› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Common Property › Who pays for damage to strata common area? › Current Page
The issue isn’t the private courtyard per se … the issue is where the gate is located. Check the boundary line on the building plan. Without seeing it I am assuming that the gate would be in a common property boundary so therefore the gate would be a common property maintenance issue.
I believe that the OC would have been responsible for repairing the latch when the problem first occurred, and the OC is still responsible for repairing the latch.
Was the OC notified about the latch when it first broke? Did any of the adjoining resident owners notice that the latch needed repairing, and did they just ignore it?
It is the general responsibility of the Tenant to report this type of maintenance issue to their Agent, who then passes it on to the Owner, who then passes it on to the OC. However, sometimes Tenants do not know what to do when they face a maintenance issue such as this.
Now the issue has become worse because the initial repair was not undertaken. However, the OC is still responsible for all the repairs of the gate.
In my opinion it will only become an Owner responsibility for the common property gate repairs if there was deliberate and wanton destruction by the Tenant. This would be a difficult case to argue under the circumstances.