I would love to get a dollar for every time a person said to me that consumers are more educated today than ever before. For each of these dollars, I would like to double the bet that consumers are no more educated today than ever before. In actual fact, they are wrongly educated and have little information to help themselves.
The Office of Fair Trading publishes an excellent guide on Strata Living. This guide summarises all the obligations of the Owners Corporation, the rights of lot owners and an explanation of how the Strata Schemes Management Act 1996 operates. This is accessible to anyone and should be used as a good guide for executive committees and for lot owners. We have recently heard a story which demonstrates the folly of believing that education does have an impact. At an annual general meeting of a prestigious apartment block in Sydney, the budgets and the financial reports were totaled. An angry person from the floor asked the following question: “I would like to ask the Strata Manager whether the Owners Corporation has a bank account”.
The Strata Manager looked at the building manager in total disbelief. The lot owner then reiterated their question. The Strata Manager asked what did she mean by “does the Owners Corporation have a bank account”. The lot owner responded that “all I want to know is whether the Owners Corporation has a bank account in its own name”. Obviously, the Strata Manager answered in the affirmative. She then noted that “There is nothing in the financial reports to show what the number of the bank account is”. I believe the discussion continued on in this manner for some thirty minutes. There was a perfect opportunity for this chairman to ask the lady to sit down and trust that there was a bank account. One of the retorts
from another lot owner was “How can we pay the accounts if we don’t have the bank accounts”. The lady was still confused when sat she sat down not believing that there was any evidence of any bank account in existence at all. She was led to believe that the Strata Manager or Building Manager held the money in their own account.
I would to be able to tell you that Leverage has got an answer to these problems! We would also like to tell you that we have got a strategy to deal with such lot owners! But we can’t. There is nothing we can tell you that will allow you to deal with real dummies. We are currently developing a course for executive committee members, however, if people do not have the IQ to understand, there is nothing that anyone can do.
When you sit down today and whinge about your lot owners, feel for the Strata Manager with his belligerent, rude, arrogant, self opinionated lot owner who doesn’t even believe that the Strata has a bank account.
If you have any funny stories regarding your Strata, please don’t hesitate to tell us. We love to pass on the funny stories so that we can place them on our blog for people to read. If we don’t laugh at the things which may make us cry……… psychologists may be the only answer.
Until Next Time
Bailey Compton & the Team at Leverage Australia & The Australian College of Professionals
