Source : Perth Now news
A Sydney property owner has listed their forever home for millions of dollars less than the price they purchased it following a strata nightmare.
The waterfront Glebe apartment sold for $4.1m last year, but was recently listed for just $999,999 after the owner realised they had inherited a problem.
“Have you ever looked at a beautiful terrace in Glebe and thought, ‘This is nice, but I wish it came with a little more emotional trauma?’”
the advertisement reads.
“Well, today’s your lucky day. This isn’t just a home. It’s an experience.
“For nearly $4m, we thought we’d purchased our forever home. Turns out we’d actually enrolled in an unlimited subscription to ‘Strata – The Never Ending Story’.
“Membership renews automatically. You don’t get to cancel.”
The seller said despite the beautiful terrace and fantastic location you needed a diploma in strata law and time to read thousands of pages of meeting minutes and legal correspondence.
They said repairs quickly turned into Olympic sized events that required meetings, consultants, engineers, reports, lawyers and special levies.
“Everybody agrees something needs fixing (but) nobody agrees how,” the property ad read.
“Twelve months later, everyone meets again to discuss why nothing happened.
“It’s beautiful. Tradition is important.”
The owner said they were simply selling because they bought the dream then the nightmare came free, suggesting someone who enjoyed suspense, meetings and the belief that problems could be solved by commissioning more reports.
“Forget checking the dishwasher. Forget checking the paint. Forget checking the roof,” the ad read.
“Ask for the meeting minutes (and) read them because the biggest surprise in strata usually isn’t hidden behind the walls,
it’s hidden in the paperwork.
“Offers, well we’ll take just about anything. We’re flexible. The real value is in the life lessons.”
The ad has been shared on social media and has received hundreds of comments from people sympathising with the owner.
“Sums up strata pretty well though. Strata in Australia is a bureaucratic nightmare and desperately needs to become service and value focused if people want higher density to work in this country,” one person said.
“I’ve owned apartments overseas and the strata experience was totally different, it actually felt like good value.”
Another person said they had seen another horror story where the developer owned half the units, so they owned the strata.
“Strata really needs a full shake up, particularly as move toward medium and higher density living in our cities,” a person commented.
