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I am an owner of a unit in a large block of units. My daughter is the tenant. I gave her a car so she could get her license. The car was parked to the side of a long driveway leading to the car spaces. Many cars park there seemingly legally as signage either end of the driveway indicates that there is no parking past a certain points. When coming home from work one evening she noticed the car missing. I attended the police station and reported it stolen. None of the other occupants seemed to know anything until her dad becames involved. Then one of the owners printed an email trail which indicated both the Strata Managers and several of the owners knew exactly what happened. The email indicated the car was towed at the request of the Strata Managers. Further, it read, at the time it was towed to the street, a Council Officer removed the plates(council have vehemently denied this saying they do not remove number plates) and stated it couldn’t be left on street as it was unregistered (council confirmed they would not have been able to determine this)
the email goes on to read Police advised to dispose of the car! So it reads the car was scrapped!!!! In the car at the time it was towed were several high priced items including a wedding dress ( strata managers have confirmed they have this item only) Strata Managers have stated to me they were advised it was an abandoned car. However if that was true why did they retain the dress? I can confirm no notices of any kind were placed on the car, no letter or any advice was received by either myself or daughter in terms of the car being parked there. It seems a far fetched story……. I am still trying to understand how this can happen. I would appreciate any advice in terms of who to contact first and who would be the best people to represent myself in this matter. Thankyou.
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The legality or not of towing your daughter’s car I will leave to someone else, but some things do not make sense.
The vehicle registration papers will prove her car had number plates and that it was registered. If the car had been sitting in one place for a long time (while your daughter was waiting to get her license), the Owners may have thought it was abandoned.
Where was your daughter when all this was happening?
In NSW, motor vehicle registration can be checked with Roads and Maritime, and most cars still would have a registration sticker with the date of the registration. In our suburb, an abandoned vehicle sits on the street for several weeks until reported, then the council sticks a large notice on the windshield stating it could be towed away as an abandoned vehicle.
Why would your daughter leave valuable items, especially a wedding dress in her car? As is obvious, just about anyone can break into a motor vehicle if they want. We are warned not to leave anything valuable in the car, and even if insured, she may not be paid.
It is not unknown for owners corps and building managers who have cars abandoned on common property to roll them out on to the street where they have to be dealt with by the local council and/or police. Often they will remove the plates to hasten the car being deemed ‘abandoned”.
This is, of course, completely illegal but it gets round one of the great anomalies of strata law that Common Property parking is private property as far as the council and police are concerned but it’s not private property if you want to remove vehicles that aren’t supposed to be there.
It’s hard to know what the details of this particular case are but it would seem that the car was on common property and hadn’t been moved for a while. Notices to move it weren’t getting to the car’s owner – or they were being ignored. And throw into the mix a typically high-handed attitude towards tenants who are treated as second-class citizens in many strata buildings.
If the Strata Manager is in possession of the wedding dress, it suggests the car was opened by someone (as part of the process of rolling or towing it out?).
I doubt if the local council parking attendants would have removed the plates, as has been alleged.
I would put my money on this being a case of a car parked illegally, a car owner who either didn’t know or care that they were in breach and a frustrated and/or overzealous building manager or EC taking the law into their own hands.
You won’t get any joy with the CTTT as they won’t award damages. I doubt very much if the police will be interested in a case of theft or criminal damage. So your best bet may be to talk to a lawyer about a claim for financial restitution at a district court against the Owners Corporation on the basis that they or their agents must have organised the removal of the car which they were not entitled to do.Other questions that spring to mind include why the daughter wasn’t parked inside the building, how often she used the car, whether or not the Owners Corp knew whose car it was, whether or not it was parked on common property and whether or not she ever got a notice to remove it, either directly or on the car.
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.
How could the OC know it’s your (or your daughter’s) car if it was not parked in your allocated car space?
We have this issue in our OC. Parked on common property? We just can’t always be sure who owns the vehicle.
So, unless signage specifically stated that parking was allowed where the car was parked, the car could look illegally parked to an OC. And if it had been there for weeks – it could look as dumped.
We had a similar problem in our block last year when a car was left in the car wash for 3 months.
This car had been a regular “visitor” for some time previous, so it was known to be associated with a resident of the building, but there was no way of telling who. Notices on the car and around the parking area failed to get a response.
It eventually transpired that the owner was in the Defence Force and had been posted overseas. He asked a friend (non resident) to park the car in the building, and the wash bay was the most convenient spot.
Our OC is self managed, with one person owning about 75% of the lots, who is quite happy to allow his tenants to use the visitors spaces for overflow parking.
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