© Purchasers Strata Inspections Pty Ltd 1976 - 2015
Levies + $500K Legal Fees Each Year This very large Brisbane building was built by a well known, highly regarded construction company. Can that be a recommendation to buy? The building has many issues as it is not only residential, owner occupied, but some apartments are leased by the building managers similar to a hotel. There are two big problems, the first is the suitability of the clients who rent the rooms, the behaviour of some clients often falls well below the expectations of the residents. The larger issue however is the building defects which have not been addressed and the construction company is refusing to do more work arguing the building rectification and repairs have been completed. The owners are unhappy and they Body Corporate have hired a legal firm to recover the costs from the construction company. The strata’s legal team is made up of full time legal staff who are charging back their hours at commercial rates. Despite the construction company claiming the defects have been rectified, the construction company has taken legal action against a plethora of tradesmen and trade companies who have carried out works during construction in addition the construction company is also counter suing the Strata Plan for defamation. There has been no real estimate on building repair cost, put simply that will come later and that is expected to be in the millions! All the legal stuff is just about locking in who is going to pay. If the building loses this case, and they may, they will need to fund their legal action and they will need to pay some of the construction company’s legal fees PLUS they will need to fund the defect works. If they win, they will get some of the legal fees back and some of the defects rectified. Very few strata inspection companies agree to do a report on this building as it can take a number of days to sort through and make sense of the records. We do this building frequently so we have a lot of it on file already. We are often asked to do this building by our competitors who will copy our report data, put it on their letterhead and add a substantial margin. Our report for this building has a defect section which runs into 10 pages or more. The history section of our report has about 10 pages as well. The frightening reality is the majority of these apartments sell without a strata inspection as the target demographic are not represented by a clearly independent legal advisor. The sales and marketing team for these apartments produce a very slick promotional presentations. These are marketed in Singapore and Beijing. The showing of apartments to potential purchasers is carefully orchestrated to avoid potential purchasers from seeing the less desirable, client side of the building. Showing times are different depending which side of the building is being sold, the season and the position of the sun. When apartments are shown sales staff take groups of people up to the unit at the same time promoting the perception that there are many interested buyers. We are suspicious of the make up of the groups as not all may be potential purchasers. Purchasers are not told of the legal action or the defects that will need to be repaired. The levies are are not advertised in the sales brochures and the overall printed presentation of the apartments seems to be well ahead of the real presentation. Full history on file If buying a strata apartment a report is essential to be certain you are not getting less than you expect
Purchasers Strata Inspections Pty Ltd
Email psi@strata.com.au Phone 1300 363 774  Fax 1300 365 774
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