As a first time homeowner, I attended my first ever Strata Council meeting last night and boy was it fun (insert sarcastic tone here).
First off, I am suffering from a bout of food poisoning at the moment. Secondly, I was alone as Michelle was working the night shift. Thirdly, this is one of the most boring meetings I've ever been to and if you know my industry, you know I go to a lot of meetings. People love to complain I guess, love, love, love to complain. And about dumb things, most of which are in their control if they wanted to change things. But they don't, they would rather wait for a meeting, and complain in front of everyone forcing the meeting to go on forever.
I've heard that these types of meetings are boring and brutal and now that I have attended one, I can say with complete conviction... they were right.
3 comments:
Too bad you can't host the meeting in a Ghost Recon fashion where you make the complainer eat a grenade...congrats on your first Strata Meeting, one down, many more to hate!
Welcome to the club man. We hold our strata meetings in the lobby of our building and if you've seen the lobby of our building you can barely fit a couple of squirrels there comfortably let alone 25 or so owners. I really feel that this adds to the strata experience. Maybe you should request a really small meeting place at yours too!
We've been somewhat lucky with our Strata Council, but I've heard horror stories.
For example, a family living in my parents' building was parking their car in the unsecured visitors' parking lot. One day/night their car was broken into. They waited until the next strata meeting to make their claim AGAINST THE STRATA! You'd think they'd go to ICBC, wouldn't you?! The strata told them, in front of everybody present, that they could handle the family's claim, but that would mean everybody there would be paying for it. The family took back their claim. They had no fucking clue what a Strata Council was, or how it worked. Morons. Where did they think the money came from?! (Then they had to instruct the family that they weren't supposed to be parking there anyways.)
The one thing that you should do, Gio, is try to get on the Council, and do it quickly. My father did for his building. Why? It's relatively easy to get the by-laws made, it's relatively difficult to change them once they're implemented. Get in, get your rules in, then get out when your terms up.
Oh, and if you choose this route, put a limit on rental units. Otherwise, you'll have too many "transient" tenants who won't care as much about the building or the people in it. Might affect property value, too.
Post a Comment