neighbours were each slugged $15,000<\/a> after a leak traced back to his giant balcony uncovered major defects.<\/p>\nHe said he and his partner bought the unit in 2012 during a quieter patch in the Sydney market and thought they had found a bargain.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the open inspection for this apartment, we were the only ones there. Must be a dud, we thought upon entering,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Inside, the apartment felt small \u2013 until they discovered an enormous balcony off the second bedroom and instantly fell in love.<\/p>\n
\u201cRectangle shaped, it was essentially the same size as all the internal rooms put together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg)
<\/p>\n
The balcony was a winning feature for a Sydney apartment owner, but it cost his neighbours a lot of money.<\/p>\n
But weeks later, strata alerted them to complaints from a neighbour below, a mother and baby, who had damp spreading through their ceiling and walls.<\/p>\n
The cause was eventually traced to their balcony.<\/p>\n
A waterproofing and construction assessment found a major failure in the building membrane. Inspectors also found the balcony railing was too low to meet modern safety standards.<\/p>\n
The result was a massive repair job involving resealing the roof garden and installing new, higher balustrades.<\/p>\n
The price tag hit $105,000.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: Australasian Strata Insights | UNSW<\/p>\n
To the horror of fellow owners, the cost was split across the building because the balcony was considered part of the external structure and therefore common property.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the owners who had been there for many years blamed the damage on the former owner of our apartment, a reclusive elderly gentleman who had passed away,\u201d Mr McIntyre said.<\/p>\n
\u201cApparently his \u201cmassive pot plants\u201d were too heavy and had no doubt caused the damage, despite having being warned by that other owner a number of times.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, apartment owners parted with thousands of dollars, while construction proved to disruptive for the mum with the baby that they were forced to find a new rental.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An apartment owner in Sydney\u2019s inner west has been hit with a staggering $64,000 bill to fix defects…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-843822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}