› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Buying and Selling › Builder’s rort blocks loans › Current Page
This is a new one on me but I'm no longer surprised at the schemes, scams, rorts and gouges that builders and developers get up to.
OK, without seeing the by-laws, there's a fair chance that this rule isn't legal. Also, unless it's a special by-law – one of those that requires agreement with the beneficiary of the by-law – it can be changed with a 75 percent vote of the owners.
What you really need to do, as a strata plan, is to talk to a specialist strata lawyer right away (there's a whole bunch of them listed HERE). They will tell you what you can and can't do and what the best way is to do it.
They will charge you for it, of course, but if it means you and your neighbours saving 10 percent of the value of your home, then it will be well worth it.
I'm not sure what you mean by “first mortgage” but the advice doesn't change. Talk to a specialist strata lawyer.
By the way, this is a perfect example of the kind of contract that would have been struck down by our Federal Fair Trading laws – if they hadn't specifically excluded strata from them. Why did they exclude strata? Because vested interests persuaded the politicians in Canberra that if they weren't allowed to rip strata owners off with impunity, then they couldn't afford to build apartment blocks.
This is, of course, self interested nonsense. The best developers are building communities that people want to live in (and therefore they have no problem selling their properties). But too many of the others are greedy, heartless robber barons whose morality is based on the notion “if I can get away with it then it must be OK.” Here endeth today's spray.