This article discusses how to improve understanding of body corporate duties Queensland, focusing on practical ways committees can educate owners, manage expectations, and reduce conflict beyond levy costs.
Question: How can I help residents understand the body corporate’s legal obligations when most people only focus on the cost?
I am the secretary of a body corporate committee in Queensland, representing around 400 owner occupiers. We avoid much of the angst I see in other schemes because committee members take on clear responsibilities and carry them out with care and professionalism.
The biggest challenge I face is educating residents about how the scheme must operate under the Body Corporate and Community Management Act, the Retirement Villages Act, and other legislation they read about in retirement living material. There is often confusion about which laws actually apply to our community titles scheme.
Even with the excellent BCCM training available online from the Queensland government, many residents are only interested in the bottom-line dollar figure and have little interest in the work, obligations and constraints that come with serving on the body corporate committee.
What practical strategies or tools can a committee use to improve owners’ understanding of the body corporate committee’s legal responsibilities, so that expectations are more realistic and conflict is reduced?
Answer: The difficulties you mention are endemic across the industry.
You have just described one of the most significant problems in a body corporate: too many owners think about it only when they look at their levy notice. Every manager will tell you about their experiences of sending out information about schemes, details of projects meeting notices, and so on, which are largely ignored by owners. Still, when you send out a levy notice that is higher than the last one, suddenly, half the scheme will contact you. It’s hard to combat that.
It sounds like your committee is doing a good job of running the site and trying to keep owners up to date. However, I have significant concerns about the amount of time volunteer committee members are required to spend on site management – especially in older buildings. Many committee members are doing 10+ hours a week – often a lot more. It’s hard to put in that commitment. Updated legislation is required to streamline certain body corporate processes. Body corporate managers should be professionalised and permitted to lift more of the burden.
Unfortunately, I think it will take a major failure before there is change – we’ve seen incidents like the Grenfell fire and collapse of the towers in Miami that show us what happens when buildings go wrong. The odds of a similar incident occurring in Australia in the next few years would be higher than most people are comfortable with.
Apologies for the gloomy post – it sounds like you are doing good work at your site, so keep it up, but the difficulties you mention are endemic across the industry.
William Marquand
Tower Body Corporate
E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au
P: 07 5609 4924
This post appears in Strata News #775.
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Read next:
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