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Our friends in the neighbouring complex tell us their AGMs are usually held during work days, resulting in quickly concluding meetings through the use of proxies by their strata managers. I advised them to send a registered letter to the strata managers, asking whether the AGMs are held in that way to enable the use of proxies, then, depending on the reply, lodging a complaint with Fair Trading. Could anyone help with any thoughts or further advice please?
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Those who read my posts will know that I don’t curry favour with Strata Management Companies, but I think you’re being a bit hard on them with regard to the advice provided to your neighbours.
Most Strata Managers will happily convene Annual General Meetings (AGMs) in the evenings or even on weekends, but they’ll likely charge the Owners Corporation for the use of their rooms and/or their time, which in my opinion is fair enough.
Advise your neighbours to check their Plan’s Agency Agreement with their Strata Manager, where they’ll almost certainly find a schedule of fees including those for meetings held after-hours. They’ll then be in a position to assess whether meeting convenience is worth the cost.
@daphne diaphanous said:
Our friends in the neighbouring complex tell us their AGMs are usually held during work days, resulting in quickly concluding meetings through the use of proxies by their strata managers. I advised them to send a registered letter to the strata managers, asking whether the AGMs are held in that way to enable the use of proxies, then, depending on the reply, lodging a complaint with Fair Trading. Could anyone help with any thoughts or further advice please?I doubt the SM will reply with anything like “yes we hold them on weekdays to enable us to use proxies” or ‘for our convenience and to inhibit owners from having a say’.
When our OC considered engaging a SM the contracts stipulated that AGMs held outside weekday business hours attracted extra charges. So maybe it is done to save costs.
Why not list it as an agenda item for the next AGM to discuss the pros and cons. My view would be to test your views on other owners before listing the agenda item to see how much support such an item would have.
We have our AGM at the Strata Manager’s office at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. My first was this year.
I guess I should not have been surprised that four out of eleven owners did not attend and gave their proxy to another Owner. We have no serious issues that I know of.
I think our Agreement with the SM is that they do two ‘free’ meetings and any others with the SM we need to pay. He is available for telephone advice and is very approachable.
You are so lucky FlatChatFan. Never move, never change Strata Managers and nip any issue that arises in the bud straight away before they fester. You live in some kind of strata utopia.
Our meetings are always held in the evening (at our request & expense) & typically go for 3 hours or more – extremely painful & labourious – this is because of our nightmare owner who needs to attemt to dominate, control, argue, ridicule etc all other attendees including our managing agent. One agent sacked us, one upped the fees for our 4 lot plan to $3,500.00 pa. They end up being scared & wary of this guy. Luckily he has moved out & has his unit leased & it is still for sale, has been for the last 3 years due to it being overpriced & the levies being around $12,000 per annum due to his 45% unit entitlements (that he thought he could use to control the plan – pity he didn’t do his research & discover special resolution requirements of 45% & ALL his plans involve taking over exclusive use of common property in a manifestly unjust & unfair way).
Personally, I would like our meetings held at the property as our current managing agent has no idea of what our somewhat ‘unique’ property is like & this makes discussions difficult.
We have 4 lots tha used to be holiday flats that were built 40 years ago & were not strat’d properly at all. The layout is odd to say the least.
Our AGMs always used to be Saturday mornings, then the managing agent changed it to 4pm on a weekday, with a one hour limit, and less than a week’s notice by the time we received the letters. The immediate impact was that attendance dropped from 90% to 20%, with virtually no proxies submitted. It costs me half a day’s pay to get there. I reminded the agent that we were paying their fees so we should be able to stipulate the time and duration of the meeting. Their answer – “we only open in business hours” – they also know that they have no competition in a regional area, and rely on owner apathy to get away with it. Easy money for them I guess.
A few years ago our strata manager was one of the big operations, who shall remain nameless, because they were so bad. They liked having GMs at odd times, or even better doing a meeting by paper resolution to approve renovations, with the note that no-one should attend. Two people out of nine voted. That particular decision is now the subject of a long legal dispute.
M S may not have the luxury but we got rid of that strata manager, and found one who fits in with us. The one we have now doesn’t charge for the first two GMs in a year, whenever they are held. Of course a manager has the right to charge for out of hours meetings, but they should not be dictating when they are held.
I don’t like undirected proxies being given to the manager and a meeting being held that way, because effectively you are putting the manager in the position of a compulsorily appointed manager. That is extreme but it does happen.Our GMs are all held on site, normally starting at 6 PM. Fortunately we have the space for meetings. In the few changes in SM over past 15 years, it has been an important consideration to have the meetings outside normal office hours. No doubt this was taken into account in determining the base fee.
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