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Topic
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Movers moving a tenant out from a top floor unit have dragged things down the carpeted stairwell (common property) and ripped small holes in the carpet on the edge of some of the steps. The holes weren’t there this morning.
The tenant has paid the movers, and they’ve gone.
What to do about this? I’ve already taken photos of the holes. Does the tenant have any responsibility? Should I phone/write to the movers and hope they own up like the company IN THIS POST did? What if they just deny it was them?
We have the standard by-law saying the OC must be notified before anything is moved through common property, so an OC rep can be present. It was ignored, as it is 100% of the time. Who has time to stand around a stairwell watching movers for hours, anyway??
Cheers & thanks
RL
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Very quickly get your strata manager to sent the OWNER of the unit a bill as they are responsible for the actions of their tenants. The owner can then take the money out of the tenant’s bond and the tenant can try to get it back from the removalist. It’s a bit of a chain but the responsibility starts where it belongs (the landlord) and ends up where it should – the tenants and their removalists.
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
Why wouldn’t they pay for a whole new carpet? If they had damaged a wall, you would expect them to pay for the wall to be painted, not just the repaired patch.
But just Google “carpet repairs” and you will be astonished at what comes up.
One other thing, if the owner and/or tenant have to pay for a whole new carpet, it sends a loud and clear message to everyone else to be careful.
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
Just to close off a resolution to this: I was not available in the days after the damage happened and it was not followed up on.
I patched up the carpet with scissors and a bit of glue (after googling “carpet repairs”
) and got a pretty good result for 15 minutes work!RL
I may be wrong but the Department of Fair Trading has deemed any damage to common property made by either owners or tenants as being the responsibility of the owners corporation to repair. Unless the damage was deliberate, they deem this as normal wear and tear. An example of this is the marking of the walls in the stairwell after a tenant moves in.
There’s a distinction between who’s responsible for having repairs made to common property and who pays for those repairs in circumstances where they’re a consequence of an activity by someone who’s in breach of a By-Law, such as in RL’s first post (#1).
@SamG said:
I may be wrong but the Department of Fair Trading has deemed any damage to common property made by either owners or tenants as being the responsibility of the owners corporation to repair. Unless the damage was deliberate, they deem this as normal wear and tear. An example of this is the marking of the walls in the stairwell after a tenant moves in.Never heard of this one. If you damage anyone’s property – including commono property – then you are liable for repairs. Otherwise people would feel free to smash up common property with impunity.
The above would only apply if there was no way of proving who was responsible, in which case the Owners Corp’s legal duty to maintain and repair common property would kick in.
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
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