Thanks for those words of support CBF. I too have done all the duties you describe in the past. The problem with having “nutbag” owners/residents in strata is that they are right across from your front door. If I were in a house their front door would be further away. And I could put up a screen, without permission, to have privacy at my front door. We have an owner here who no longer opens the front door, and rarely ventures out (checks first to see who is outside her front door) because of intimidation and harassment (she was on the committee – complained about breaches of by law, gets harrassed). Is that any way to live? When the antagonisers are right there, two steps away from your door, where do you go?
If you read the post about the NSW Strata Legislation Review, there is some hope! The issues mentioned are the same issues we all read in flat chat – over and over again. Of course parking is probably the biggest issue, one that I am well and truely over. If you went into a department store and bought a 50 inch plasma TV, would you fork over the money then pick up another 50 inch TV and walk out with both? No, because you only paid for one! So what makes people think it is any difference in strata. You get what you paid for!
I don’t want a house for space. The space I have here is perfectly adequate. I have actually been looking at houses of the same size as my place! A small house with just more yard than I have. Most don’t have garages or parking! There is a reason though why these houses cost about $150,000 -$200,000 more than my townhouse – because here I just own inside and I can’t change it. For the extra couple of thousand grand I can do what I like, if I could afford it. Yeah sure my neighbour could be a collector of rusty car bodies left on his front lawn. But that is why God invented muraya hedges.
I know that my complex is not the worst by any means, though I have left out many details in my tales of woe on this forum. At dinner parties I am often asked to tell what “they” have done now and to retell past stories. I have had friends in the market for a place, but when one comes up in my complex they run a mile preferring the devil they don’t know rather than deal with what they know has happened/is happening here! And when friends visit they ask me to point out the units of “them” – like one of those Hollywood stars tours!
When my elderly mother had to downsize, I would not let her to go into strata. I found her a small house instead. I could not imagine what stresses she would have to go through living under the current strata system. She has fantastic neighbours on all sides who keep an eye out for her, do things for her if needed – mow the front lawn, bring the bins in, trim trees, even organised maintenance for her. I shudder to think of her living in a complex like mine. If someone dropped dead by the letterboxes in my complex, the owners would wait to complain at the AGM next year about having to step over the body to get their mail that day – the EC should have done something!