Letter to the Minister

Dear Minister,

I have reviewed the “Strata & Law Reform Community Title Law Reform Discussion Paper”.

I must say that I was particularly interested in Chapter 3: Managing the Built Environment. I wish to emphasise that the comments below are in my personal capacity.

I am personally very supportive of law reform that enables a fair, transparent and practical means of terminating strata schemes.

The truth is that many buildings in North Sydney and Double Bay (not to mention pretty much every major town centre in NSW) cannot reasonably be redeveloped based on the current state of strata law. It is nearly impossible to terminate a strata scheme under the current law and the requirement to have unanimous support for the termination of a strata scheme is artificially preventing urban renewal in circumstances where it should be encouraged.

While the principles of individual rights to own property are sacred and the basis of our capitalist economy, equally, there is a very strong community interest in allowing older strata properties to be redeveloped, particularly in circumstances where the strata building is not properly maintained, is very old or even when the town planning controls would allow a substantial increase in height and density on the land in question.

I am very supportive of the concepts contained in the section titled “Urban Renewal” starting on page 22 of the report and believe that a small minority of strata owners should not have the ability to hold the large majority to ransom.

My personal view is that it is absolutely key to any law reform in this area that those owners who are not interested in selling have appropriate rights of review, so as to avoid tyranny of the majority and equally in circumstances where a sale is forced that the minority owners are fully compensated for the full value of their units taking into account issues as diverse as:

Kind regards,

Lesli Berger

General Manager

Fivex Commercial Property