Property manager Proxy voting

I think you are clutching at the wrong straws here. This rental agent is not a property manager by any accepted definition in relation to proxy votes and wouldn’t be even if his office was in your lobby.

Firstly, do you have a by-law banning short term lets? If so, that makes the following a lot easier.

If you have an existing problem with short-term lets, then you need to pursue that through your strata manager, Fair Trading, the Tribunal and your local council.

Meanwhile you should canvass the owner-occupiers of the block to approach the council as a group to make it clear that the law-abiding members of the community who actually live there do not agree to to approach by absentee investors who have hijacked the owners corporation.

You could even make a submission to NCAT (the Tribunal) to have a strata manager appointed to take over from the EC.  Or you could ask for orders for the creation or enforcement of by-laws restricting lets.

Finally, if this rental agent is already managing illegal short-term lets, then you should complain to Fair Trading.  By the way, a recent ruling by the Land and Environment Court said that short-term lets are not covered by the Residential Tenancies Act.  So if this agent is promoting short term lets in a residential-only building he is breaking the law.

Illegal short-term lets are a cancer in strata. Hit them with everything you’ve got.  Best of luck

JC – notwithstanding advisory notations on the prescribed Proxy Form the relevant section of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act is as follows:

(7A) Other limits on exercise of proxy – A vote by a proxy who is a caretaker, an on-site residential property manager, or a strata managing agent is invalid if it would obtain or assist in obtaining a pecuniary interest for, or confer or assist in conferring any other material benefit on, the proxy.

So as Jimmy advised, the activities of a local real estate agent who manages the short-term letting of some Units in your Plan is not captured by the provisions of Clause 7A (above), that relates to an on-site property manager who occupies part of the common property (e.g. a desk in the foyer) and who is engaged under a formal agreement by the Owners Corporation (O/C), not by its individual Owners.

That said, the submission by the O/C of a Development Application to the local Council would not be approved unless its Local Environment Plan enabled short-term letting to be permitted, and if as you seem to suggest that permission could be granted, then in addition to you and like-minded Owners immediately initiating the actions that Jimmy suggested, your O/C could still vote to Register a Special By-Law that among other things could prescribe how short-term lets must be “managed”, such as by restricting the numbers of occupants in Units, on-site parking, times of arrivals/departures, security access, and any number of similar provisions that, whilst not preventing short-term lets in contravention a Council consent, could well serve to actively discourage (if you get my drift) that type of occupancy.

You’ll need 75% of those Owners voting at a General Meeting (including by proxy) to pass such a Special By-Law, so best get started with lobbying. 

JC – the Rental Agent is a Member of your Plan’s Executive Committee (E/C) because he was nominated, seconded, and elected by a majority of those who were entitled to vote at the last Annual General Meeting (AGM), and then elected Secretary at the following Meeting of the new E/C.

You mentioned in your first post that this individual exercised an Owner’s proxy to vote on the submission of a Development Application, but that’s only one vote, so a majority of the others who were present at what I assume was a General Meeting (because there a no votes by proxy at E/C Meetings) must have voted similarly.

So it’s not the Rental Agent alone who’s to blame (if any is to be apportioned) for the submission of the DA, but rather it’s the Owner who seconded his nomination and the majority of Owners who then elected him to the E/C.

You and like-minded Owners could correct that situation at the next AGM, but in my opinion there’s nothing additional to the actions that you or your Owners Corporation is taking with the Department of Fair Trading, with Council, and via a Special By-Law that may be reasonably taken, as under the provisions of the NSW Property, Stock, and Busines Agents Act that governs their activities, neither of you is a “client” of the Rental Agent and so you have no ability to complain.