Question: Years ago, a lot owner found concrete cancer in their lot. They told no-one and retiled over the area. A new owner purchased and discovered the defect. Is the body corporate responsible for the (now more substantial) full cost of the repairs?
Our apartment block is approximately 50 metres from the ocean. A lot owner in our complex found concrete cancer years ago in their top-floor apartment and didn’t report the issue to the strata or repair the damage.
The owners concealed the concrete cancer by relaying new tiles over the whole area. Now, years later, the lot has been purchased by an investment company and the concrete cancer has been discovered.
Can the new owner hold the body corporate responsible for the full cost of repairing the much larger amount of damage to the floor or does the initial covering up of the concrete cancer in any way lessen the liability of the body corporate? The repair costs will be much larger because of a previous owner’s deception.
Has a similar previous cases come up before?
Answer: If a body corporate is responsible for something, they retain that responsibility regardless of what has transpired in the past.
I’m not aware of any cases, although you can research for yourself at the Australasian Legal Information Institute. Your query is quite specific, so it is possible you won’t find it precisely in a case.
Generally speaking, if a body corporate is responsible for something, such as maintenance or repair of common property, then they retain that responsibility regardless of what has transpired in the past. Equally, if a previous owner is responsible for some damage, then it might be possible for the body corporate to recover costs from the previous owner, although they’d need to seek legal advice on how to do so, and if it is worth it. For example, a body corporate has not maintained a common property driveway over the years because it was going to cost too much money and the committee at the time did not want to spend it. Now a new committee is in place and they are deciding the repair needs to be done and money spent. Just because the maintenance wasn’t done previously, doesn’t relieve the body corporate of its responsibility now.
There are a few things unclear in your query. How have all these things come to light? Are there expert reports to verify it all? Are you sure it is actually a body corporate responsibility to repair? If you haven’t addressed these issues, you should probably do so as a first port of call.
Chris Irons
Strata Solve
E: chris@stratasolve.com.au
P: 0419 805 898
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