If I can jump in first, welcome to our world. Don’t be put off by all the negative stories – people rarely write to ask for advice on how to deal with how happy they are.
There are certain precautionary steps you can take to make sure your strata life is happy and stress-free. This would be my checklist.
- Don’t buy off the plan unless you really trust the developer
- Don’t buy into a building that’s more than four years old (and less that 10) where a proper defects check and claim hasn’t at least been looked at
- Don’t buy into a small block that’s dominated by one family (usually the builder’s)
- Don’t buy into a block that has an onsite manager who is also allowed to run the rental roll
- Be very wary of any block where the minutes show absolutely no signs of any problems, disputes or issues. This is probably covering up worse stuff than you imagine.
- Unless you actually enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of other cultures (as many people do), make sure there isn’t an overly dominant ethnic or cultural group in the block – and that applies to retired WASPs as much as it does to new Australians.
- Don’t buy into a building where the developer, building manager and strata manager are all run by the same company.
- Don’t buy into a building that has ‘resort’ facilities that you might never use -any levies will seem high when you are paying for things you don’t want.
- Make sure you share the same view on pets – whether that’s for or against them
After that, make sure your solicitor orders a forensic check of the strata minutes for the past three years, using strata search specialists.
If you can tick most if not all of those boxes, you will probably have a happy time in strata. An believe it or not, there are plenty of apartments around that will give you exactly what you are looking for.