Leaving the Body Corporate.......?

Hello i am an owner occupier of a flat in forbes nsw and have spoken on many occasions to the other owner occupiers,
All of us want to leave the body corporate as it is now managed by some dubbo company and no one was told it was being sold to them also the maintenance on the property accounts to nothing (ie leaking gutters, gravel driveway pothole and weeds growing)
the owners take turns mowing the only small patch of mostly dead grass that is at the very front of the property Body Corporate literally does nothing and has done nothing for many years, except charges each owner a weekly fee.
how can we get rid of these financial vampires
any help would be appreciated.

Ive always wondered how the BC penalises of punishes you or whatever if youre an owner? Can they fine you or een have you kicked out or something? What if you just ignore them?

Would it be rude to ask which BC u are dealing with?

our BC strata manager is absolutely hopeless. Although for the next AGM they’ve kindly provided us with a new schedule of fees, so not only do we pay an annual fee, we now pay for them to do something. Fortunately in a small BC of 20, getting things done is often easy. There are 6 or 7 of us that makes things tick.

Our body corporate has been self-managed for about two years. It saves everyone heaps of money, but it depends on a few dedicated people (mostly retired live-in owners) to keep it running.

Flatone said :

Yes, leaving the bc strata manager!
Thanks all for the comments.

You cannot leave the bc strata manager. Your only option is to vote the existing manager out at an agm in conjunction with the other owners in your bc and replace it with another bc manager.

Yes, leaving the bc strata manager!
Thanks all for the comments.

As Padoof said, if you want your flat out of the BC, you can’t. Common Property and all that.

You can change Strata Managers, but who’s going to do it for you? In Queanbeyan, MacNamees have a stranglehold on the market, tho’ there’s some bunch from the South Coast (Sapphire something) and Ray White have the new block on Henderson Road. I make no comment on how good any of them are; I suspect they’re as bad as each other.

You could check out http://www.flat-chat.com.au/ which hangs off the Sydney Morning Herald website.

Alternatively alternatively, you could practise your political (as in branch stacking, getting people to agree on anything) and managerial skills (as in, getting the paperwork – legal liability – in order for when the wind blows a foxtel dish through a car windscreen in visitor’s parking) and accounting (preparing a P&L statement, a budget, collecting the strata fees) by running the joint yourself. Nominate yourself and a bunch of friendly residents at the next AGM. How difficult this is depends on how big the complex is.

Go to the library, see if you if you can find a copy of “Apartment Living” (Williams and Thomson, ABC Books, ISBN 0 7333 1451 1, 2004) for a good guide to general procedures. There may be others, too.

Good luck. Let us know how you get on.

shauno said :

I recently had a problem when they made me take down my foxtel dish even though others where up there and wasn’t in anyway effecting the building or appearance. Basically it was purely out of spite because I didn’t go through their bureaucratic process.

“affecting” (You did say, happy to be corrected.)

I’m pretty sure that you would have agreed to obey body corporate rules when you bought the place? You can contest their decisions, but I very much doubt you can opt out. But you’ll need to confirm this with someone with more legal knowledge than me…

if you mean get rid of your current body corporate STRATA MANAGER then the best time to get rid of them when at the AGM usually they are reinstated in the role but you should check whether there is a contract in place for longer than a year-to-year basis. if there is a contract then that’s where the exit fees will be found. have you talked to them about performance issues to give them a chance to pull up their socks?