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I am an owner in a block of 20 townhouses with attached garages. 6 of these townhouses have garages on the street frontage. The garages are set back 5 metres from the footpath, accessed by a paved driveway or “apron”. These aprons are deemed to be common property on the registered plan and standard by-law 2 therefore applies. There are also 4 townhouses with an apron from the private road which services the remaining 14 townhouses.
At an EC meeting a few years ago permission was granted for residents to park their cars “from time to time” on their respective apron. One of the owners (who does not have an apron) is continually agitating for the permission to be reversed, claiming that parking in the area is valuable and those residents should be paying the OC a fee for parking. 8 of the 10 garages have been utilised by the residents for storage.
Am exclusive use by-law was proposed last year at an EGM but did not achieve the 75% approval vote.
The issue appears to be one of common sense. Despite the designation of the apron as “common property” only the resident can use it (to access their garage).
Would it be possible/practical for the relevant owners to apply to NCAT for a ruling?
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So 8 out of 10 of the owners with aprons are now using common property as parking space, so they can use their garages for storage, even though permission was granted to park “from time to time”?
From the information given the owners are using common property which has a value, for a use that has value. When the exclusive use by-law was proposed, did they propose a payment to the owners corporation for the exclusive use, and if so was this backed by a valuation?
Although the common property is in front of the respective garages at present it belongs to all the owners – you can’t just take that away from them without accounting for its value.
Yes of course the owners could apply for a ruling, but if they have not proposed compensating the owners corporation for taking over part of the common property, then I doubt the application would be successful.
Paddy – in addition to Scotty’s comments, whilst an Executive Committee (E/C) can grant consent for the casual use of the Common Property for vehicular parking under By-Law 2, as I get the impression that parking “from time-to-time” is more like most, if not all of the time, then the E/C is really over-stepping the mark.
If that’s the fact, then I don’t believe that it’s possible for affected Owners to seek to obtain a Ruling, as that’s only considered in circumstances where an Owners Corporation has been approached to grant Owner/s a Licence to use its Common Property, and that’s been put as a “special resolution” to a General Meeting and been voted down – and from my reading of your post that’s not what’s happened.
So rather than trying the “exclusive use” approach, that fortunately failed (see last para), I’d suggest a Motion to grant affected Owners a period licence (annual?) under the provisions of Sect 65B of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act, where you’ll see that “terms and conditions” can be incorporated such as to require benefiting Owners to make payment/s to the O/C.
If such as Motion can be properly passed at a General Meeting, then that should both satisfy the Owner who believes that another carspace is worth something (and they’re right in my opinion also), enable a more formal “trial” of the arrangements, and avoid all the pitfalls of “exclusive use” – including the perpetuity of such arrangements irrespective of changed circumstances, including different Owners or Tenants who may be less accommodating.
Hi Paddy, re “The issue appears to be one of common sense”. All strata living owners and OCs rely upon informal agreements as much as formal or legal agreements to find the practical rules that work for their property.
I find that when it comes to the law there is NO common sense. If there is to be common sense applied it is up to the OC. Although what you may see as common sense others may see as benefiting at the expense of other owners.That is why I believe searching for a resolution thru bylaws or a ruling will only get you one of the resolutions that scotlandx or Whale has alluded to.
Our strata plan has a similar issue which I have commented on previously. Most here haven’t agreed with our resolution. In short some our issue is: some owners have a common property area directly outside their garage. This area can only be used by the relevant owners and them using it does not (in a practical sense) cause others a nuisance or deprive anyone else of the use of common property.
The only reason those owners have been tolerated to use the common property area directly outside their garages is that they could show that because of the lack of common parking and visitor parking areas there was a benefit to all owners.
Depending upon the personalities and unique circumstances of your strata unless you can draw up convincing arguments the avenues outlined by scotlandx or Whale are the only way to go.
So I guess I am asking or recommending, can you draw convincing arguments why you shouldn’t strictly enforce the law?
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