Remember the rogue developer who is basically making up the rules as he goes?
Apparently this chump has now sold enough units to trigger the first AGM but thinks he has protected his position by demanding that the new owner pass over his proxy vote as a condition of the sale.
Oddly enough, this plays right into an area that we know well – because Flat Chat got the law changed on this, back in the day.
You see, we discovered through a question asked by a concerned reader, that some of Sydney’s biggest and most reputable property developers were demanding proxy votes as part of their sales contracts.
Everything would be fine and dandy until the unit owners had the temerity to want something that didn’t suit the developers. In one case, the developers wanted to turn an exclusive residents-only private marina into a huge commercial operation.
The owners objected so the developers used their proxy votes to sack the EC, elected their own guy to a one-person committee and then wrote to the planning authority saying the building supported it. Nice.
This got so crazy that elsewhere owners were being told that if they turned up at the meeting and voted – rendering the proxy invalid – they would be sued for breach of contract.
Anyway, the law was changed, credit was given to “the media” and since we were the only people writing about this, that would be us.
And, to be clear, these days any proxy vote that is provided as a condition of a sales contract is worth nothing and should not be counted.
You can read the latest shenanigans from the unluckiest strata scheme in the land HERE. Meanwhile there’s our customary cavalcade of complaints and questions, including:
- Do votes against approval for renovations have to be ‘reasonable’? That’s HERE.
- Can a tenant claim a rent reduction when the balcony isn’t accessible for weeks? The agent says no. That’s HERE.
- The vote was five versus three but one member in the winning group used two proxies when they were only entitled to one. Should the AGM and election be declared null and void? That’s HERE.
- There’s concrete cancer under the tiles but the autocratic chair says the Owner’s Corp shouldn’t pay to fix it. What do you do? That’s HERE.
- Some of the air-conditioners are common property, others are private. The Owners Corp won’t pay to repair private a/c so why should those owners pay levies to repair the common property a/c? That’s HERE.
- Do strata insurers check up on strata schemes to make sure they are not breaching the terms of their insurances? That’s HERE.
