Failure to repair rental problem damages common property

Kenny – I’ll jump in early on this one as our owners corporation had a very similar problem around 12 months ago, where I (as Secretary) was asked by a tenant to have a look at some bubbling paint on an internal wall of her unit.

As I had previously seen the identical problem in other units, a cursory examination was all that was necessary to determine that the problem was due to a leak from the vertical section of the water supply pipe feeding the outlet in the shower recess.

Whilst the leakage was within an internal wall and rectification was therefore the owner’s responsibility, it had been left unattended for so long that the water had migrated to an external wall, and that made rectification the responsibility of the owners corporation (O/C).

Just as in your situation, the tenant told me that she had reported the problem to her property manager, once verbally around 6 months prior and on a second occasion in writing prior to the last routine inspection of her unit just one month earlier.

On the basis of past experience with property managers, I’d determined that as they generally have difficulty justifying their fees to investor clients, they often rely on a statements to the effect that a whole financial year had passed without a single expense.

Which doesn’t mean that no expense to address maintenance or repairs was necessary, but rather that none had been attended to!

Anyway, as I’ve learnt not to deal directly with property managers when I have my “owners corporation” hat on, with the permission of the tenant I took some pictures of the damage, which by the way included to the kick-plates of the kitchen cupboards, and sent those together with an e-mail to the lot owner containing further advice to the effect that in addition to making repairs to the plumbing, the internal wall, and kitchen of his unit, he would also be required to pay for the repairs to the common property that arose from delays in him, via his “agent”, rectifying the source of the water leakage.

The lot owner promptly contacted me to advise that the O/C’s e-mail advice of the problem was the first he’d received, and I believe that as I shortly thereafter received a phone call from his property manager who, after being berated by her client (the lot owner), did her utmost to then by various accusations cover her backside with mine; unsuccessfully!

All necessary repairs including those to the common property were attended to in short-order, and whilst I wasn’t privy to who paid for what, I do know that the O/C paid for nothing, and that whilst the lot owner told me that he was intending to change to a different property management agency, in the end he didn’t (?).

So back to your questions, as the circumstance of the property manager being formally advised of the fault, presumably in your case not advising their client / lot owner, and certainly not advising the O/C or its strata manager resulted more damage and in increased costs of rectification, I think your O/C should do as ours did by immediately writing to the lot owner to explain the situation, and to advise that the O/C will be consequently invoicing a percentage of its costs of rectification to them.

As to what that percentage should be and how it should be invoiced, I’d suggest that your O/C seeks to make a defensible calculation of the marginal costs of repairs, ideally based on an assessment from its chosen contractor and substantiated by a statement from the tenant or at least a contemporaneous note by you about when and how they first provided advice of the problem to their property manager, with the amount of that calculation being then invoiced as a separate line item on the owner’s next contributions invoice (levies).

In that way the invoiced amount is at arms-length from the property manager so that any discussions about how it arose is between them and their client (the lot owner) and it would, if unpaid, remain as a debt against the lot and be recoverable, together with interest, whenever the lot changes ownership.

As much as I dislike the phrase, yours actually is “a matter of principle” and is certainly one where all O/Cs need to send a clear message that all owners, absent or otherwise, need to promptly attend to maintenance issues and, where any doubt exists about who’s responsible for the repairs, to notify the O/C and thereby give it the opportunity to decide upon that.