Apartment owners are being reminded to fully understand their rights and the details of their building by-laws after one homeowner wrongly paid $10,000 before getting a whopping $174,000 bill that was never his to pay.
Melbourne father Mark, who didn’t want to share his surname for professional reasons, got the bad news around April last year. His apartment had water damage in the walls and he was told by the managing company of the body corporate he would have to foot the bill to have faulty pipes and the damage repaired.
“They told us we had a leak in our bathroom that was causing damage to the storage spaces that were below our apartment,” he recalled to Yahoo Finance.
“They eventually sent the builder out, and the builder walked around and he pointed to three little spots of mould on the beams that went under my apartment, I argued with him, and he said; ‘No, you don’t get mould without water, it’s your fault, bad luck, you gotta pay for it.'”
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His son was living in the apartment at the time, and to avoid too much disruption, he paid the $10,000 to carry out some works. But a few weeks later he got a call and another bill for $24,000 with the body corp saying the problem was worse than initially thought.
“I started getting my nose out of joint at that point,” Mark said.
It then escalated to about $174,000 with a request to dismantle and rebuild his bathroom and a bathroom next door.
He pushed back, arguing that the plan of subdivision noted that parts of the building between individual apartments, like piping, belonged to the body corporate. But the building management was insistent he was still liable.
Do you have a story you want to share? Nick.whigham@yahooinc.com
Building issues like water damage from faulty or old pipes can end up costing apartment owners huge amounts. · Supplied
Fortunately for Mark, he knew Kate Yeowart very well, who works in the industry as a specialist in strata management. She counselled him on how to respond, including how to reference the subdivision plan and assert that the matter sat with the owners corporation and its insurer, not with him personally.
“So we served that on the body corporate and made it clear I would defend that in court,” Mark said.
“They then agreed it was not my problem, and it should go to insurance.”
Yeowart is the director of Strata Savvy and said it pays for apartment owners to have a good understanding of the Strata Plan and how it divides up the legal titles in their building.
“This case came down to understanding the plan of subdivision and identifying where the leak actually originated,” she said.
“In strata, the difference between private property and common property can completely change who is responsible for repairs. Owners should never assume an invoice is correct simply because it has been issued to them.”
With a number of high-rise apartment buildings reporting defects in recent years, the broader issue has been in the spotlight. Even for well built buildings, poorly run strata committees can lead to headaches for owners when repair issues suddenly arise.
A 2024 investigation by the ABC found the murky strata industry was responsible for millions of dollars in opaque, often hidden insurance fees while some corporations were taking kickbacks from contractors.
Mark ultimately got his $10,000 back and not long after the ordeal he sold the apartment in March of this year.
Despite dodging a bullet, he says he wouldn’t ever buy another apartment as an investment.
“A friend of mine is a very senior architect … the number of properties that he’s aware of where water damage has occurred from pipes that service multiple apartments is just staggering,” he said.
“I think that’s the end of me going and buying an apartment in any way as an investment, it’s just madness, I think.”
Do you have a story you want to share? Nick.whigham@yahooinc.com