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• Building Defect Claims by Owners Corporations

  Sunday, 24 April 2011

  Owners Corporations in Victoria have a duty and obligation to repair and maintain the common property and for the benefit of all proprietors on a plan of subdivision. An essential part of this duty is to keep in good and serviceable repair, properly maintain and where necessary, renew and replace — the common property, including the fittings, fixtures and lifts used in connection with the common property; and any personal property vested in the Owners Corporation, and to do so whether damage or deterioration arises from fair wear and tear, inherent defect or any other cause. Thus in fulfilling its duties an Owners Corporation must rectify all inherent building defects that are on common property and the responsibility of the Owners Corporation.     What are building defects?           A defect is a fault or imperfection. A building defect is a fault or imperfection arising from the design and or construction of a building. A defect is usually measured against objective criteria such as:  the Building Code of Australia; Australian Standards; the standard of building works that would be performed by a “reasonable builder”. Some practical examples of the types of building defects that we ...

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  Posted by: Anthony Wilkinson

  Category: Owners Corporations / Body Corporates

  Tags: Body Corporate, Owners Corporation, Building Defect, Building Contract, Rectification, Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995

• Legal Costs for Body Corporate / Owners Corporation Disputes in VCAT

  Friday, 15 April 2011

  Since 31 December 2007, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which is otherwise known as VCAT has had the power to hear Body Corporate / Owners Corporation disputes ("OC"). Prior to this all or the majority of OC disputes were heard in the Magistrates' Court of Victoria. A big part of the reason for the move to VCAT was to eliminate or minimise the issue of legal costs for people or OCs involved in such disputes as VCAT has a general position or mandate that each person to a dispute must bear their own legal costs unless exceptional circumstances apply. This is supposedly to allow the individual lot owner to air their grievances  without the worry a legal costs order to follow. As great as this sounds that does not mean that affected persons or individual lot owners should not consider the dispute resolution process stipulated in the Owners Corporations Act 2006 and Owners Corporations Regulations 2007, which sets out a process by which grievances maybe heard. Should an aggrieved person fail to attempt to resolve the dispute prior to issuing an application in VCAT and it is determined that the aggrieved person's claim had no grounds or frivilous then it will not be ...

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  Posted by: Anthony Wilkinson

  Category: Owners Corporations / Body Corporates