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Can you use your apartment in NSW for business purposes?
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Don’t know about the legislation or your by-laws but in these days of home offices and telecommuting there would be a lot of business that one could do without anyone being in the slightest bit bothered.
The practical criteria seem to be related to whether or not there is additional foot traffic, pressure on parking, security issues and impacts on common property.
A resident who used the common property pool for children’s swimming classes is one recent example that springs to mind. Another was a tenant who purported to offer a massage service when it was in fact a brothel.
Peter is right about home offices (I’m sitting in mine right now). But I have most of my meetings in nearby cafes. If I had people trooping in and out all day, I suspect I’d be getting a tap on the shoulder from the building manager threatening a “change of use” complaint to the local council.
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
We’ve had and have many tenants who have registered businesses that no one would even know about. But there is one tenant who has started a party planning business and is pushing their luck a little by using their garage for storage and taking an extra carpark outside for their car, having deliveries left in the stairwells, and loading and unloading at unreasonable hours. I’m watch them to see if they can see the error of their ways before taking it up with them, but if a business doesn’t impact on other peoples amenity or enjoyment of their lot, I can’t see the problem, legal or not legal.
I agree in the majority of cases it shouldn’t be a problem however it goes beyond whether the business is impacting other residents’ enjoyment of their lot or the common property. The key thing is liability.
For example – if someone is running a hairdressing business from their apartment, and someone visits the property for an appointment and injures themselves on common property, who should be iiable?
Many people work from home these days. There’s working from home and then there’s running a business from a residential property.Your local council will have a Local Environment Plan (LEP) eg; the City of Sydney’s can be found here.If you’re within the boundaries of your LEP, no sweat. If you’re not, it is effectively a change of use, and your by-laws will almost definitely say that any change of use must be brought to the attention of the Owners Corporation.Everyone has obligations to the OC to ensure that a change of use does not negatively impact on any insurance claim – Lot Owners have unlimited liability.It’s easy enough to establish whether or not what one is doing sits within the parameters of the LEP. Just verify ‘yes’/’no’, out of respect for the others in your OC and in line with the Terms and Conditions of your Strata Scheme’s mandatory building insurance policy.
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