Lot owners wants to recarpet common area at own expense

Often in a multi story building, the OC determines

(a) how often to recarpet a common area (say every 6 yrs);

(b) How much money per floor to allow for said recarpeting; and

(c) What colour/style the carpet should be in order to be uniform in the building.

If say the OC allows $2,00o per floor, in your case it’s $1,000 per lot every 6 years, then so long as each floor is given such an allowance every say 6 years (adjusted for inflation), it doesn’t matter if one floor changes carpet today and another floor does it next year etc. Records will be kept of when a floor replaced a carpet. If owners of a floor want say a $3,000 carpet then they will have to top up the $2,000 allowance given to that floor.

The OC should stipulate that only well known carpet suppliers & layers can be used. Using such a commercial firm will ensure correct underlay is used and good quality workmanship will be provided.

Why is a top floor area, which would be the least used, in such poor condition (seemingly in contrast to the lower, more used, floors)?

Is this a maintenance issue which needs to be addressed?

The whole question of splitting costs is coming up more and more.  The law says that all common property costs must be charged to owners according to their unit entitlements.  But my investment property has some apartments not serviced by lifts and so only those that are pay for maintenance, under a special contract with the OC.

I’d like to see a situation where, for expensive essential works, they could be split between those who can pay special levies up front a(and therefor don’t pay interest) and those who need a strata loan to avoid having to sell their homes.

In this case, all you need is an agreement that the upstairs owners will be allowed to carpet at their own expense and it will only become common property after a reasonable time set out in the contract.  But then, I’m no lawyer.

My other question is, how was the landlord of the flat able to walk away without compensating for the damage caused by their tenants?

As I am constantly telling readers of this website, there are no stratakops.  However, yo do this, no one from Fair Trading is going to come along and demand that the upstairs neighbours restore the old carpet or refund money.  You could push this through as a simple accounting exercise. Owners A want to replace the carpet.  The OC will pay for replacement, up to a certain value, but will only do so at a flexible date in the future which will be triggered by the recarpetting of the other lift lobbies.

Upstairs neighbours recarpet and pay for it. Share of agreed recarpetting (or part of it) is recorded as a debt by the OC to the people upstairs. Two years later, rest of building is recarpetted, Upstairs neighbours’ levies are reduced by their share of total recarpetting, established earlier, because the OC effectively owes them that money.

Complicated but actually simple.  Is it totally legal?  Who cares?  There are no StrataKops.  Your only problem is if the upstairs owners sell in the interim and the new owner wants their floor recarpetted at the same time as the others.