Legal (Page 4)

Legal articles relating to legislation, disputes and civil suits

Contributed By: Michael Kleinschmidt Stratum Legal on

On 26 September 2018 Adjudicator Roseman declared the letting authorisation for Allure Apartments in Townsville void.  The management rights operator, Allure Townsville Accommodation Pty Ltd (ATA), had taken a transfer of the letting authorisation in June of 2015.  The management rights were transferred from Allure Hotel and Apartments Pty Ltd (AHA) who had acquired them from the developer, South Townsville Developments Pty Ltd, on 3 September 2014. From the beginning, the management rights business had been operated from a manager’s unit (lot 201) and a reception area, initially located on the common property. While AHA was the operator, that area of common property was convertedRead More →

Contributed By: Short Punch & Greatorix on

Some time ago I published an article on what I thought was reasonable for a Body Corporate to request from a buyer of management rights, in considering whether or not a Body Corporate committee should consent to the transfer of management rights agreements to the buyer. This is an important issue, because under the Body Corporate and Community Management legislation, a Body Corporate committee must not unreasonably withhold approval to a transfer. Under the legislation, one of the matters which a Body Corporate committee may have regard to is the financial standing of the proposed transferee.  My opinion as expressed in my previous article wasRead More →

Airbnb is never far from the headlines, and many industry segments are clamouring for regulation. In June 2018 the NSW government announced severe restrictions on short stay accommodation. It remains to be seen how that will work in practice, and how Queensland will implement our own version. Hopefully the legislative response will be informed by the lessons learned from the regulation of ride sharing services such as Uber. Industry Concerns Body Corporates, owners, and on-site managers are justifiably concerned about the rising popularity of home sharing services, and other online accommodation booking platforms, for properties within Community Title Schemes. Naturally, I can’t condone “self-help” remediesRead More →

Contributed By: Hynes Legal on

If you don’t know whether the cladding on your building is combustible (or to use the less scary word – non-conforming), you are soon going to be forced to find out. The issue over what cladding has been used on buildings crystallised after the Grenfell Tower fire in the UK in 2017.  Australia’s equivalent (without the horrific loss of life in Grenfell) was the Lacrosse Tower fire in Melbourne in 2014. The ABC’s Four Corners covered the issue in this excellent episode. Since then the wheels of respective state governments have turned very slowly.  Victoria has their cladding task force and has now come up with a rectification solution that will allow lot ownersRead More →

I frequently speak with managers who are frustrated by the standard of service offered up by so-called specialists in Management Rights, who in reality, have limited experience and knowledge of this industry and result in unnecessary professional fees and cost blowouts. Existing “industry accreditation programs” appear to me as little more than pay-for-play operations that exist purely to sell magazine advertising, where anyone can be ‘accredited’ if they simply open their chequebook. This doesn’t help our industry, in my opinion, as such we have set out to develop a program that has complete financial independence and is entirely merit based, as measured by the managementRead More →

Contributed By: Hynes Legal on

We first wrote about bullying in strata more than two years ago. We have been waiting for a while, but we finally have a decision from the Fair Work Commission (FWC) that gives some guidance about whether the sort of conduct we regularly see in terms of committee and resident manager communications constitutes bullying. And if we are going to gloat just a little bit, it played out the way we predicted it would. Every other day we deal with business relationship breakdowns in strata. Tit gets exchanged for tat. Petty email wars ensue. Mud gets thrown and names called. A committee/management rights relationship is a special one. IfRead More →

Contributed By: Short Punch & Greatorix on

Every day, we read of the power that is wielded by elected persons around the world, either as a result of our democratic process or somebody engineering themselves into being the head of government. It is an interesting concept of democracy that we are all willing to exercise a voting right to put a person in power and then that power can be wielded with quite a degree of discretion and decision making by that person. Then you get the complete opposite where a government will not move to make a decision without a referendum or a plebiscite from the people giving it a directionRead More →

We are thrilled to launch our Industry Recommended Professional program! Below is a Q&A explaining the program, its benefits and how it works. What Is the Industry Recommended Professional program? Our industry has entered an age where the quantity of suppliers is great, but often the quality of work offered is not. Managers and prospective managers expend considerable time and money in their efforts to source professional service providers who understand this industry and specialise in it. The Industry Recommended Professional program allows such service providers to rapidly and easily distinguish themselves as authorities both trusted, and respected in our Management Rights industry. It isRead More →

Contributed By: Short Punch & Greatorix on

Something has got to be done about the “industry” that is developing, or has already developed, around the process of a body corporate giving its consent to an assignment of Management Rights Agreements (Caretaking and Letting Agreements for Schemes). This harmful industry has sprung up from the activities of some Body Corporate Managers, Solicitors and so-called “experts” in assessing the merits of the assignee, when a party is buying the management rights and the selling manager seeks the consent of the Body Corporate. The job of the committee of the body corporate is simply to check the material submitted by the assignee, have an interviewRead More →

ARTICLE BY JOHN PUNCH Ever since management rights sales began some 38 years ago, the standard method for calculating a sale price has been to apply a multiplier to the net operating profit of the business, for a one year period preceding, but ending as close as possible to the signing of the contract. Some lawyers and accountants are now proposing to allow for adjustment of the sale price at settlement to take account of any lots that may leave the letting pool between the signing of the contract and the day before settlement. Generally, we find that as soon as we inform any sellersRead More →

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