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Hey strata living residents
Long story short. I live [in a strata scheme of more than 500] apartments
Strata management here is way beyond the control. The lack of transparency of the finance, the massively overpriced fee for almost every single repair or maintenance project, the list can be on and on. Normally, the strata committee make sure the strata company does the right thing and provide reasonable service, and the strata company make sure the strata committee following the right procedures. When the strata committee and the strata company work together as alliances, the property owners become victims.
Imagine that 300 unit owners out of 800 sign the petition demanding an EGM, to solve the issue of the mismanagement. The [strata managers], together with our strata committee simply takes the owner’s corporation’s money (without owner’s consent) to hire expensive lawyers to stop us from getting an EGM.
Imagine the frustrated owners booked the conference room inside the complex trying to discuss the management problem, the strata committee simply hire security staff to lock up and guard the conference room, make sure the owners will not be able to gather ( in 2017).
Imagine in the annual general meeting, owners pointed out the management’s misconduct and demanded an explanation, which the strata manager was not able to answer, after providing some irrelevant and invalid excuses and he simply said “we are not discussing this any more, now we are moving to the next motion”
Getting rid of the current strata committee and the strata management company is impossible. First of all, the management has access to all owner’s information, thus they can send flyers and propaganda printouts and Emails full of misinformation ( to defend themselves) to all property owners. However, the owners who wish to fight corruption can not reach all neighbours especially those who live somewhere else as investment property owners.
Secondly, the strata committee simply authorise themselves to take money from the owner’s corporation to get costly legal service, while owners can only take legal service at their personal cost when they try to take legal proceedings to solve the issues of mismanagement. Even though the legislation has a restriction of how legal costs can be used by the strata committee, but, so what, they simply spend the money because they have access to it.
Indeed, owners have the right to vote, but after they get misinformed by the management, it is very difficult to make the right choice. When the strata committee and the strata management company inform all residents that if you take legal proceedings against them, you will be financially and legally liable,,,,,,, owners are intimidated and afraid of taking actions.
I am keen to know if you have experienced something similar and what action did you take and what was the outcome
[This post has been edited to remove references to the strata scheme (and by implication, the strata committee) and the strata managers as the comments are potentially defamatory. We specifically ask Flatchatters not to do that. We don’t have the kind of professional indemnity insurance to protect us from litigation from unsusbtantiated allegations – JimmyT]
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