NSW: Q&A Unit owner requirement to maintain lot property

This article is about an owners requirement to maintain lot property.

Table of Contents:

• QUESTION: Is the lot owner required to maintain their lot?


• QUESTION: The strata manager has arranged work on a neglected lot and associated common property and divided the costs among owners. How do we ensure the owner of the neglected lot pays their proportion of the costs?


• QUESTION: A developer owns a lot in our building. It has stood vacant for years and needs maintenance. The developer will not respond to emails. What do we do?

Question: Is the lot owner required to maintain their lot?

A lot owner in our building rents out their unit but does no maintenance:

• Two water leaks caused damage to the unit below.


• Water hammer originating in the hot water taps in the lot causes noise in surrounding units.


• Their balcony tiling has little grout left and is leaching water and staining the newly painted common property.


• Their balcony door leaks allowing water into the unit, and there is magnesite in the slab under the carpet.

These issues are causing angst to the other lot owners and potentially damaging common property. The owner has ignored requests from the strata manager via minuted decisions by the committee. Is the lot owner liable for damage caused by lack of maintenance?

Answer: Lot owners may be held liable for consequential damage to common property caused due to a failure to maintain lot property.

Yes, lot owners may be held liable for consequential damage to common property caused as a result of a failure to maintain lot property. Further, lot owners are under a statutory obligation not to use their lots in a manner that causes a nuisance or hazard to the occupier of any other lot.

Leanne Habib Premium Strata E: info@premiumstrata.com.au P: 02 9281 6440

This post appears in Strata News #656

Question: The strata manager has arranged work on a neglected lot and associated common property and divided the costs among owners. How do we ensure the owner of the neglected lot pays their proportion of the costs?

In our eight lot strata scheme, one rented lot is neglected and requires repairs. Our strata manager has organised an engineer and a building company for works. The repairs involve work to both lot and common property.

The lot owner’s proportion of the work outweighs the common property work. However, the strata manager has split the total cost among all the owners based on lot entitlement. The investor lot owner will pay less, and the remaining owners will cover their costs.

The executive committee and the engineer have alerted the strata manager to the lot responsibility on the strata plan, pointing out the owner’s responsibility. Still, our strata manager has yet to do anything to amend the cost allocation. What can we do?

Answer: If the common property is not the cause of the damage to the lot, the lot owner would be responsible for repairing or maintaining their lot property. The owners corporation should not be paying these costs.

If the common property is in disrepair and that disrepair has caused damage to the lot, the owners corporation would be responsible for repairing and maintaining the common property and the damage caused to the lot. The owners corporation has a strict duty to repair and maintain the common property under section 106 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015. It is liable for any reasonably foreseeable loss suffered by a lot owner due to the failure to repair and maintain the common property. Damage to a lot is a reasonably foreseeable loss.

If the common property is not the cause of the damage to the lot, the lot owner would be responsible for repairing or maintaining their own lot property. The owners corporation should not be paying these costs.

You should note that the strata managing agent is an agent of the owners corporation and does not necessarily make decisions of the owners corporation but carries out the decisions of the owners corporation and strata committee.

It is sometimes difficult to determine what is lot and common property. Some items, such as ceilings and waterproofing and tiles on bathroom floors and external walls are incorrectly assumed to be lot property as they are internal to a lot, when in fact, they are common property.

Matthew Jenkins Bannermans Lawyers E: enquiries@bannermans.com.au P: 02 9929 0226

This post appears in the July 2023 edition of The NSW Strata Magazine.

Question: A developer owns a lot in our building. It has stood vacant for years and needs maintenance. The developer will not respond to emails. What do we do?

Our scheme has twelve residential units plus two commercial lots. The developer still owns three units. One unit has sat dormant for three years. The rear verandah is thick with pigeon faeces and is in a terrible state.

Our strata manager has contacted the developer but is unable to get responses to emails. The developer is uninterested in maintaining the unit. What can we do? We’d prefer not to go to the tribunal.

Answer: Consider mediation through NSW Fair Trading.

If you don’t wish to go to the tribunal, consider mediation through NSW Fair Trading or your local community justice centre.

Alternatively, you could lodge a complaint with your local council about the potentially hazardous, unsightly property.

Leanne Habib Premium Strata E: info@premiumstrata.com.au P: 02 9281 6440

This post appears in Strata News #646

Have a question about an owners requirement to maintain lot property or something to add to the article? Leave a comment below.

Embed

Read next:

• NSW: Rain, Rain and More Rain… Revisiting the Basics of Responsibility to Maintain Common Property
• NSW: Who is Responsible for Mould in Strata Living?
• NSW: Q&A Duty to Maintain and Repair Common Property

Visit our Maintenance and Common Property OR NSW Strata Legislation

Looking for strata information concerning your state? For state-specific strata information, take a look here.

Are you not sure about some of the strata terms used in this article? Take a look at our NSW Strata Glossary to help with your understanding.

After a free PDF of this article? Log into your existing LookUpStrata Account to download the printable file. Not a member? Simple – join for free on our Registration page.