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Strata insurance claims are an unfortunate fact of life. However there are ways to minimise their impacts and keep premiums lower.
Have a regular, ongoing inspection and maintenance regime for plumbing, drainage, roof, electrical and plant.
Deal with repairs routinely and promptly.
Maintain a healthy fund balance so you can ‘self-insure’ smaller jobs.
Consider setting higher excesses to lower premiums
Don’t give your SM the power to lodge claims without committee approval
Always include your excess in yearly budgets, and carry it over
Always shop around insurance and scrutinise policies.
Accidents can and do happen, but with a bit of effort it’s possible to put your OC in a better position to handle them.
I would say yes, they should. The leak is not your fault and they’re managing the property.
I agreed broadly with the sentiments outlined above in relation to ensuring residents have complying equipment that meets Australian standards – the same with any other product they buy really. There is an onus on personal responsibility here.
If there is a fire and suspect chargers are the likely cause then the fire services will investigate as will insurers to determine liability.
The best we can do as active strata owners is ensure we have by-laws/rules in place to ensure residents are aware of their obligations that any equipment they bring into the complex complies with relevant Australian standards whether its gas bbq’s, lighting, lamps, tv, any sort of charger or battery.
Owners corporations would probably be well advised to undertake a “test and tag” activity to identify all component plugged into outlets on common property is identified.
I have only ever owned in small complexes, currently I own in 3 buildings – 16 lots, 12 lots and 14 lots. These all have budgets under $250k. Key to these have been an active and engaged EC/SC.
Many owners just assume paid Strata Managers take care of everything, which is true only to the extent to which they have been enabled by the OC.
When it comes to engaging external trades and services the industry is rife with over-quoting. This is where an active committee can make the biggest impact by scrutinising quotes, insisting on 3 quotes and providing a quick, coordinating response back to Strata Managers for action.
For larger complexes this model should work too. There are various methods they can use such as using WhatsApp groups etc.
There should be guidelines around critical services (ie: 7 or 14 day action period) or an ‘opt out’ decision mechanism (gas will be cut-off if XYZ service isnt’t undertaken by ABC, use decision buttons below) for SMs to use to ensure all residents are not disadvantaged by a lazy EC/SC.
At the end of the day try as you might sometimes human apathy just cannot be overcome.
If they have breached the code of conduct or failed to deliver services you can use the Act to terminate them. The wording varies in each state but we did this successfully in the ACT with our strata manager, we gave them 30 days to explain their actions and if these were not acceptable to the Executive Committee their services would be terminated. We had already explored alternative Strata Managers and had one ready to move to.
Short answer is you need to be up to code for fire stuff.
Long answer is you are at risk of being taken advantage of by “fire consultants” who are also in the business of providing fire upgrades or get kick backs from referring strata’s to particular companies.
We went through something similar in Sydney, small old building. A couple of fire companies quoted upwards of $100k to bring the building up to current code (ie: all the bells and whistles as per a new build).
However some fairly close scrutiny on what the actual minimum requirements were (on top of what was already there) brought this down to around $12k – which was upgrading one of the pumps and connecting smoke detectors to a back-to-base monitoring service.
I’m an EC member on a few properties. For the same reason I would not approve a resident keeping a 44 gallon drum of petrol or diesel in the basement, I would actively vote against any charging infrastructure being installed.
I would even extend this to include permission being required to keep EV cars in basements as it would totally change the fire safety profile of the building.
You virtually cannot put out lithium battery fires. At least a petrol or diesel fire will either burn out or can be put out, but lithium battery fires are on another level.
In my view, the fire risks for almost all buildings are too great and such infrastructure belongs outside, on street level.
We use a broker through our SM. We always get multiple quotes in a report from the broker. The report also lists those insurers who refused to quote. In our building the SC is authorised to spend up to $15k without an AGM Or SGM. So far our insurance has always been under this amount and the SC always proceeds with an insurer who meets our needs. The quoting process provides scrutiny. You should be able to ask the SM or SC for evidence of approaching the market to obtain the best quotes.
I’ve never understood the “resort style” living marketing nor the need for concierge. My investment and living strategy has always been in buildings of 3 floors or less in a small complex. Much much lower fees no lifts pools or gyms.
I’m on the Executive/Strata Committee of two properties I own, one in ACT and one in NSW. I find this issue intriguing.
My view is that an Owners Corporation should not withhold reasonable permission for a lot owner to install and be responsible for installation of EV charging equipment where it is practicable and technically feasible to do so. This extends to metering as well.
However, for the same reasons an Owners Corporation wouldn’t allow an owner to store 44 gallon drums of diesel or petrol on their lot because it is cheaper for them to buy fuel this way I don’t think an Owners Corporation shouldn’t be falling over themselves to facilitate or retrofit elaborate systems for faster charging simply because an owner wants it, especially in older blocks. It just may not be safe or appropriate to do so.
In newer complexes this may be less of an issue especially if there is existing infrastructure to support a/c and induction appliances.
Installing EV equipment on Common Property I see being fraught with issues as they will inevitably become defacto carparks for EV owners. Having appropriate bylaws or rules in place to manage access to Common Property EV chargers, and even timed billing for each use of them, should be part of the mix.
Finally, part of the discussion needs to be that although EVs are cheaper to run, electricity is not free – at the end of the day we live in a user-pays society.
I have an update.
After reading all the entries on this topic I decided to take a similar course of action and read what our obligations actually are and then scrutinise everything the current Fire company was recommending and threatening to breach us on.
Through our strata manager I was able to get them to take a revised fire safety schedule to council that complied with our pre-existing fire safety systems and made some more subtle adjustments to meet modern expectations.
We also applied for an extension to lodge the AFSS to allow us to do the work.
The upshot is instead of a $36k bill we will have an $11k bill and we have 6 months extra to complete.
We won’t need a special levy for this either.
Lesson learned – scrutinise and question everything and try to do it from an informed position, read up. Engage positively with your strata manager, you’re paying them after all.