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(This post was submitted as one long paragraph, so I’ve re-organised it and fixed up a few typos to facilitate better / more responses. Whale 1200 22/4)
After being ripped off by a faulty developer who did not waterproof and construct our development properly, we engaged a series of expensive consultants over ten years to get the issues fixed.
Our Strata Manager, who had been appointed by the developer, did little to assist, and many of these consultants also took our money and the problems remained unfixed.
Now out of warranty, we selected new Strata Managers, outlined our issues and that we needed to engage trusted builders who would properly rectify these issues, and an independent building supervisor (to specify, quote and supervise the work) as we do not have the expertise or time.
The new Strata Manager recommended a ‘trusted’ rectification and engineering firm and a set of builders to quote the job, and a large special levy was paid and work commenced over a year ago.
The builders turned out to be very unreliable, aggressive and dismissive and the work was often faulty. The ‘independent’ engineer paid to represent us seemed to have a pre-existing relationship with the builder and constantly covered for the builder’s errors whilst also failing to respond to owners issues themselves or meet the terms of their contract.
The specifications for the work were often wrong and misquoted. All owners complained, and the work went way over schedule etc.
Almost a year after work commenced, my property (I paid nearly $60,000 towards the job) has had the bathroom done twice so far due to errors and needs to be redone again by the builder as it remains error ridden, one bedroom has been inundated by water through the ceiling after they did faulty guttering work (not picked up by the Supervisor) and there has been damage to my property throughout and faulty workmanship meant to be fixed.
The Supervisor just refuses to respond to my requests to have the issues fixed, the builder ignores me as well – at one stage offering to pay some of my money back – but that leaves me having to source my own builder and supervise works – when I paid to have that done via the special levy.
I have approach Strata and EC over a period of 5 months since the work has been left like this, and they have failed to act. The builder and Supervisor have been deliberately ignoring me and refusing to address my issues out of vindictiveness, following my pressing them to fix blatantly poor workmanship and raising OFT involvement.
The builder is so aggressive I have actually become frightened to have him in my home, as I am a young single woman. The Strata Manager recently said if I get another builder to fix the issues, they will remove my bathroom from strata responsibility. I am sure they cannot legally do this.
Bottom line, I paid nearly 60K for work and services I have not received, and I have instead ended up with a property in a total mess and the stress of trying to get it all fixed whilst being constantly ignored. Does anyone know what my rights are to get this issue fixed? All parties acknowledge that I have been left with faulty work and I am basically being discriminated against by being put in the too hard basket. I resent having to pay for legal advice on top of all of the above.
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nellv – before your post drops off the bottom of the list, I’ll offer some advice.
It’s the Owners Corporation and not you who engaged and is presumably paying for the builder’s services, so it’s up to it to resolve any consequent issues such as the one with the waterproofing of your bathroom.
What you need to do is to get yourself out of the middle, and to insist in writing that your Owners Corporation (O/C), via its Executive Committee and its Strata Manager, deals with the builder and their minions to have your problems resolved within a timeframe that’s acceptable to you.
If you’ve put that in a formal way to your E/C Secretary and Strata Manager already and its documented, then you can immediately apply to have the matter Mediated, and if that doesn’t achieve an acceptable outcome then you can apply for Orders to force the O/C to exercise a function for which its responsible (and for which its accepted responsibility by virtue of its special levy) on the grounds that it hasn’t done so within 2 months of your request regarding the repairs to your Lot; see Sect 138(2)(b) of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act (1996).
Finally, with regard to your question about the O/C absolving itself of any responsibility to maintain an area of the common property in your Lot (i.e. within your bathroom), YES it can resolve to do that by way of a 75% majority vote at a General Meeting, and particularly so if you engage another builder to attend to your long-awaited repairs; so however frustrated and annoyed you become DON’T DO THAT!
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