Smells like trouble.

Hi guys. I’m a recent first time home owner / strata member and just my luck I’ve been sucked into a dispute with my neighbour before I’d even moved in!

We bought our unit and immediately began some minor renovations, all of which were minor enough that they did not require strata approval first (we checked). One such reno was to sand and reseal our floorboards. That’s where our problems started. 

Although we’d already knocked and introduced ourselves and advised there would be some noise and smell, our closest neighbour in our 12 unit block complained to me about the varnish smell wafting through into her apartment. She immediately requested to be reimbursed for the cost of staying in a hotel for three nights to avoid the smell, and harangued our tradies, the strata managers and myself to see if we were “insured” to cover this. All three said no of course, and the strata managers explained that the issue did not fall under strata jurisdiction as I had not breached any by-laws.

Apart from anything else, we had friends stay in our new unit (two days after her complaint) who slept on the freshly varnished floors and had no problem with the smell. What’s more, our clothes were hanging in the built-in robes during the varnishing and they don’t have any lingering smells at all.

We bought our neighbour a nice ($30) bottle of red and wrote a card apologising for the inconvenience which we delivered to here the day before we moved in (four days after her initial complaint) and she happily accepted this. Two weeks later she slipped a letter under our door demanding $530 for the time she had spend in a hotel, and cleaning costs to dry clean all the clothes in her unit! As there were no receipts provided and I considered the request ridiculous, I ignored it.

Another four weeks later we received another letter. Now she needed $600 and stated the “problem would not go away” until we had paid her. It also said she had a “medical certificate” due to “varnish poisoning”. Again I ignored it.

A week later, I received a third letter, now demanding $700 and stating she had made applications to the CTTT regarding the dispute, quoting application #s. When I checked with the CTTT, these application #s were indeed made by our neighbour, but were incomplete, name my strata managers as the respondent, and contain no mention of the issue addressed in her letters to me.

I have sought legal advice in case it does go to the CTTT and feel pretty confident. I still have seen no receipts for her claims, I had an apology gift happily accepted, I breached no laws or strata by-laws, and have stat decs written by our friends who stayed stating the smell was non-existent after 48 hours.

I just thought it would be an interesting topic for the forum to discuss!