Question: What is the importance of including owner improvements made to common property in the body corporate records?
Answer: It is very important that bodies corporate have an improvements register and ensure that it is promptly updated with the required details, otherwise a body corporate risks becoming responsible for costly maintenance to improvements made for the benefit of one lot.
We are increasingly seeing issues where improvements made to common property by an owner have not been noted within the body corporate’s records.
Improvements made to common property by a lot owner for the owner’s benefit that have been approved by the body corporate must be recorded in a formal register managed by the Body Corporate. This register becomes part of the Body Corporate records and is available for inspection by any interested person.
An owner of a lot (and any subsequent owners) are required to maintain improvements to common property that the body corporate has authorised, unless they have been excused by the body corporate from doing so. However, it is possible that the responsibility for maintenance can be shifted back to the body corporate if the required details have not been entered onto the register of improvements and the lot is subsequently sold. For example, the Adjudicator in Belle Court [2006] QBCCMCmr473 (29 August 2006) (‘Belle Court’) confirmed this by providing:
“Section 146 Standard Module requires the body corporate to keep a register for recording each authorisation for the owner of a lot to make an improvement to common property for the benefit of an owner’s lot. The register should include the conditions on which the authorisation was given…
Even if the Applicant as a purchaser was told about the railing, there was nothing to be found in the body corporate records (as now shown to me) which shifted responsibility for it onto the Applicant. The body corporate secretary had recorded “nil” on the Disclosure Statement when asked the question about maintenance of common property; and even if the purchaser could see that the railing was falling apart, it still remains a body corporate responsibility.
In my view, even if the Applicant had sought a Body Corporate Information Certificate, (Form 13) and Mr Winterbine had attached the 1998 Document to it (such as he attached for Unit 1) this 1998 Document would not be sufficient to notify a prospective purchaser of an obligation to maintain the railing, and would also not be sufficient to shift the burden of maintenance of common property onto a lot owner.” (our emphasis added)
Therefore, it is very important that bodies corporate have an improvements register and ensure that it is promptly updated with the required details, otherwise a body corporate risks becoming responsible for costly maintenance to improvements made for the benefit of one lot.
This post appears in Strata News #624.
Hayley Gath
Mathews Hunt Legal
E: hayley.gath@mathewshuntlegal.com.au
P: 07 5555 8000
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