It takes all sorts: 20 years of strata squabbles

For the past few weeks, we have been running pieces by our friend Francesco Andreone of GoStrata.  Last week I returned the favour by providing him with my recollections of 20 years of writing about strata – including the sometimes weird but often wonderful people I’ve encountered on the Flat Chat Forum. This is an edited version of what I sent to GoStrata.- JimmyT.

It was back in 2007 that I had my first major piece about a strata scandal published in the Sydney Morning Herald, and it all started with an email to the earliest iteration of the Flat Chat Forum.

I had received an query from a woman who was thinking of buying into Breakfast Point but concerned that the developer, the Rose Group, was demanding her proxy vote as a condition of sale.

I advised her to refuse, which she did, only to be told that it didn’t matter because they had everyone else’s votes anyway. She decided to buy elsewhere.

Digging deeper, I discovered that the Rose Group had used its proxy votes – which it demanded as a condition of the sale of its apartments – to take control of the executive committee of its Hunters Wharf building.

Why? Quite simply, to overturn the clear and vehemently expressed wishes of the majority of owners who objected to the expansion of their small private marina, part of the obvious appeal of this, the scheme’s most prestigious building, into a massive commercial operation.

By “take control”, I mean the developer had used proxy votes, handed over compulsorily as part of the sales contract, to sack the entire committee at the block’s AGM and installed a company man as its sole representative.  He then retracted the residents’ vehement and apparently unanimous objections to having their exclusive-use private marina turned into a massive commercial operation, which would have been one of the largest on the harbour. 

Instead, the one-man committee wrote to the local council and state government saying the residents – or, at least – the committee fully supported the commercial marina proposal: an egregious and deliberate falsehood, although technically and legally true.

Shortly after my story appeared in the Herald, then Planning Minster Frank Sartor announced that it would henceforth be illegal for any developers to demand proxy votes as a condition of the sales of their properties, citing pressure from the community and the media.    

The media?  That would have been me, if only because strata issues weren’t on the popular press’ radar back then. That change to strata law has since spread to every state and territory in Australia and also led to limits being placed on the number of proxy votes any one person or entity can hold.

For what it’s worth, the Rose Group argued that they needed the votes to ensure the continued development of the area as a harmonious community. To which I can only say pffffft!

But that one email led to further enquiries and eventually blew the lid off the whole disenfranchisement of strata owners by proxy harvesting, not just in Breakfast Point but across the state and beyond.

Since then, the Flat Chat Forum, as it is now known, has grown and the website has just over 9000 registered users, about 1000 readers a day, often more, while our weekly newsletter has a whisker above 3000 subscribers.  The forum has accumulated about 6000 topics and more that 20,000 replies.

These figures aren’t massive, compared to the squillions of “followers” that influencers claim.  But they are real people with verified email addresses (unlike one of our short-lived rivals who claimed to have more users than there were apartments in the whole of Australia).

And those users can be broken down into four main categories – the Worriers, the Warriors, the Quiffs, and the Carers.

The Worriers

Strata can be a strange and hostile place, especially if you don’t know how it works and even more so when you know how it should work, can see where it isn’t working but don’t know how to fix it.

The Worriers are generally residents who want to do the right thing but, more to the point, don’t want to do the wrong thing.  They want to be good neighbours but don’t know how to deal with bad neighbours. Some are on committees, many aren’t.

Mostly they want a quiet life and not to even have to think about by-laws and regulations.  They want to keep their levies as low as reasonably possible and don’t want anything to happen that might affect the value of their homes.

All of which would be fine were it not for the fact that they have neighbours through the walls, the floor and the ceiling who may have a completely different set of priorities.

So the Worriers will come to Flat Chat looking for solutions that involve the minimum disruption or confrontation.  In their search for peace, they don’t want to start a war.

Fortunately for them, there are very few strata problems that haven’t been aired in the Forum and they will get advice that ranges from the passive to the aggressive and they can choose their path accordingly.

 Quick Fix For Free

The Quiffs – or Quick Fix For Free brigade – are people who have encountered a problem in their strata scheme and want free advice on what to do about it. What’s more, they want it now and when they’ve got it, they move on, often without a word of acknowledgement or thanks.

Did they take the advice our readers offered and did it work?  We may never know.

Often they will ask their questions too late – “I’ve got an AGM tomorrow night … how do I get an item on the agenda” – or with the expectation that we will intervene on their behalf (we won’t but we will recommend agencies who might).

Now, I don’t blame people for thinking the internet exists to provide free information, advice or entertainment. We have been drawn to its various charms by the provision of precisely that, which has created a culture in which anyone who asks for payment is treated with suspicion.

The growth of adblocker apps only consolidates the sense that a lot of people feel they are entitled to get content entirely free regardless of how much it costs to produce it. I would be as guilty as anyone of that – when the free trial period for a new app runs out, I take a lot of convincing to pony up for the subscription.

By the way, Flat Chat is financed by sponsors who have been with us for years and whom I chose because I like and trust them and would recommend them to strata residents in any case.

So the Quiffs register (as they must before they can post), ask their questions, often get an answer, which they may or may not like, and move on. 

Occasionally Quiffs will pepper the Forum with the same question in different areas under different headlines – they soon get short shrift.  I want all the responses to be in the same place (and so should they).

That said, some stick around when they realise there is a very supportive community that they can tap into and to which they can contribute. And that’s when they become Carers

Caring and Sharing

Probably the most rewarding aspect of running the Forum is the way that other owners pitch in with advice. This, I believe, stems from a recognition that strata living can be hard but there are ways of making it easier.

So people will come with their own questions and stay to offer advice and support to people who are going through something that may have no connection with their original issues, but which they have been through themselves.

I call this group the Carers because the one thing that shines through is that they care about other people and they can see the potential in strata living if we get it right.

They are the lifeblood of the Forum because they are informed, experienced empathic and fair – all qualities you are looking for when you are assailed by conflicting and unreliable information, often from vested interests, when you are in the middle of a stressful dispute.

The Warriors

This is a militant subgroup of the carers, who have become frustrated with their strata schemes and seem to live in a permanent state of cynicism, frustration and rage.

No solution will work, in their view, all committee members and strata managers are incompetent and corrupt, any efforts to change anything are doomed to ignominious failure while they are vilified as troublemakers in the community.

Often dismissed as ‘keyboard warriors” and “bush lawyers” they can be guilty of cherry-picking aspects of strata law to create an argument that wouldn’t stand up in a high school debate, let alone a strata Tribunal.

Our job at Flat Chat is to let them have a voice but point out the flaws in their arguments before anyone gets too carried away.

In Venn diagram of strata living, there are many overlapping groups and the Quiffs and Warriors share a lot of territory.  Occasionally people will write to us in the mistaken belief that by naming a neighbour or a strata professional they can exact some revenge or influence their behaviour.

But we have always operated on the basis of anonymity because it means people can talk about their problems without damaging their standing in their community or even the value of their homes.

The woman who baulked at the Breakfast Point proxy grab and eventually bought elsewhere insisted on anonymity.  But she opened the door and others who were prepared to be named poured through.  And that’s when we allow ourselves to think that this thing actually works.

And just one more thing …

In recent years, the NSW government has taken to tweaking the wording of strata laws so that elements that you have sworn by in the past suddenly have different meanings.

For that reason if no other we always hold up our hands when we’ve got it wrong.  The NSW Strata Schemes Management Act is a strange and confusing document – for instance, the word “secretary” could mean someone on your strata committee or a senior civil servant – so we take care to warn readers that ours is not legal advice and that for serious issues they should consult an experienced strata lawyer.

As screenwriter William Goldman once said of movie-making, the real problem with strata is that nobody knows anything.  At Flat Chat we try our best to spread the information without exacerbating the misinformation.

And in those efforts, the Forum is the lifeblood of the website – so please keep posts, regardless of how weird or wonderful your questions are.