Travels etc.

A story from one user of  http://strataboss.com.au A strata unit owner has got a problem with exhaust fan in the bathroom and requested a strata manager to send someone to fix it. An electrician came and fixed the issue. Next day the strata manager sent an invoice to the unit owner and requested a payment or proposed adding that amount to the levies bill. The owner went to  http://strataboss.com.au , chose the problem location (bathroom) and the problem (exhaust fan) and got a c omplete information about who is responsible: If it is inside the lot it is the Owners responsibility. If it is mounted within "Structural cubic space" e.g. communal ducting or a false ceiling which is designed to carry communal pipes etc or outside the lot, then it is the responsibility of the Owners Corporation. In that case the fan is not inside the lot and therefore is Owners Corporation's responsibility. Instant savings of $100!

During more than 4 years dealing with various strata living issues I have got good experience working with committees, builders, strata managers etc. Almost always the good service - which is timely, reliable and doesn’t require further follow ups and re-visits - doesn’t happen at all. I don’t take to account when the job is just apply some paint and replace a light bulb. But operations that are even simpler i.e. getting to contact the builder or other people by strata manager very often takes weeks without any action. Though money is being regularly paid to them for the service. Low quality solutions are not good for multiple reasons They require time and effort to rectify after the work is done. So instead of productive activity we have to be engaged in fixing the problem which shouldn't exist in the first place They are equal to fraud, because almost always the money is paid for the solution and if it's low quality then it's obviously not the product...

StrataBoss  has got a feature allowing to notify your strata manager after you have identified who is responsible to rectify a problem in your strata unit. The email will contain the information from the web site that will help the strata manager, executive committee and yourself as an owner to proceed with problem rectification. This feature will save your time informing the strata manager and relevant people to get problem solved as soon as possible. Check it out !  

Almost 8 months passed from the time of previous post and here's how the owners corporations activities looked like to "resolve" the defects/problems: 1. Independent inspection report was ordered and completed 1st June 2015. The report confirmed the defects that were known to owners corporation already. It should be noted that in the period between December 2014 and June 2015 the only attempts by owners corporation to resolve the issues were to convince the lot owner that it's the owner's personal responsibility. Therefore half a year gone with a couple of meetings only, because people were "on holidays", "busy" etc. 2. Between 3rd July 2015 and end of July 2015 the strata manager spent "contacting the builders for quotes". Until owner called the strata manager nothing have happend. 3. By the end of August 2015 all quotes were in place. The meeting of all owners was set up for the 7th October! Because as usual "holid...

Reducing costs of strata unit ownership: start with identifying who is responsible for maintenance and rectifications of the common property that affects the unit at http://strataboss.com.au

When dealing with strata living and issues related to a unit or common property it is crucial to identify the responsible party as soon as possible! Having ceiling falling on your tenants or your beloved cat and dog? Need to paint the door to your unit? Waterproofing is not functioning? Other major or minor issues with the unit? Regardless of the severity of the problem, you can spend months before you realize that the reponsibility is not yours, but either a builder or owners corporation. In addition to that you may spend some money on investigation and/or fixing the problem which is not yours. Fortunately there is a tool which can help you out identifying who is responsible and where you can start your claims and/or fixes: http://strataboss.com.au The tool is simple - choose where the problem is located, what is the problem and see who is responsible - you as an owner or owners corporation as a whole (which will potentially save you a lot of money in some cases). Enjoy!

This post is a continuation of the long process that started in December 2011 and is still going. Here’s the link to the whole story: http://traveloga.blogspot.com/p/home-building-issues-sydney-experience.html An idea of this publication is to draw attention of people who are interested or involved in the building industry, property market, construction, property development and property management and ownership. That should help to raise awareness and to ignite conversations with relevant people in law making, business and other communities who could take this information to account when they dealing with relevant matters and think about quality of the work and of research and education. This matter is about building defects that are covered by statutory warranty, but in reality are covered by rather a joke. Well to be fair to all parties some minor defects (that are similar to paint a crack or to replace broken toilet paper roll holder) were brilliantly rectified by the resp...

As I explained in the previous post , communal ownership like strata title implies duties and responsibilities of all owners. This is not quite comfortable idea for majority of property owners. If we consider current unit/apartment prices in Sydney as an example the reasons of it would become apparent. In addition there is a particular feature of Australian lifestyle which is politely described as being laid-back. Strata owners have to regularly contribute money into an account specific for administration and maintenance of the building and common property. Here’s where majority of property owners in such titles limit their duty and responsibility in relation with the communal well-being and problems. However this is not enough. Some owners contribute their time to present at the meetings as an executive committee and once a year for all owners meeting, i.e. out of 28 units there are 4-5 units that consistently are involved. That doesn't mean involvement after or in betwee...

If you talk to people who own apartments/units in NSW 99% of them will say something like "our strata is totally dysfunctional" and some of them might say "our strata management is quite good". Below I will explain what they mean by saying that, because what they are referring to may be quite different from what they say. Term "strata" is used by majority as something that relevant to ownership, management and ongoing maintenance of a block of units. The concept of strata title was introduced in 1961 in Australia to deal with property rights of apartment blocks. Strata title allows individual ownership of "a lot" which is part of the building (apartment, unit, townhouse) together with shared ownership in the "Common Property" which is the remainder of the building that is not included in the individual lots (i.e. walls, roofs, foyers, planters, pathways, parking etc.). This is a type of communal ownership and living. The keyword...

There is no surprise that amid property price growth in Australia (especially in Sydney) some people would be interested in explaining the reasons of it. Beyond market conditions (demand higher than supply, low interest rates, higher income than many other places) there is also a tendency to blame foreign investors in influence on the property prices. I have personally heard sentiments about this from persons who couldn't afford to buy property for themselves to live. For some it is possibly easy to mark people who they see as competitors on the property market as foreigners. As an illustration you might consider this quote: ... I think it is hard to deny. If you imagine an auction on a weekend where you throw in an extra buyer who is willing to pay a little bit more than everyone else there, if that buyer happens to be foreign, maybe as a temporary resident, and they are buying the single place that they are able to get approval for, it is hard to deny that it would not p...

This post is a follow up on the earlier article  Development Application for Strata Common Wall . Residential owners corporation reached out to surveyor and found out deposited plans that show the boundary is face of the wall on the commercial strata side. That means the applicant (commercial strata) submitted development application without consent from the owners of the wall. This was pointed out to the Council and the applicant as follows: " Section 78A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (NSW) provides for the making of a development application (DA) subject to compliance with the requirements of the regulation.  Clause 49 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2000 (NSW) (regulation) mandates that a DA needs to be either made by the ‘owner’ of the land affected by the DA or any other person so long as the owner has provided consent in writing. DA Number was made by Applicant_Name and the owner specified is Proprietors of St...

An article about Canadian problems regarding mortgage, but advice is international though http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/paying-off-your-mortgage-faster-can-pay-huge-dividends-1.2719753 However, in Canada the level of household debt relative to disposable income was a near record 163.2% this year. That means majority of people just don't have money to implement the strategies outlined in the article.

There is a building that is constituted by Residential strata (28 units) and Commercial strata (2 offices and 2 retail shops). Residential block and Commercial block face each other and have got shared walls between courtyards as per following figure: Commercial Strata decided to enclose their courtyards (Courtyard 1 & 2 on the figure above). Enclosure would increase existing shared walls by 60 cm. Their floor level is lower therefore from their side it is about 25% increase, but from the Residential side it is about 40% increase: Commercial strata owner sent a proposal for wall increase to Residential strata. Residential strata had a meeting and didn't consent to the proposed enclosures. A letter from Residential was sent to Commercial with "No" for proposed enclosures outlining the reasons. Part of the proposed structure will encroach to private property - residential owners' courtyards. Therefore written consent from the owners of either common wal...

Very interesting article ' China aims to build over 7 million public homes this year ' There is a couple of questions in this regard: 1. How those properties will be distributed among the tenants? Would it be an income test, need based or merit based system? All all of that together in some proportion? 2. How the property rights will be established? Would the tenant of such a property be an owner with the right of disposition, just a tenant on a lease with payments made by government or something else? How this will work in China where communist and capitalist principles seem to work very well together. We'll see.

Today have contributed to Australian law by defending my application at NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The Tribunal ordered exactly as I expected. The application was lodged 19th March and the hearing has been set up for today 14th April. It is related to the building defects that were reported originally in December 2011 and the builder made several attempts to fix it without a proper result. There were several factors to that: - Negligence by the sub-contractors - No quality assurance by the builder - Builder was not willing to fix the issue which involved dragging process of numerous inspections, involving Fair Trading, the builder, independent inspector etc. - The builder tried to be smart and started coming up with ways to recover their costs - though all the work they did was part of statutory warranty. The conciliation went well and the matter proceeded to the hearing with a mutual agreement by the applicant and the respondent (the builder). As expected, the ...

Not long ago I published an article  Economic Lessons - Consumer Influence on Price  with an intent to show that not everywhere rules of supply and demand work as per the textbooks and as per wishes of some people. I have discussed this topic with many people and majority seem to still believe in supply-demand mantra. Today I stumbled upon the article by BT Financial Group -  4 surprising facts about the property market : "Supply and demand pricing rules don’t always work with property".

With the New Year resolutions came new wave of communication with the vendor and builder regarding unresolved defects from last year. Vendor has been contacted by the owner, because: - In the contract of sale there is a clause which states that all defects should be reported within 3 months after settlement and should be repaired by the vendor (and at the vendor's expense ) within 6 months after settlement - The vendor and their relevant contacts were notified numerous times about those defects and their response has been always "all issues will be resolved" which changed to "the building came with 12 months warranty and the responsibility passed on to all owners" - The owner didn't have any direct agreements or contracts with the builder. Therefore it has been decided to work with the vendor. An email correspondence with the vendor looked like this: Owner (O): Hi, it's been two years since the defects were reported, but not ...

Awesome news: http://smh.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/nsw-strata-law-revolution-20131103-2wuy4.html It is apparent to anyone who lives in a strata unit that the current issues are serious and it should be something done about it at a legislation level. I have written about some of the existing problems sometime ago  http://traveloga.blogspot.com/2013/05/real-estate-strata-living.html In the course of new laws to be implemented, how they are going to enforce builders or developers responsibility? Will see.

Major building defects are still not resolved and the owners of most of the units didn't even bother to follow up. However some units are eager to finalise the process and fix the defects. One member of executive committee has built an online application on the Internet to get the response from the interested units what defects have been fixed and what are outstanding. With the results of that report owners corporation lodged a complaint with Fair Trading against the builder on the outstanding defects. The complaint was lodged on 16/01/2013. A week later, on 23/01/2013 Fair Trading called the owners corporation to confirm the details of the complaint. Same day they called the builder. Builder contacted owners corporation on 29/01/2013 to advise that they are coming to inspect the defects again! They explained it as they want to confirm what defects they are responsible for and that they are going to contact Fair Trading after the inspection. The builder advised they ar...

In the earlier post I described the timeline of the intriguing case of construction issues/defects resolution. What's obvious: Nobody is rushing to fix the earlier reported issues Vendors don't do anything to fix the issues Strata management doesn't assist in fixing the issues, but forward messages to the executive committee of the owners corporation Treasurer of the owners corporation Executive Committee is somehow involved in the process and communicates directly to vendor, strata manager and the builder. No visible results though, but just promises of better future. Research The owner initiated the following research: Strata rules to see who is responsible for what in terms of building defects Seeking legal advice to set up a plan for further actions against the Vendor and/or the Builder Requesting strata scheme account statement Outcomes There is no law for breach of contract. So legally there is no obligation to act as per contract of sale even ...