This Q&A about NSW strata title by-laws has been supplied and written by Allison Benson, Kerin Benson Lawyers.
Question: How do we find the bylaws for our strata plan? We only have a copy of our strata title bylaw changes from 2012. We can only rely on information from a former committee member.
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I have a copy of our strata title bylaw changes from 2012. Our Strata Plan is from 1997 but the bylaws that affect us cannot be found. We can only rely on information from a former committee member.
How do we find the bylaws for our strata plan?
Answer: You should always be able to find a copy of the registered by-laws for your scheme.
You should always be able to find a copy of the registered by-laws for your scheme.
If a consolidated set of your scheme’s by-laws have not yet been registered then the certificate of title for the common property will list all the registered changes of by-laws and which of the model by-laws or developer by-laws apply to your scheme. You then need to go through all the registered dealings to see what changes have occurred and to obtain a copy of the model by-laws that apply.
If a consolidated set of by-laws has been registered, tracking down the changes is much trickier as the previous dealings changing the by-laws will no longer be registered by dealing number on the common property title. It is not impossible but it does take a bit of investigating to see what the dealings were previously, you can do this by looking at your original contract for sale of land as all the previously registered dealings will be included, then you could search through the minutes of each general meeting to look for any changes that occurred after you bought your property.
For completeness, I would also search the files to see if the strata manager had any copies of the previously registered dealings as sometimes by-laws were passed but not registered.
Allison Benson
Legal Practitioner Director
Kerin Benson Lawyers
P: 02 4032 7990
E: [email protected]
Please note: This is not legal advice. You should seek legal advice particular to your situation.
This post appears in Strata News #344.
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We have resided in our duplex since 2004 we did not have a registered set of By-Laws attached to our property. We as owners have had cooperative owners in the past until now. The current owner gives power to their Real Estate Agent who repels any action by us the owner to paint the property or have their tenants abide by Common Property Rules. Can they do that? Shouldn’t the Owner be directly accountable for their property and inform the Real Estate what has to be done? The real Estate Protect their Tenant and Income to the Owner. When informed about repairs she informed us she had a pension and couldn’t afford them we would like to paint our 17 year old Duplex. !!
Hi Angels
We have responded to your question on this post: NSW: Q&A Unbalanced Strata Unit Entitlements Affecting Maintenance
Hi. We’re a pre-1997 scheme. With the 2015/15 legislation changes, we went through the process of reviewing by-laws, and made some (relatively minor) changes. The SMA lodged these for registration. I was then dismayed to find that I had to pay a broker to get a copy of the by-laws (a few hundred $$ by the time you work out which broker report is needed). It came back with a NIL result ie there are no by-laws.
Dealing with the Registrar General is difficult, but they did help and advised that (my words) “there are no transactions, there has never been a transaction, no by-laws have been lodged at any time”. Wow! This raises all sorts of questions for us.
Where do we stand? It seems to me that we have no means of dealing with any issue that arises in our star community.
Thanks
Hi hope you are well , I have a copy of our Bylaw changes , from 2012 , yet the Strata plan is before 1997, the bylaws that affect us cant be found , it is on the say so of one of former committee members……
We have replied to your question in the article above.