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I posted on here a while back about rectification works we needed to do to our building and the likelihood of being able to sue the developer for costs… needless to say we are paying for it ourselves.
After many, many months we have finally had every unit looked at, had three quotes prepared, awarded the tender and issued the special levy.
Unfortunately one of the owners has come back requesting not to pay the levy due to financial hardship.
How do we deal with this?
We obviously don't want to be the cause of someone losing their home over a special levy commitment, but nor can we let other homeowners bear the burden of someone who hasn't put money aside knowing this was going to come up from as long ago as three years…
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This is a tricky one. If people don’t have the money, they either have to raise it or sell. What they can’t do is shift their debt on to their neighbours. However, many banks will treat a share of strata renovations as if they were a loan for a renovation for a home. It protects their investment (your mortgage) and has an outcome that they know will support the value of the property. They need to either talk to their current lender or look at refinancing. If they’re not prepared to do either of these things, then they will face statutory penalty interest on the unpaid special levy.
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.
Could you let this owner pay in installments? We did this with a special levy here. Though it wasn’t a huge amount of money per unit, everyone was pleased with paying out the money over a few quarters. Though if it is a large amount of money you are talking about, and they don’t have any money, maybe they can’t even do that.
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