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I live next door to a unit that has recently sold. Over a ten year period, the owner has leased the property to several different tenants. The property has been continuously managed by the one Real Estate Agent. I took the opportunity to inspect the unit at a recent open inspection and was appalled at the property's condition. In addition to a small part of the hall ceiling falling in, most of the rooms had extensive water damage from the common property deck above. The Real Estate Agent's selling spiel was that the damage was the responsibility of the Owners Corporation and the new owner would not have to pay for the repairs. My question is given that the property has been managed continuously by the one Real Estate Agent who did not report any damage to the Owners Corporation during the ten years, surely the cost of repairs should not rest entirely with us? What are our options?
Many thanks,
Tiaeki
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I suggest you let your executive committee and strata manager know of this situation in writing immediately and do your best to contact the new owner and suggest they call off, or at the least stall, the sale if possible (cooling off periods may be in force, contracts may not have been exchanged, settlement may not have taken place etc.) Complain to the head of the real estate agency concerned etc. in writing. Tell everyone. Make as big a noise as you can. It'll sort itself out.
This is what annoys me most about strata living. Some people think that anything and everything is the responsibility of the OC. So they don't report a problem because if it gets bad (and therefore more expensive) they won't have to pay anyway. So they wait until it is really bad before saying anything. We had one owner who wrote saying that he had considerable damage to his property caused by a problem that he himself said he had known about and had watched get worse over 5 years. When the damage caused huge problems and required extensive repairs, he contacted the OC.
Owners/residents( and in this case agents) should have to report problems when they first appear so they can be repaired with minimum cost. And if they don't, and it is obvious that the problem has been ongoing and not reported, then the owner should pay for it. If only…..
This is exactly the reason why I am looking to rent instead of buy. Right now, you’d think the rental market would be ripe for the picking. However, in my opinion, there are so many vacancies that the landlords aren’t properly fixing them up and making them available. You’re left with old foreclosures that were abandoned by the previous ‘owners’ (and these are in pretty bad shape.) If you use the internet, you can search for some houses for rent, but trying to go through a standard channel is frustrating.
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