Two ACT Strata Leaders Disagree … Are we Surprised, Amused or just Bewildered?

It’s normal for strata stakeholders to disagree over many small and big issues.

But, you’d think the leaders of the strata sector would have more in common, agree on key and fundamental things and be heading in the same direction.

Ah, well that’s not the case in the ACT about whether or not there should be a Strata Commissioner to oversee what’s going in strata buildings in that state.

ACT Strata Manager [and SCA National President], Joshua Baldwin, says:

• It’s "time critical" for the ACT to create the role, as the workload for strata managers is increasing.

• The ACT strata industry is in an explosive state as it moves towards one in three people living in strata.

• Strata Community Association welcomed the opportunity for a third party to provide guidance on what strata managers were and were not responsible for.

ACT Strata Lawyer, Christopher Kerin, disagrees, saying:

• Community awareness of the exact role for strata managers needed to be improved.

• Sometimes strata managers would go beyond the typical jobs of arranging body corporate meetings, collecting levies, and insuring the building to trying to act as "a go-between" from unit owners to the complex's executive committee, leading to unsatisfied expectations.

• Usually, after investigating complaints about strata managers, they arose because of confusion.

• That a commissioner might not help since other similar consumer facing schemes in ACT remained understaffed and under resourced.

Who’s right and who’s wrong on the topic doesn’t really matter IMO … even though there’s been one [kinda] Strata Commissioner in NSW for the last few years as an example of what might and might not result from it.

Rather, what I find most amusing [or is that troubling] is that:

• on the one hand, a strata management leader [SCA National President] is asking others to define the strata manager’s role because there’s a crisis coming which [impliedly] strata managers don’t know how to handle,

  and

• on the other hand, a strata lawyer says we need government regulation and involvement won’t help as strata consumer expectations and what strata managers promise and do are typically misaligned.

So, what is happening in strata land?

Can it really be that the strata management business sector has not defined its role, the extent and limits of its services, and communicated that to its customers?

You can read their comments in the ABC News article Strata Managers come under the Spotlight as Apartment Living Becomes more Popular here.