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Topic
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Our strata plan is a block of units, shops beneath, and 3 free standing garages out the back. Common property between. I’m a tenant not an owner.
A woman bought one of the shops (actually, two shops adjoined. She found a tenant and has renovated to a restaurant.
The problems:
1. She has already built a grease trap on common property, and installed an external air duct that residents are complaining about.
2. She has one garage (2 story, storage at top) and an adjoining car space. She has had a DA approved to extend her garage by extending the top floor of the garage over the top of her car space, and converting this to a commercial use of staff room and office.
She is taking over common property between the garage and car space with this structure. She is also building into the airspace above the car parking bay, blocking light from common property.
She got herself elected to Chair of the EC, and has a close working relationship with the young woman who is the Strata Manager. The strata seal was used on the DA, but the OC had not seen the DA plans, just a simplified diagram provided.
The DA was approved, and a bylaw is being drafted to give exclusive use of common property to the new owner. It’s significant. This bylaw will be voted on at the upcoming AGM, but no information has been given to owners yet about how much common property is involved. Neither have they been told they have the option of selling the land and airspace outright, or leasing it for an annual fee.
Some common property has already been built on, (grease trap), before the bylaw.
It’s a huge messy situation. I got a copy of the DA and showed the plans to the owners, and they are shocked.
Also, no-one, not even the Strata manager, knew about the fact that a grease trap was going to be built on common property before the event.
I’m now being harassed by shop tenant and owner, and threatened with legal action. I think it’s because I found out information that had been concealed.
Btw, based on last sales, land around here is worth around $10,000 per square metre.
Was I wrong to talk to other owners and give them information I had got from council and Dept Fair Trading, or just stupid to get involved? (Many of the owners are my friends, I’ve been here a while, I hate to see them taken advantage of.)
Sorry about the length of this post!
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Replies
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Normally you would need OC approval to make structural alterations.
Mojo – you may wish to consider that just like her Lot, the pavement / floor of the Owner’s carspace is still Common Property, and as such she cannot permanently fasten anything to it without the prior written consent of the Owners Corporation (O/C).
I don’t wish to confuse matters prior to your O/C seeking some expert legal advice, but as an alternative to a grant of exclusive use it is possible under the provisions of Sect 65B for the O/C to grant a licence to the Owner for her use of that section of its Common Property. At least a licence can be regularly reviewed, amended, and indeed cancelled by the O/C upon reasonable grounds without the requirement for that Owner to give the prior consent that’s mandated when a grant of exclusive use exists.
At least in that way the O/C can’t be judged obstructionist, and can buy some time to assess how things pan-out with the Owner’s business venture by, figuratively speaking, dipping its collective little toes into the water before jumping straight in to the exclusive use pool; just a thought!
mojo – fair enough, but if the Owner is made fully aware of the conditions that will be attached to any licence, and makes an informed decision to go ahead, then I’d expect she’d be prepared to accept the consequences of future reviews and to make damn sure that she and/or her tenants behaved themselves so as to ensure a continuance of such an arrangement. Conversely, if she refused the conditions, then I don’t consider that the Owners Corporation (O/C) could be adjudged unreasonable.
But then I’m neither a member of that O/C nor a Lawyer!
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