Flat Chat Strata Forum The Professionals Current Page

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  • #8517
    Whale
    Flatchatter

      I recently received correspondence from a local property manager who signed the foot of the page as a “Practicing (sic) Real Estate Professional”.

      Presumably this is an attempt by this person to differentiate themselves from others occupying the same role in other real estate business in the area, but based on my experience none is different from the other.

      Why is it that so many people in the real estate industry, including those in sales, property management, accounts payable, and strata management seem to be on a race to the bottom of the proverbial cockies cage together with those in car sales and in politics?

      They’re all supposed to have “Continuing Professional Development” (CPD) under the requirements of the NSW Office of Fair Trading (OFT), and yet in this instance the property manager who claims to be a “practising professional” was writing in response to my request for a well overdue Tenancy Notification under S119 of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act (SCMA) about which she has absolutely no clue as “none of the strata managers asks for that”.

      Further, I’m continually chasing accounts payable people in real estate offices who are responsible for paying Strata Levy Contributions on behalf of their Clients, and I invariably have to contact those Proprietor/Landlords personally to expedite those payments.

      A Proprietor/Landlord in our Plan who was earlier this year personally heading off to the Consumer Trader & Tenancy Tribunal as his property manager had let him down badly, showed me a Tenancy Agreement  that had a social housing provider, and employee of that provider, and the residents of his Unit all listed as “tenants”. I expressed my concerns about entities, non-residents, and residents all being shown as “tenants”, and needless to say the CTTT ruled that the Tenancy Agreement prepared by the property manager was “illegal and unenforceable”.

      As for strata managers, I recently submitted a post about one who adjourned an Annual General Meeting due to no quorum being present, and then armed with a heap of proxies that magically appeared in time for the reconvened meeting, “met with himself” (his words) and proceeded to approve a flawed budget, to re-appoint three (3) Executive Committee Members (EC) who didn’t nominate and weren’t present at either Meeting personally or by proxy, and to defer resolution on all except the mandatory included motions to that EC, whose members have never met in the subsequent eleven (11) months.

      So much for CPD for people in the real estate industry, where much of the course material is prepared, presented, and authorised by the Associations representing that industry merely to ensure (un-audited) compliance with OFT requirements and to permit those people to sign letters as a “Practising Real Estate Professional”.

      The solution?  Not sure, but it’s certainly not the proffering of Continuing Professional Development for people in the broader real estate industry or mandatory training for Executive Committee Members as is being suggested by Minister Roberts in the State Government’s Review of the SCMA unless it’s all fair-dinkum training, where people can actually fail, and where the Providers are either (and ideally) TAFE Colleges or regularly audited by OFT.

      Despite the way that all this is heading, as evidenced by the recent proliferation of radio advertisements for strata managers, I predict that many more people will do what I have; don’t own  strata property as a principal residence (particularly one that’s newer than 6 years), don’t deal with real estate salespeople, self-manage strata and be guided by the Flat-Chat Forum.

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