Living with compulsorily appointed strata manager

An adjudicator ha accepted a submission that our OC is not functioning satisfactorily and has compulsorily appointed a strata managing agent nominated by the applicant.  The applicant is a 24% entitlement holder in a strata of 3.  The applicant accepted their lawyers advice not to communicate with the 50% entitlement holder and has followed that advice assiduously.  At an EGM they refused to wait for the third owner to arrive (she had car trouble), stated they would vote no to everything and then just left.  When the running late owner arrived, the remaining two did not make any decisions: we have always had all three owners involved for decisions.  At the next EGM, the 24% owner lodged a proxy voting no to every motion, including one to seek mediation.  They then took the OC to mediation claiming the the environment was toxic.  Arguably, because they made it so.

They bought about 2 years ago.  They wanted to change the gate entry locks that had been in place for the last 10 years.  At an EGM, the OC voted 2:1 (76:24 on unit entitlement) not to change it.  I am concerned that they will get their compulsorily appointed manager to do their bidding and change the gate locks.  Does the compulsorily appointed strata manager have to act in the best interests of the OC are can they do the bidding of the disgruntled minority unit holder?

This is the first of a series of posts I’ll make.  NCAT seems to be impressed by having a lawyer making your submissions rather than on facts and evidence, the minority unitholder has destroyed common property and has refused to follow OC decisions to reinstate it.  When they bought, there was structural cubic space in their unit enclosing a sewer line.  They didn’t search OC records about it and bought without objection.  That was the CP they destroyed.  They now want to move the sewer line but refuse to accept a by-law, requested by the 76% entitlement holders, to bear future responsibility for issues arising from moving the sewer.

Estimate of the cost of appealing the adjudicator’s decision run from $10,000 to $20,000.  To meet that, I’ll probably have to run a crowd source funding campaign amongst interested parties.

Have fun, people.  We are not at the moment and being totally done over.