Summary shows high-level bullet points for each event. Detailed shows the nuanced information for each event.
The Precinct's car stackers are recorded as common property on the strata plan, yet owners with car stackers have been charged individual induction fees for years as personal contributions under the Strata Titles Act.
After 5 weeks of discussion with the strata manager and COO, the strata manager advised the topic would require legal determination. Based on this, a lot owner lodged an application with the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) disputing the lawfulness of these charges.
In short – without a registered by-law that expressly allocates induction costs to individual owners, there is no legal authority to charge those costs. Given the Council of Owners (COO) allow the strata manager to knowingly handle costs and charging in this manner, the greater question is straightforward: what other financial matters are not being handled in line with the Strata Titles Act, the by-laws, and by extension, for the benefit of the building?
Car stackers are recorded as common property on the strata plan, yet owners with car stackers have been charged individual induction fees for years – invoiced as personal contributions under the Strata Titles Act. After five weeks of unresolved correspondence with the strata manager and COO, a lot owner lodged an application with the State Administrative Tribunal at their own cost to have the legality of those charges determined. The underlying point is simple: without a registered by-law that allocates induction costs to individual owners, there is no legal authority to charge them.
Given the Council of Owners (COO) allow the strata manager to knowingly handle costs and charging in this manner, the greater question is straightforward: what other financial matters are not being handled in line with the Strata Titles Act, the by-laws, and by extension, for the benefit of the building?
This page is long and detailed – intentionally so. The aim is to be open and transparent with all residents about an ongoing dispute: what happened, how it has been handled, and where things stand. If you own a lot with a car stacker, it is particularly relevant to you. The page will be updated as the matter progresses.
Chronological from when the dispute was first raised in writing through to the current directions hearing.
The COO circulates a letter setting out its position on car stacker costs going forward. A registered by-law is now accepted as necessary, and standard inductions are now accepted as a strata cost. A new cost centre charging only stacker owners is proposed in place of the old direct charging arrangement (it was not compliant in the first place). The COO continues to assert that car stackers are lot property, despite the strata plan's express notation that they are common property.
The headline takeaway is implicit acceptance that the SAT application was well founded. The COO's stance has shifted to align more closely with the law than it did in January, even if not fully.
The letter states the amended Strata Titles Act "takes precedence over" the strata plan. The two instruments are not in conflict. The Act and the scheme plan are designed to operate together. Under the Act, property is common property if either of two independent limbs is satisfied:
The clause is drafted to define what common property is, and sets out two independent ways property qualifies – only one needs to be met. The legal opinion obtained by the COO chooses to read it the wrong way round: it treats failure of limb 1 (physical location within a lot) as proof that car stackers are not common property, and ignores limb 2 entirely. If limb 2 is considered as it should be, it is satisfied by the scheme plan's notation that the car stackers are common property.
The letter states standard annual inductions "may be treated as a strata cost." The same legal advice the COO relies on to argue stackers are lot property also concludes that there is no current basis for mandating inductions or for charging owners individually. If that advice is being adopted, it must be adopted in full. The position held since January, that inductions were a prerequisite, was not supported by any registered by-law. Charges levied on that basis were not lawfully collected.
The lot owner has separately advocated for a registered by-law that constrains induction costs to a single annual induction covered by strata, specifically to prevent the kind of open-ended charging that gave rise to this dispute in the first place.
The COO has confirmed the car stackers fall within the existing strata insurance policy. This is the expected outcome – common property is insured by the strata company. Treating it as a separate question that needed an answer risks making the existing position look like a concession.
The letter frames the proposed approach as fair and consistent. Two points are worth separating.
Every current owner purchased their lot on the unit entitlements registered against the scheme. Valuations were done on that basis. If the COO is now saying the strata plan should be ignored on the question of common property, that calls into question every other thing on the strata plan, including the unit entitlement schedule itself. The scheme documents are either reliable or they are not.
The COO's argument is also self-undermining. Stacker lots carry no premium in their unit entitlements precisely because the scheme was set up on the basis that the stackers were common property. The absence of a premium is not evidence of inequity. It is evidence that the scheme was designed and registered on the position the COO is now seeking to reverse.
Inventing a "premium" that the scheme was never designed to contain is the first problem. Under common-property treatment, no premium needs to exist – costs are shared by unit entitlement and the stackers are maintained on that basis. Pointing to the absence of this invented premium as evidence that costs are unfairly shared is the second problem. The argument only works if you first accept that the stackers are lot property, which is the very thing it is trying to prove. The unit entitlement schedule does not reflect a stacker premium because the scheme was never set up that way.
Stacker lots provide two car bays. So do tandem lots. The stackers are a mechanism to enable certain lots to have two bays where physical layout did not allow tandem parking. The building's overall parking offering, and the lot values that flow from it across all lots, depends on those two-bay arrangements existing in the form they do.
Common property is jointly owned by all owners in proportion to their unit entitlement, and the running costs are shared in those same proportions. Calling that a subsidy suggests there is a fairer baseline being departed from, when in fact unit-entitlement cost-sharing is the baseline. The same framing would call lift maintenance for ground-floor lots, or pool maintenance for owners who do not swim, a subsidy too. Common property is shared because it adds value to the whole building, and the whole building benefits from it.
If unit entitlements were registered on a basis that the COO now says is wrong, that is a question for the developer and the original registration. It is not a problem for current owners to resolve through new cost centres or new by-laws layered on top of the registered scheme. The strata company's role is to operate within the framework that was set, not to retroactively rewrite it because a particular outcome would feel more equitable to a sub-set of owners.
Owners have not been told how the proposed vote will work. Any governance by-law under the Strata Titles Act 1985 must pass by resolution without dissent – the vote can only pass if no single vote is cast against it. The other details matter too: who can vote, how the vote will be run, and when it will be held. These shape how owners think through what they are being asked to vote on and how they prepare. They should be shared up front, well before the vote is called, so that owners have time to ask questions and turn up to the vote informed.
Money has been spent by the COO pursuing legal advice, drafting by-laws, and developing a service agreement template for a new cost centre, all without showing that any more cost-effective options were considered first – A short conversation with the affected stacker owners would have cost nothing and would have revealed early-on whether the proposed path was realistic before money was spent. Doing the work in stages; test the route first, and then committing to the paperwork only if it stacks up, would have lowered the risk of paying for documents that may never be used.
Strata funds are shared funds. Before spending them, there is a reasonable expectation that options are weighed against each other. That step is missing here, and every owner wears the cost of the path that was chosen, regardless of how the by-law itself plays out.
If you would like to know more about this matter, please get in touch with any questions.