Hi all,
I bought some land at the end of July. The settlement date was the 29th of July.
It’s community title… I pay about $14/week to have the public paths, trees, grass, parks, etc looked after. It looks pretty impressive!
So, there’s strata attached to the land.
Come about November this year, I still hadn’t received any strata bills, so I rang Ernst Body Corporate up who told me that the property was still listed under the previous owner.
My solicitor didn’t do any body corporate search, and thus failed to fill out change of ownership form 8 (8a I think).
The previous owner is a slack arse who failed to keep up with his strata payments… so much so that they commenced action and there’s $717 of outstanding ‘strata debt recovery fees’, with date 27th of July…Ie, BEFORE we settled.
Ernst Body corporate has stated that debt owning on the land, in this case, strata payments, moves with the owner, ie, we now have to pay the outstanding strata, plus the debt recovery fees.
Not happy.
What I have here in the final letter my solicitor sent me is this phrase she wrote:
“We advise that our searches did not disclose anything adverse to your interests”
…which is crap, considering she failed to do any body corporate searches.
Is there any chance that I can ask (read: demand) my solictor to pay the $717 debt recovery fee, as she failed to comply with the law, and thus failed to do any body corporate searches?
I don’t think there’s any chance in chasing the old owner…
I hate paying other people’s debts.
Has anyone else been put in this situation before?
Cheers!
— M.
The plot thickens!
My solicitor claims that the seller didn’t disclose the fact that there was a body corporate attached to the property, thus he’s broken the law.
I’ve sent all the paperwork to my solictor who will then calculate the strata due and send the bill to the seller.
I wait with baited breath!
— M.
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