The only way that the tenants in our Plan ever receive their copy of our By-Laws and Special By-Laws and of the “Strata Living” publication produced by the NSW Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is when I provide it to them; both are required to be provided to tenants by Property Managers under the provisions of the NSW Residential Tenancies Act 2010 (RTA) but they never provide those documents to their tenants – ever!
The tenancy notifications to which Jimmy refers are to be provided to the Owners Corporation under S119 of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act, and even though I’ve included a proforma of that notification as a download on our Plan’s website, Property Managers never provide that notification unless I contact them to request it when the prescribed 14 day window has lapsed – in fact most Property Managers have no idea what I’m talking about!
The RTA also requires that tenants are informed of any past “violent incidents” or significant health and safety issues involving the rental property that they’re contemplating leasing, but Property Managers don’t do that either even though information on that requirement is also a download on our Plan’s website.
With around 80% of the Units in our Plan being rented, it’s in our Owners Corporation’s interests to ensure that tenants are properly informed about what we call “the top ten challenges of Strata Living” in our Plan.
So in order to overcome slack Property Managers, every incoming tenant receives a Welcome Package, addressed to them by name once we receive the S119 notification, which includes a one-pager / double sided from the Executive Committee about those challenges (parking, noise, vehicle lights, balcony use etc), some site specific information (garbage segregation, security access operations, maintenance responsibilities etc), and copies of our By-Laws and of the OFT’s “Strata Living” publication.
The whole idea is for the O/C to assist tenants to “settle” and to give them an opportunity to do the right thing, on the basis that people generally don’t behave like idiots on purpose!
It works almost all the time, and overcomes the inadequacies of our local Property Managers who don’t know any better; but then I’ve raved on about them in numerous other posts.