Hi Toco

About your floorboards – I'd definitely get permission. You're new in this block so you don't have a feel for what fellow owners 'can get away with'. If you put down solid floorboards without permission  and the owners corporation take action to have the situation remedied, what then? It will leave a crappy taste in everyone's mouths…

The big problem for new flat owners is often that they are unaware that you have far fewer rights and many more obligations, than if you had bought a house for your PPOR.

About the pool: if a few people aren't paying their fees then in a small block its pretty noticeable. Eventually the body corpporate will extract their money, but meanwhile there might be a shortcoming in the admin fund. This is exacerbated if the sinking fund is already pretty depleted. Maybe thats why the pool cover is still on? I'd ring the strata agent to find out  about this and the general state of the block's finances.

good luck

we are currently in a similar situation, but  knocking out the wall may not proceed as smoothly as you would like…

the guy upstairs did just that. he is being taken to court for removing the internal kitchen wall  and other unauthorised work. the whole thing is becoming very bloody. that said, if its supervised by a structural engineer who agrees that there will be no structural impact on the block, the owner's corporation can't deny approval for work to proceed.

as an aside, check that the floor to ceiling height is the same in the kitchen and the living room before you knock that wall out.

mkc

circumventing the agent has worked very favourably for me on one occasion and not at all on another.  the vendors solicitor is generally very obliging and just passes on your written offer.  the first time i did this i actualy bought the property on favourable terms but earned a lot of hostility from the agent. another time, the agent called me up, gave me a piece of his mind etc… but the owner listened to the agent. unfortunately for the owner, 3 months later when no more offers were coming in, he acepted a cheaper settlement. but maybe the terms were more to his liking??? i find that quite often vendors have unrealistic expectations in the early weeks…

i'm interested about the 2 properties u mentioned earlier ( on the market for 12 & 2 months respectively). if an owner won't meet the market & he's been waiting it out for 1 or 2 yrs, then he won't probably sell cheaply. find out what the owner wants. eg long settlements are favoured by those who may be waiting for their new house to be built etc.. but i wouldn't be offering above market value as jon suggested unless the suburb is in the early stages of a booming market or the property has  unique development potential etc…

i know its pretty low, but what i do is give the agent my offer  in writing, and send a copy to the vendor's solicitor.

i only do this if  i think i'm dealing with a dodgy agent…