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We live in a 24 townhouse lot in NSW. We have 2 major issues going on at the moment. Scheme has been in existence just over 4 years. 7 of the lots have double garages and 17 single garages. The complex was actually designed to allow the single garages to park in front of their garage to give them a second spot – plan showing this has been sighted. However the standard by-laws were put in place and the plan passed was no one parking on common property. Note I am now on the committee as treasury, having to get involved to make things happen as we had major financial issues- another problem altogether.
1/ The argument we have is the double garage people want to also park in front of their garages, giving themselves 4 spots. The majority of the committee entails double garage people. They have 3 times put forward a motion to an EGM which has failed saying they get 2 spaces and and single garages can have 1 space in front of their garages, 3 times it has been defeated. Because we have had no resolution on this matter and this disagreement has been going on for over 4 years, everyone is now parking multiple cars wherever they want on common property and it is becoming a nightmare as well as WHS issue. My partner and I are now personally taking this through the steps. Did mediation, which failed, as no one else bothered to turn up, the other members of the committee just ignored the whole process. Now going to adjudication. We actually want to get the 1 car for single garages agreed to — is there any chance the adjudicator would change a by-law, or will they just say you have to all abide by the current by-law. That at least will force the issue as everyone would have to park on the road — though my thinking is most will just ignore the ruling — if they do what action can we take? What sort of fines will be enforced.
2/ Visitor car parking — when is a visitor not a visitor — we have 2 residents who have perennial visitors — one of them is a brother who is now living with sister and mother until he sorts out his living arrangements. Classing himself a visitor he is parking in visitor spot despite having lived here for last 3 months. We also have the boyfriend who spends at least 3 nights a week here in a row if not more. How do we go in enforcing visitor parking rules?
You probably have dealt with all this before. Found your site full of lots of good information.
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1) My feeling is it is quite reasonable that if you allow one person to park in front of their garage you should allow all residents to do the same (whether it’s a single garage or double).
2) As for visitor parking it has been ruled in QLD that a visitor is someone whose primary purpose is to visit a resident and not have any secondary reason. So if your visitor is staying and going to work or study each day their sole purpose is not as a visitor and so is ineligible to use the visitor parking. The same reasoning should apply Oz wide.
long term you could also pass a bylaw defining limits on the time a visitor can park in a visitor parking bay. Max of 1 day per week for 8 hours or max of 4 hours per day.
Greg,
In most complexes there are bylaws that are bent to some extent by express or tacit agreement. For enforcement it is up to the Executive to follow through. If the single garage owners are allowed to park, it all depends upon how ‘cheated’ the double garage owners feel.
I would have thought that the following statement especially use of the word ‘designed’ doesn’t carry much weight when against the bylaws. “The complex was actually designed to allow the single garages to park in front of their garage to give them a second spot – plan showing this has been sighted.”
I would just ask the following questions:
1. Does the parking in front of the single garage create a nuisance or other wise deny others of the use of common property? By saying that the complex was ‘designed’ to allow it I would have thought no.
2. I would then ask the same question re parking in front of the double garage, does it create a nuisance or other wise deny others of the use of common property? If the answer is also ‘no’ the double garage owners have a strong case (or so I think) to be treated equally with single garage owners.
@Gregc59 said:
That at least will force the issue as everyone would have to park on the road — though my thinking is most will just ignore the ruling — if they do what action can we take? What sort of fines will be enforced.An adjudicator can order someone to abide by the by laws and impose a fine of up to $550. If they then ignore the order you can apply to the adjudicator again who can issue a fine of up to $5500 for breach of an adjudicators order.
THAT will get people to think twice about parking on common property.
Parking is obviously a very touchy subject. I guess each Strata needs to make up its own mind about how it enforces parking and other bylaws for that matter. Let me outline why and how our practices work in our strata.Our Strata was built over 30 years ago, before the days when it was mandatory to put aside dedicated parking. We have no visitor parking, nor is the street parking readily available, there is some but it is on a steep hill and then only a few spots.There are a few locations on the common property where parking does not cause inconvenience to other owners. One of these is beside the driveway where there is space for three cars. These unofficial visitors parks are used for short periods by owners at times. Also there are are a few units where owners parking directly outside their garage present no obstacle or nuisance to others owners enjoyment of common property. There are other owners where to park directly outside their garage would cause obstruction and nuisance to others. So we only allow some owners to park directly outside their units.If the Strata were to strictly enforce the “no parking on common property rule” it would result in everyone being treated the same but a lot more inconvenience to everyone. This is because such enforcement would result in:1. no visitor parking at all; and2. no owners ever being able to park on common property even when they could safely and unobtrusively do so.So even the owners that don’t get to park outside their garages get the benefit that when they have visitors they can tell them to park in the ‘visitors’ parking spaces. Also such owners often use these ‘visitors’ spaces themselves for short periods. The owners who are allowed to (maybe I should use the word “tolerated”) park outside there garage VERY RARELY use the ‘visitor’ spaces.I think all owners accept, some more begrudgeingly than others, that there are benefits in the parking practices we live under. Having said that if we got one or two owners who insisted that “if I can’t park in front of my garage no one can” we might be in deep trouble … but so far so good! .
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