The real mug’s game when it comes to real estate

Looking for an affordable home in Australia is officially a mug’s game but be careful what you wish for, or things could end up like this.

OPINION

Looking for an affordable home in Australia is officially a mug’s game, and the crippling cost of a freestanding home, coupled with chronic housing shortages, has apartment living in its ascendancy.

But to all those prospective unit buyers out there, I say beware the enemy within: strata plans.

Sure, the size of future mortgage repayments may crush your hopes and dreams – but once you’re in, it’s the strata plan that’ll really crush your spirit.

We bought our home – a two-bedroom, one bathroom apartment – in 2005 and we’re still paying it off. We’ve paid extortionate strata levies for god only knows what the whole way along.

There’s no parking. There’s no lift.

There’s certainly no security or concierge or anything but a fortnightly fiddle by an ineffectual leaf-blower who is diligent only in carefully ignoring the actual weeds breaking through the brick pavers out the back.

Strata living: the struggle is real.

And we’ve paid tens of thousands into a sinking fund in recent years to pay for remedial works to the building. Work that has also required multiple lump sum payments – the kind of cold, hard cash that would have seen us within striking distance of paying off our mortgage.

But no.

Instead, we have paid (and paid and paid again) for damage to the building caused by one lot’s long-term failure to maintain their property.

BOTCHED JOB

And the one thing we were getting out of the staggering cost of this remedial project – an overdue exterior paint job – has been botched by those we have paid so handsomely for so long.

They have just painted the front of the building a different colour to the sides. Worse, they must have known they were doing it, because it is so blatant where the two paints meet, and they went ahead and did it anyway.

Worse still, I told the strata manager it was a different colour and supplied multiple photos before the scaffolding came down, so that the issue could be promptly remediated.

Nothing was done.

So at great expense, with the project blowing out to a frankly cringe-worthy degree of time and money, we now have a two-tone building.

Slow clap.

The high cost of freestanding homes means apartment living is in the ascendancy. But buyer beware.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

But wait. It gets better. The total cost is now more than four times greater than back when I was the sole active strata committee member for too many years to name and first got a quote for this work.

Boy, didn’t everyone spring from the woodwork in their rush to vote it down then! We were the only owner occupiers at the time, you see. So the owner investors just thought we were up to no good. Well, that was somewhere in the realm of $25,000 per lot, so good job voting it down years ago, team!

And because this is strata living, there is no end point for this blunder, no reliable recourse, nor any action to get the painters to account for and correct the massive mistake they know they made.

And now there’s no scaffolding either, nothing but a notification from the strata “manager” in response to our concerns that there has been a further $80,000 overspend.

Plenty of Aussies are in the same strata boast.

Years ago, we suggested a square metre split of the roof cavity and the charmless communal back area of washing lines and bins. The hostility was palpable, despite this division of communally owned space having been successfully adopted by numerous blocks, including the property that starred in the first season of The Block, adding significant value to all properties. The downstairs lots end up with private backyards, while the two lots upstairs end up as three-bedroom, two bathroom homes. Win/win.

To us, this idea was a no-brainer because we all stood to gain. But the way the other owners reacted, even when we encouraged them to seek independent advice, jeez, you would have thought we were trying to burn down the block.

Back when we were the only owner occupiers, this same air of deep suspicion pervaded all group decision-making.

It was really unpleasant, like they thought we were always trying to gain some secret advantage, when in reality I co-ordinated trades and supervised minor repairs like an unpaid building manager for about 15 years, right up until they all turned up in force to vote down the building remediation, at which point I gave up.

In all the years, there was never a single thank you from any of them.

Oh, wait. That’s not quite true.

One owner moved in post-Covid. After we moved into a rental and leased our apartment last year, she was forced to concede that we, and we alone had been taking out the bins every week for every one of the 18 years we lived there.

But that was in the context of her now wanting to pay someone to take out the bins.

And if all the other owners decide that this is a service suddenly worth paying for, then please let me know the going rate and I shall gladly invoice them for 18 years of weekly duty.

Originally published as The real mug’s game when it comes to real estate