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Navigating loss of rent claims and repair obligations in strata schemes

A recent Supreme Court NSW decision (The Owners – Strata Plan No 2661 v Selkirk [2024] NSWSC 760) provides guidance as to the obligations of strata schemes and strata lot owners in cases where water penetration damages a strata unit and loss of rent is claimed by the affected lot owner.

Facts

The case involved Ms Selkirk, an owner of a strata unit in a Darling Point building, who had significant water leakages from her bathroom into the unit below. Whilst the owners corporation acknowledged its duty under section 106 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) to repair common property, disputes arose as to the extent of the necessary repairs and compensation payable for Ms Selkirk’s rental loss. At one stage, rent claimed was $1,750 per week at an amount in excess of $117,000.00. [...]  READ MORE →

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Unjust strata by-laws and unreasonable strata levies

There is a recent Supreme Court decision concerning unjust clauses in a strata exclusive use rights by-law and also concerning unreasonable strata levies.

In case of Perpetual Corporate Trust Ltd v Owners Corporation SP6534; El Khouri v Owners Corporation SP6534 [2024] NSWSC 173, the Court deals with a matter involving a penthouse apartment (Lot 11) in Point Piper Sydney situated on the fifth and sixth floors of the strata building. The building comprises of 11 lots in total. The penthouse has extensive ocean views of the Sydney harbour particularly observed from the balconies on the two floors and the rooftop area. The balconies and the rooftop have been accepted to be common property. There were also various valuation evidence that the exclusive use rights alone amounted to $2,250,000 in value. [...]  READ MORE →

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Strata – Electric Vehicle Ready Buildings Grant

The NSW Office of Energy and Climate Change (as part of the Net Zero Plan Stage 1) has introduced a grant with a quota to assist over 125 residential strata apartment buildings in NSW to install electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure within their carparks. Applications are now opened.

What this means is that owners corporation apartment residents may be able to charge their electric vehicles at home (within their building) without seeking electric ports elsewhere!

Eligibility Criteria (briefly) [...]  READ MORE →

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Strata Building Defects – Protections for Owners

Strata Building Defects and Part 11 Protections for Strata Owners

We have previously written an article about the new duty of care protection in favour of property and strata owners, which is available under the new Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 NSW (DBPA). Basically, it establishes a new duty of care against various building practitioners, retrospectively, covering losses arising from the last 10 years or so. However, that is not the only remedy available (of course). The issue of building defects have been around for a very long time and the legislation have been changing constantly, especially for strata buildings and it involves a myriad of legislation and laws. And that’s why those poor people at Opal and Mascot Towers were tearing their hair out when all those defects came into light. In passing, it is somewhat of a cold comfort to those at Mascot Towers, understanding that various defects were pre-existing at least since 2012 and structural defects still appear to remain. [...]  READ MORE →

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COVID-19 Laws on Strata and Community Schemes

Extension of COVID-19 Laws on Strata and Community Schemes

Due to ongoing issues with COVID-19 (although we suspect many of the stakeholders are pressing hard for these behind the scene to be frank), the NSW Government has extended the operation of the laws to allow general and strata committee meetings to be held remotely.

The previous provisions on these were set to be repealed on 31 May 2022. The laws will now continue to apply until 30 September 2022.

The extension of these laws under the strata and community regulations means that voting at a meeting held remotely can still be undertaken electronically, for example, teleconferencing, video conferencing, email, or other electronic means. This would by-pass the “normal” need for the schemes to have already resolved to opt into these electronic meetings. [...]  READ MORE →

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New Health Orders and police powers for Apartment Buildings

COVID-19 Laws – New Health Orders and police powers for Apartment Buildings

On 6 September 2021, the Minister for Health and Medical Research introduced a new COVID-19 Health Order. The revised Order includes additional provisions to facilitate government lockdowns of specific apartments.
In short, the Order offers the Minister the power to declare a building as a “high COVID-19 risk premises”. This declaration can be made if at least one dwelling in the building is considered a COVID-19 risk premises and there is a risk of transmission of COVID-19 between the residents. The declarations will be made on the NSW Health website.
Unless the Minister revokes the declaration, a building will remain a high COVID-19 risk premises for 14 days. During this time residents must not leave their residence unless they are instructed to do so by an authorised medical practitioner or the police, or in the case of an emergency. [...]  READ MORE →

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Short-term letting restrictions and how they impact you

Short-term letting restrictions – PART 2

Short-term letting restrictions and how they impact you

We have previously written an article about the short term letting issues affecting property and strata participants back on 6 March 2021 (You can read it here). In short, it dealt with Part 1 of the legislative framework to regulate the short term letting situation. It involves the NSW Fair Trading’s mandatory code of conduct (which regulates the conduct of short term letting, presuming it is permissible) and the Strata Legislation (which allows the strata schemes to ban short term letting in lots that are not a principal place of residence of the owner or occupier). [...]  READ MORE →

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Debt recovery and strata lot owner goes missing?

Debt recovery and strata lot owner goes missing?

A strata lot owner goes missing when council rates and strata levies were owed. What happens, you might wonder?

 This is essentially what has happened in the case of Council of the City of Sydney v Baboon Pty Limited [2020] NSWSC 1480. Council rates were owed to Council (the plaintiff) of around $9,500 and strata levies were owed to the owners corporation of around $26,000 (second interested party). As you may know, both Council and the owners corporation have the power to “force sell” the strata unit to recoup their respective fees and costs, whether or not the owner can be found. In this case, the strata unit owner cannot be found and so, Council in this instance decided to proceed with the sale. The property was sold to (and purchased by) Baboon Pty Limited (third interested party) for $136,000 in November 2018. [...]  READ MORE →

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Rewrite to Community Land Development and Management Acts

Complete rewrite to Community Land Development and Management Acts

The old set of community scheme legislation was effectively blown into pieces with the new, commenced on 1 December 2021. Are you ready for all the changes?

The Development and Management Acts 1989 are now repealed with the staged commencement of the new counterparts (Community Land Development Act 2021 and the Community Land Management Act 2021) started in March 2021 and “finally” on 1 December 2021.

The official line is that the reforms align the community scheme laws with that of the strata schemes. And the official line is not wrong. However, there were significant points of differences between the two sets of legislation in the past and even now. And additionally, strata schemes simply do not have the more complex issues such as the tiered scheme systems such as neighbourhood and precinct schemes, association property, community management statement, etc. [...]  READ MORE →

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Combustible cladding problems in strata apartments

Most of you would have heard about the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London, the 2014 Lacrosse building fire in Melbourne and/or the 2012 West Terrace fire in Bankstown NSW. The result of those fires is the renewed focus in fire safety laws for strata buildings, especially those with external combustible cladding.

In New South Wales, those laws involve:

  1. Building Products (Safety) Act 2017 (NSW);
  2. Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2000 – which was amended under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Identification of Buildings with External Combustible Cladding) Regulation 2018; and
  3. State Environmental Planning Policy Amendment (Exempt Development—Cladding and Decorative Work) 2018 (NSW).

In brief, the legislative framework seeks to (i) ban certain products from being installed on buildings (Type A or Type B construction) regardless of whether they may have a current CodeMark Certification, (ii) override various requirements of the BCA where there is an inconsistency with respect to the product bans, (iii) identify and collect information about buildings to which external combustible cladding has been applied, (iv) maintain a statutory register of the affected buildings with certain information to be provided to Fire and Rescue NSW and (v) to restrict or prohibit cladding and decorative work from being carried out as an exempt development. [...]  READ MORE →

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Commercial Law – Taxing Times for foreign owners

By Natalie Gosper, a Solicitor in our Commercial Law team.

In 2016 and continuing in early 2017, we saw many changes to legislation affecting both vendors and purchasers of property. These changes largely came about due to the new Commonwealth Reporting Requirements (CRR).

The CRR places requirements on States and Territories to report transfers of freehold or leasehold interests in land.  The information collected is used for data matching by the ATO to ensure compliance with Commonwealth tax laws and for the establishment of the National Register of Foreign Ownership of Land Titles. [...]  READ MORE →