke or water, then they can take action for orders in NCAT. They can get orders that that person fix that problem. An individual or a tenant could make the application. As far as damages in NCAT go though, you’d be better off going to a court, if you’re trying to claim the loss of rent, or some sort of personal injury claim.

Jimmy  05:58

Right. But there’s nothing in the law that says well, that’s just tough luck. Accidents happen and you can’t hold a person responsible, just because the accident happened in their lot?

David  06:12

No, no. What can happen is that, if you’ve put somebody on notice, (and typically this happens that ‘hey, there’s water going through your apartment into mine)…’ They don’t address it properly, because they didn’t fix the problem properly in the first place, or they just ignored it. Then from the time that they’re put on notice, and they’re being negligent (effectively), that’s when their liability arises for those financial losses, that are reasonably foreseeable. They can be held financially accountable.

Jimmy  06:38

Okay. Which brings us back to mould…

David  06:41

Just to complete that answer; quite often though, there’s strata insurance, and it covers burst pipe claims. There’s lots of exclusions around that, around degradation and rust and oxidation of the pipe and they’re not proposing to cover events associated to that. But certainly, the strata insurance is something worth giving serious consideration to, before any litigation.

Jimmy  07:05

That would be strata insurance. I mean, that’s again, another argument that comes up that says, well, if the pipe is inside the owners lot, then it’s not common property. Therefore, does that mean it’s not covered by strata insurance?

David  07:18

Just to clarify, if you’ve got the pipe running through a lot (which is servicing more than one lot), then that is common property. But if it’s just servicing the one lot and it’s not in the common property slab, or common property wall and it’s just sitting in the airspace, well, then that’s just part of the lot. And in relation to the strata insurance policies, they generally don’t distinguish between common property or lot property pipes, they generally (but you’ve got to read the Terms and Conditions), will insure all the pipes.

Jimmy  07:51

Right, okay. That’s question one and I’ve managed to get us off-topic already. Question two; ‘how long does a person have to claim for losses in mould cases?’

David  08:05

There’s varying claims that people can make. The most common one is for a breach of the owners corporations’ failure to repair and maintain common property, because there’s a statutory ability to claim damages. That action needs to presently be brought within two years of awareness of the loss, i.e you’ve been losing rent for three years, well then, you’ll only be able to claim rent for the last two years. If you want to claim beyond that two-year period and you haven’t commenced your action in a court yet, well then you could bring an Action in Nuisance. You’ve got six years to bring an Action in Nuisance against the owners corporation, or the lot owner. Bare in mind that breach of statutory duty… The first part I talked about, it’s only against the owners corporation and can only be brought by an owner. So if you’re an occupier who wants to claim losses, well then, you’d be looking at nuisance, not the statutory duty under Section 106.

Jimmy  09:02

But given that mould can cause illnesses and asthma, and exacerbate things like asthma, then nuisance is a possible reason.

David  09:12

Yes. It also, occupies liability, like a slip-and-fall case, so you’ve caused an injury. And the sort of evidence; we often get this inquiry and it’s sort of more from people that are just irritated and they feel as though they may be getting sick from it. But there’s certainly been cases where people have been sick from it. And you’ll need to; like if you’ve had a car accident, or a slip-and-fall claim, you’ve got to have very strong expert evidence, from the relevant experts to say this particular event caused particular loss to your health, and that that loss is permanent and accruing and getting worse, or whatever. So you’re not going to go down that pathway for a mild illness; you’re looking at something more on the permanent side of injury.

Jimmy  09:58

I know somebody who, mould exacerbated their asthma and they ended up in hospital with pneumonia. So I’m thinking they’re edging close to the threshold.

David  10:11

Yes. Well, they would have significant medical expenses to warrant potentially, the cost and the time and the effort, that it would take, to get all the expert evidence together, to mount the claim.

Jimmy  10:25

All right. Question three; ‘what sort of evidence is required?’

David  10:31

Again, it depends on what injury you’re claiming. If you’re claiming loss of rent, you’re claiming the establishment of a lease was in place, there’s been negotiations with the tenant to reduce the actual rent, and it’s been a reasonable abatement of the rent and you’re entitled to claim that sum that you’ve lost, together with other… If you’ve had to replace carpet, furnishings… You’ll need to produce the invoices and prove that it’s a reasonable replacement, for whatever was there before. If you’re claiming for personal injury, well then again, you’ll need very good expert evidence, from varying doctors as to the loss you’ve suffered; your state of fitness at the time. The attribution of the mould to the problem and exacerbation of their injury and things like that. Lots of proven facts, that you’d need to persuade an independent person that these losses were caused by that event and these losses are reasonable to recover.

Jimmy  11:35

Okay. What is a typical order from NCAT, when an owner is successful in a mould case?

David  11:44

Typically, it comes with an order to rectify the common property. And there’s a timetable for undertaking the works and engaging appropriate waterproofing advice and diagnostics. Then secondly, there’s an order about assessment of damages, and what sums are due and payable to the owner, for their out-of-pockets’. And thirdly, then there’s typically a costs order that follows with that, as well, that they would be entitled to obtain, for their legal costs incurred in bringing the claim.

Jimmy  12:16

Now, I’ve often said (quite possibly wrongly), that the Tribunal will not, say, in a case like that, or let’s say something like, a noisy floor ‘you must take the specific steps.’ Is it true that they will just say ‘you have to fix this problem?’

David  12:39

Typically, you’ll need to establish the scope of works, in order to bring the claim and what they’re not doing. And you’d have some report from a diagnostic-type person (whatever the water entry issue is), and then they would recommend that scope of works. Or, if there’s a dispute about the scope of works, sometimes they could order that the parties engage a third-party expert to determine the scope of works, to get the scope of works refined. Quite often, the difficulty in these cases, is the scope of works; to perform the works, to stop the water entry. And then not just that, there will be a remediation programme potentially, as well, to remove the mould, once they’ve stopped the water entry and that can be quite complex,

Jimmy  13:26

“What is the time limit for recovery of section 106 ‘damages for mould -associated losses?'” Now, I hope you’re going to explain what section 106 is!

David  13:36

That’s that strict duty I was talking about; the owners corporation has to repair the common property, two years from the loss that you’ve incurred. That analogy of… well you’ve lost three years of rent; you’re just claiming two years or rent from the time you bring your application.

Jimmy  13:48

So that time limit is two years?

David  13:51

Yes, but it could well change in the strata review to six years, to align with other damages periods of time, because that one’s particularly short, compared to normal.

Jimmy  14:03

‘How long can mould spores remain dormant but viable, in the environment and still start growing once moisture returns?’

David  14:11

Two to three years, is the expert opinions we have obtained in varying cases. That’s why remediation programmes are important, following the water entry stopping, to get the mould properly removed from site, because it could reactivate pretty easily.

Jimmy  14:29

So simply painting over, isn’t going to do it?

David  14:35

No.

Jimmy  14:36

Okay. ‘After how many hours of being moist or damp, can mould start to grow on materials in a building?’

David  14:46

24 to 48 hours; it doesn’t take long.

Jimmy  14:50

Right. And ‘is it possible to keep mould-affected buildings operating, to buy time before a full remediation can take place?’

David  15:02

We use various experts, to determine the control measures that need to be put in place, to make it safe, so people aren’t going to get sick while they’re operating there. So they can do temporary works to make it safe, while the full scope is yet to be undertaken. So yes, you can.

Jimmy  15:21

Just something that occurs to me… If your tenant comes to you and says ‘I’ve got mould, and it’s affecting my health, and I want a rent reduction,’ and you go ‘yeah well, fair enough, we’ll reduce the rent and then the next time, the first chance we get, we’ll clean it all up.’ Does that diminish their case, if they then choose to go to Tribunal?

David  15:44

Potentially, yes, because you are entitled to reasonably foreseeable losses, but there have been a couple of NCAT decisions on the residential tenancy dispute front, where the situation arose (like you’ve said), and the landlord denied the abatement of reduction in rent. And so, an argument was had, and it was found that well, because it was coming from common property, the landlord isn’t the one who’s causing the actual loss. It’s the owners corporation causing loss, so therefore, there wasn’t an obligation to actually reduce the rent. Those tribunal member decisions are not binding on other tribunal members. It’s just that it’s possible, that you don’t have to reduce the rent and then if you bring your claim against the owners corporation, it’s possible they could defend it on the basis that you never had to reduce the rent; you incurred the loss yourself.

Jimmy  16:39

Right. Okay. And that concludes mould. As a phrase that became very common in Britain during COVID, the Health Minister would say “next slide, please.” So we’re into building defects. I’ve got a novel to read here, so bear with me. ‘What are some of the issues you will face when calculating the start date for statutory warranty periods, when you are given occupation certificates?’ And then I’ve added on another question ‘for the purposes of statutory warranties, what is the completion date for residential building works, to which section 3C, ‘New Buildings and Strata Schemes’ of the Home Building Act applies?’ Maybe I should not have joined those two questions together!

David  17:34

That’s okay; I’ll answer those together. A critical thing about a statute warranty claim that you can’t change, is the time in which you bring your action. Otherwise, it just lapses or expires; just like a debt does after six years, if you don’t sue somebody for it, the debts forgiven. So if you don’t bring your action within time, the correct time, the developer does not have to (or the builder, or the subcontractor), answer to the statute warranty claim; you’re forgiven the debt. Now, calculating starts is obviously important, because it’s not so clear. The first occupations certificate for a new building, is the relevant document. It’s the first occupation certificate for the whole building. So you could have a number of interim occupation certificates arising before the new build; before the final OC, but it’s the one that covers the whole building, that’s the relevant one. You could have a site where there’s three towers, and tower 1 was finished six months before tower 2 and likewise, with tower 3. Now, each one will have their own period of time, within which, you need to bring your action, so that gets a bit confusing for some people. But if you’ve got like a rectification job, or a retrofit going on… Look, what I mean by a ‘retrofit’ is you had a commercial building, which was subsequently turned into a residential apartment building. You’ve got a different equation to work with. It’s from when the works were reasonably capable of being used. And that’s a rubbery grey area, established by various facts and ultimately determined by the court, was when they thought it was reasonably capable of being used. Some indicia that they can consider, or materials would be, completion notices under the contract, which would have been issued before the occupation certificate. If there wasn’t a completion notice issued, because it was an owner-builder developer, then when they’re saying that they thought the works had finished, because they were just paying subcontractors and they might have just kept the property for a number of years and then decided to sell it, to try and avoid the statute warranty scheme. So whenever you’re working with retrofits and remedial works, you want to save grief, by going very conservative with the completion date. Don’t try and go close to what you think is a date; go early.

Jimmy  20:11

The Building Commissioner David Chandler, has been talking about not allowing certificates of occupancy to be issued in buildings that he considers to be defective. I mean, is that going to make a difference? Is it already making a difference, do you think?

David  20:28

Look, I think the way conveyancing works (it’s interesting to understand how conveyancing works)… So a developer cannot sell you an apartment off-the-plan, without the registered strata plan. And they can’t now get a registered strata plan, without the occupation certificate. Now, I think it’s a great move by the Building Commissioner to be able to step in and prevent the strata plan being registered, because as soon as the strata plan is registered and the conveyance that occurs two weeks later, the owners corporation, and more so, the individual owners, will inherit all the defects in the common property. So what the Building Commission has been able to do, is he’s been able to stop that conveyancing process, before the transfer to the owners corporation, and the owners of those defects arises. And he’s going through and identifying lots of buildings; he’s publishing lots of orders, in relation to lots of buildings, for these people to come back, before they transfer the problem to the owners corporation and the new owners, and is saving a lot of grief, for those people, following that process. It was a clever move. I think it’s working effectively. I’ve been to various presentations and I’ve seen varying orders, that he’s published on the website, but I don’t know if that’s the extent of the orders, or whether there’s more. But yes, I think he’s saved a lot of owners a lot of grief, in those buildings.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

It’s really interesting to get a lawyer’s point of view of when you actually put a lawyer on the spot and say what does the law say about this? We were supposed to be doing that for an hour. And I think about an hour and 10 minutes in I realised we’d gone too far. And he has has some really valuable information.

Sue

Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy

And there’s a lot more and so we’ll be coming back to this next week when the topics will include the duty of care of for builders, (the 10-year thing that was changed recently), the Design and Building Practitioners Act and the effects that’s having on getting repairs and renovations done. Dysfunctional committees and statutory appointment of strata managers will come up as well.

I just want to give a shout out to our transcriber Rafi who’s going through a tough time. She’ll she’ll get through it but she looks after us. Every week she takes her my jumble mumbled Scottish nonsense and turns it into something that people can read. So this is for you, Rafi.

Sue

Absolutely. See you soon, Rafi.

Jimmy

Yep. And we will talk to you again next week. Bye.

Sue

Bye.