This Privacy Policy deals with the collection, security, use and disclosure of personal information gathered by Prudential Investment Company of Australia and its subsidiaries including those trading as Body Corporate Services Love Owners Corporations pursuant to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the ten National Privacy Principles set out in that Act.
Information provided by you to Love Owners Corporations will be used in a manner to ensure that Love Owners Corporations is able to fulfil all of its functions and duties under the various Strata Management Acts and associated regulations.
The kind of information that is collected may include your name, address, telephone number, email address. In certain circumstances, sensitive information relating to your health may also be collected.
Should personal information be obtained from a third party, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that you know:
(a) the identity of the third party and how to contact them;
(b) that you have the right to access the information;
(c) the purposes for collecting the information;
(d) whether the third party will disclose the information to other third parties;
(e) the law that requires that information to be collected; and
(f) the consequences (if any) if that information is not provided.
We may contract with a third party and they may require the disclosure of your information to fulfil their obligations to us. For instance, for bulk mail deliveries we may utilise the services of a mailing houses which requires the disclosure of your name and address. In those types of circumstances, we ensure that your personal information will only be used for the specific purpose for which it was provided.
If you do not provide this information or we are unable to gain the information from a third party we may not be able to deal with you, or provide you with our services efficiently. If ever we collect personal information, we do so for the purpose of establishing and maintaining our relationship with you and the reason for its collection will always be explained.
Nevertheless, personal information is usually used or disclosed only after having obtained your consent, either expressly or by implication or where we are entitled or required to. The information provided by you to Love Owners Corporations will be used to, for example:
(a) maintain the strata roll;
(b) obtain and update insurance policies;
(c) aid in identification of products and services which may be required by you;
(d) maintain our relationship with you; and
(e) comply with legislative and regulatory requirements.
We only collect sensitive information with your consent or when we are required to by law. Sensitive information is defined as being any information about a person’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinion, membership of a political association, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, membership of a professional or trade association, member of a trade union, sexual preferences or practices, criminal record or health information.
Love Owners Corporations Internet Privacy Policy
If you visit an unsecured area of our website (where you are not required to log on) to browse or download information, we will record the date and time of your visit, the page that you viewed, the path you followed to get there and the information, if any, that you downloaded. This information cannot be used to personally identify you. The information is used for statistical and maintenance purposes which aid with the continual evaluation of the website.
We take all reasonable steps to ensure that your information is properly protected from unauthorised access, disclosure or modification. Our security measures include, but are not limited to, encrypting the data sent from your computer to our server, firewalls and virus scanning tools. Any information so collected is stored on our server, which can only be accessed by our staff.
We do not use any information collected from our website to send unsolicited advertising material (SPAM) to your computer.
Other information may be collected when you apply for an online product, make a payment online or send us a query via email.
Online Purchase and Payment.
When purchasing online products or making a payment online, the information required by online forms may be collected, used or disclosed by us. The manner in which this may occur is explained on any such online forms.
When purchasing a product with a credit card, your credit card number is not stored and your information is not transferred over the internet to your card provider
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The information in this article will assist when reading strata plans. This article about common property boundaries has been supplied and written by Stephen Raff, Ace Body Corporate Management and The Knight.
Questions are commonly received by strata managers from owners about common property boundaries along the lines of ‘What is mine and what is part of common property’. The list of questions can be somewhat exhaustive and often requires viewing the property’s plan of subdivision, however, I have attempted to address some of the more common areas of concern for owners and offer some insight below.
Many Victorian strata plans state something along the lines of, ‘The lower boundary of units 1 to 14 (both inclusive) lies one metre below that part of the site which lies within the vertical or near vertical boundaries of the relevant unit’. The upper boundary of each of these units is usually about 15 metres above its lower boundaries. In this case, the owner is responsible for their roof and the foundations under the floor. In this example, the common property is all the land in the parcel except the land contained in units 1 to 14. A prospective purchaser should be aware of this.
In other strata plans (i.e. Single storey units) areas above and below the units are deemed to be common property and therefore the owners corporation is responsible for the repair and or replacement of the roof and the foundations of the unit. It also means that the owner could not build a second storey without unanimous approval from the owner’s corporation, or build something below the surface such as a wine cellar.
Some plans of subdivision state that ‘depth and height limitations do not apply’. This means that the unit owner owns the immediate airspace above their unit (to the Commonwealth of Australia boundary). So, providing they obtain a permit they can build another storey onto the existing building. It also means that they own the land down into the ground and can build, for example, a wine cellar, providing a permit can be obtained. So there is no common property above or below the unit.
A plan of subdivision often states the location of boundaries defined by a building’s ‘median’ (marked ‘M’ on the plan) and ‘exterior face’. The median means that the two owners would share any repair costs of the wall dividing their two units. The exterior face means that the owner is responsible for all works from the plaster through to the paintwork on the exterior of the wall, which would include windows, rising damp, concrete cancer repairs or replacement. The ‘interior face’ means everything from the exterior paintwork through to the plaster and is the owners corporation’s responsibility.
If the strata plan states that all the air between floors to ceiling is private, that means everything above the ceiling is common property and anything below the floor is common property. So, if the foundations or roof deteriorate, it would be the owners corporation’s responsibility to repair or replace them.
If the street-side front fence of a block of units has a private courtyard behind it and the fence adjoins a footpath without any common property between the footpath and the fence, then the fence belongs to the owner of the unit that sits behind the fence. Councils rarely pay for the repair or replacement of a fence attached to an owners corporation, so this is usually left up to the owner.
If there was common property between the fence and the footpath and there was a private courtyard behind the fence, then the cost of repair or replacement would be shared equally between the owner and the owners corporation. If there is common property behind and in front of the fence then it is the owners corporation’s responsibility to repair or replace the fence.
A common problem that can occur is that a person purchases a unit under the belief that the backyard belongs to the unit, yet the plan of subdivision clearly shows that it is common property. What happens is that over time people install fences on common property to create private backyards for themselves.
The problem is that if a person slips, trips or falls and can prove negligence, it will be the owners corporation that is legally responsible because the area is common property. Yet the owners corporation quite often has no idea that this is common property, or they choose to do nothing about it. A simple and fairly cheap option is for the owner’s corporation to agree to lease or license the area to the unit holder.
If a property owner is renting their property to a tenant and only has one meter for both gas and water for the entire owners corporation, the tenants cannot be charged for the water or gas bills. In order to pass the costs of these services from the owner to the tenant, a separate water or gas meter must be installed.
The Victorian Government encourages the installation of separate water meters in unit complexes, apartment blocks and commercial properties to encourage efficiency and provide a financial reward for people who reduce water use.
In older flats and apartment complexes, separate water meters can be retrofitted after first gaining permission from the Owners Corporation to complete the work. Once in agreement, the Owners Corporation should contact the relevant water corporation in their area and have them explain the cost and process of installing individual water meters.
This article about common property boundaries is not intended to be personal advice and you should not rely on it as a substitute for any form of advice.
Stephen Raff
Ace Body Corporate Management
This article has been republished with permission from the author and first appeared on the LookUpStrata website.
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