Podcast: BBQs and secret committee meetings

Austman wrote:

If this is strata “secrecy” then it’s a widespread national issue and it has been for a long time.  I can’t quite see the national crisis.

Your sarcasm is noted and, dare I say it, misplaced.  If you want to play a numbers game, there are considerably fewer (about 15 percent) strata schemes in Victoria and all the other states put together than there are in NSW and Queensland combined.

And if you are saying the strata processes in Tasmania, WA and SA are superior to NSW and Queensland, you are clearly using a different set of metrics from mine

But there’s a fundamental question that’s more important: is it better to keep owners in the dark about what their strata committees are discussing?

That’s the old way.  The “up-to-date” way is to let owners know what’s going on at every step of the process and if they choose not to engage then they can’t complain if things go wrong.

If a group of owners get together periodically, don’t tell the other owners what they’re discussing, don’t allow anyone to observe their meetings and selectively report (if at all) on the discussions they had, that is pretty much a definition of secrecy.

And, with all due respect, your experience of the schemes where you have owned and served on committees is specific – it’s limited to the schemes you have owned in.  Have you ever owned in a building where the managers and committee members colluded to rip off the other owners?

Have you ever owned in a building where the original committee hid defects from the other owners and potential purchasers so they could sell before the problems were found?

No? Does that mean they don’t exist or or such behaviour never occurs.  Or is it only NSW that has these problems?

The last time NSW strata owners were asked how many of their schemes had defects, the response was off the scale.

But in Victoria? Nothing.  Nada.  No figures.  Does this mean there are no problems in Victorian strata schemes? Or does it just mean that most owners don’t know, those who do know don’t want to report it so they can sell out befoe the value of their property is harmed, and the media has no idea how serious it is, or don’t care.

That’s exactly how things were in NSW 15 years ago and that’s why I say Victorian strata law is behind the times.

It must be great for those blocks where there are few problems – but less fanatastic that we won’t know about the others where there are serious problems until it’s too late.

Austman wrote:

Requiring the formality as per NSW would mean, in one of my OCs in VIC, on a busy week, the issuing of 4 or 5 notices of committee meetings because, on a busy week a new issue comes up nearly each day.   How would the committee be able to deal with that requirement?

Yeah, great argument but it doesn’t wash. Most issues that need an instant response have been anticipated by delegation to the strata or building manager, who reports to the next committee meeting.

My 20-year-old block of 130-plus units has a lot of “end-of-life” issues with infrastructure, as well as all the other stuff about short-term rentals and residents renovating etc etc. They get by with one committee meeting a month.  So where is this notion that they would need five meetings a week come from?

It’s just not real.  No building in NSW that I know of works like that because they don’t need to.  That’s the reality.

Again, may I say, this is not a “strata of origin” issue.  But that’s why Victoria is behind the times – because every time someone says you could be doing better there, we get the same false equivalence arguments about how Victorian strata is just hunky-dory compared to NSW.

Maybe your own schemes are, Austman, but reports are rolling in that others are in trouble. And just wait until the dodgy developers driven out by the NSW building commissioner set up shop in Victoria.

Of course, it will take years for the stories to get out because the luckless owners will be kept in the dark.  Good luck with that.