Reply To: New owner’s liability for delayed repair

Well… I’m not sure that the buyers would necessarily have known that a second special levy was coming. We only resolved to start afresh and obtain new quotes early in March. And it was only at that point that we realised we’d need more in the kitty to pay for the replacement and thus a fresh levy. At which point the unit had just been declared sold.

Minutes from the EGM in early 2022 would have revealed that a special levy had been raised for the roof replacement (obviously with the previous owner paying their share). I can’t recall offhand if the minutes of the AGM four months later documented that the work hadn’t yet been scheduled. The “paper trail”, such as it is, would be in email correspondence between our strata managers (yes, strata not building) and the members of the SC (all owners, as it’s a small building) rather than the annual meeting minutes.

I mean, if a buyer sees evidence of a relatively recent levy for a roof replacement, you’d think they’d enquire as to the status of that job, given that it’s a major work. But it’s possible, I guess, that they might have assumed the work was progress, or at least scheduled, and as a result there would be no obligations on their part. I don’t believe the owners’ corp gave out bad info because we weren’t asked, but of course I don’t know what information may have been sought from our strata management company or what questions were asked of the vendors.