Maintenance of parking spaces

Hi Webwrx

It’s a bit of a grey area given that it has been maintained for a period of time – however generally speaking, the actual car spaces are on title and hence your responsibility (much like your balcony – you wouldn’t really expect the OC to mop the tiles on the balcony floor), but here’s the clincher –  the OC is still technically responsible for the cleaning of the visitors car spaces and all of the driveways/bitumen in between the car spaces as this is common property.

I would point this out to the EC and ask what savings, if any, they will get from cleaning parts of the car park (but not others) versus the trade off in having the scheme look shabby: leaves from an owners car space would blow around anyway, so it seems to be counter-intuitive and quite pedantic……

What about all the dust and leaves that the gardener might blow into  a private parking spot as a result of cleaning common roperty? 

Would the owner be able to claim compensation from the OC for cleaning up the mess? On a couple of past occasions I have had to ask our cleaner to wash my car after he attcked our undercover parking lot with his blower/

It makes a huge difference if the spaces are common property or part of the unit on the unit plan. If common property you might have a special privilege for exclusive use of that space and it might have been granted in exchange for the unit owner taking on maintenance eg. cleaning. I am especially conscious of this because in the ACT it takes an unopposed resolution to grant a special privilege over common property. We had such an arrangement for parking spaces. It was not done properly years ago. We have legal advice that it needs urgent fixing. We took further advice on how to fix it, explained to owners etc. Still a few opposed because they did not accept it was not done right in the first place. This has cost us serious money already, mostly due to the need to deal legally with a few intransigent owners. Tomorrow is the big day of the hearing. 

The best thing though is you have a power point metered back to your unit in each space. Great! You are set up for electric cars. I can only charge mine because a neighbour let me run a subsidiary meter in his meter box so I can charge from his unit and pay for the extra on his meter. 

When I am not being a ‘strataguru’ I am a being consulted on DIY conversion of cars to electric drive. My EV has been on the road for over 3 years now. Going great. 

@webwrx said:

I’m now thinking they’re part of the unit –

You shouldn’t need to guess, they are part of your unit or they are common property (you have stated their is no relevant bylaw) and you should be able to tell from the plans of the unit. Until you know which you are stuck.

If common property it’s OC responsibility to maintain, if part of the lot it’s owners responsibility.

However previous posts have stated that the SM MAY use strata fund to maintain items within the lot and this sounds like a sensible use of that ability. BUT what sort of vote would be required to authorize use of these funds is a mystery to me.

Why spend money on a bylaw when common sense solves the problem.