Shanghai resident Louis Yu is proud of his four investment properties in Melbourne and found them easy to manage from China — until one of his apartments became a "headache".
That apartment is part of Aurora Melbourne Central, one of the tallest residential buildings in Melbourne with more than 1,000 dwellings.
"We thought [Australian real estate] was a mature market and it was supposed to be well regulated," Mr Yu said.
Mr Yu was approached, on the Chinese messaging app WeChat, by a woman asking him for his Aurora apartment "vote".
Mr Yu said Hung-Jing Tiong, known to residents as Jing, provided a form in English which he signed without fully understanding what it said or meant.
His experience is one of several similar stories other overseas investors — with apartments in the same building — have told the ABC.
Some apartment owners appeared to be unaware of the implications of signing a proxy vote form, and the power they were handing to Ms Tiong, who allegedly managed to collect more than 350 proxy votes.
After securing those votes, Ms Tiong became chairperson of multiple owners corporations at Aurora.
Since then, a litany of disputes have erupted at the building, with complaints to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), Consumer Affairs Victoria and police.
Two separate companies have also begun legal action against Aurora owners corporations in the Victorian Supreme Court.
In one case, facility management services company FFM International (FFMI) alleges the owners corporations "failed or refused to pay invoices to FFMI" totalling more than $2.4 million, court documents show.
Owners corporations under Ms Tiong's leadership are also accused of overseeing a host of other controversial rules, like banning food deliveries and large parcels from being left in the foyer, and switching off fob keys.
In March, Ms Tiong was filmed allegedly biting a worker during an altercation.
A complaint was made to police who investigated the incident but said no charges would be laid.
Ms Tiong denies all of the above allegations.
She said she only holds 5 per cent of owners proxy votes and most people "are happy with Aurora as everything [has] improved".
Mr Yu said issues at the building could have been prevented if overseas owners had access to information about the strata scheme in Chinese, or languages other than English, so they understood the importance of proxy voting rules.
"I believe most of us never thought [we would] get into such a complicated situation," he said.
Proxy vote farming a 'common issue'
Australian Apartment Advocacy director Samantha Reece said proxy farming by either lot owners or strata managers was a "common" issue her organisation dealt with.
Of the 527 requests for mediation that her organisation received last year, Ms Reece said a quarter of them were cases involving overseas buyers.
She said the language barrier was at the heart of the issue, with limited resources regarding Australian property regulations being available in languages other than English.
"English as a second language is often hard for them [overseas buyers] to understand," she said.
"Some strata managers do actually produce their agendas in Chinese, but not many."
To better inform overseas buyers, Ms Reese has encouraged strata managers who are responsible for the administration of owners corporations to provide fact sheets about the property in the languages of the buyers they are mainly dealing with.
"We should be providing that kind of education in a variety of different languages because we are a multicultural country," she said.
Lot owner says reforms did not control proxy vote allocation
Chinese investors have told the ABC a website had been set up to collect voting proxies.
Some apartment owners were asked to log in to the website and fill out the owners corporation proxy form.
WeChat screenshots sent to the ABC show some confusion among investors about the form and who they had assigned their vote to.
In a 2021 email to an Aurora owners group that was provided to the ABC, Ms Tiong wrote: "I am your proxy, I hold more than 40 per cent owners' proxy."
The email was signed: "Your proxy holder: Hung Jing Tiong."
Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV), the agency that oversees legal disputes related to strata matters in Victoria, explained that apartment owners can hand their votes to other apartment owners to represent them but there are restrictions.
"The Victorian government implemented significant reforms to the way owners corporations operate in December 2021," a CAV spokesperson said.
"The reforms place limits on the amount of proxies that can be held by any one person, as well as ensuring committee members can give their proxy only to another committee member."
However, one Aurora apartment owner, who didn't want to use her real name, said these legislative changes did little to control the issue.
She said Ms Tiong's proxy votes "were simply divided out to a small number of other individuals who voted in exactly the same way as Jing in subsequent general meetings".
"If you're an owner-resident, please be vigilant," she said.
Aurora Melbourne Central is so large that it has at least six owners corporations and is subject to a series of complicated regulations.
"An owners corporation is basically a club that you join when you own a property in a strata scheme," said Jimmy Thomson, an expert in strata laws and regulations who edits the Flat Chat website and hosts the related podcast.
A strata scheme refers to a building or group of buildings that have been divided into lots like apartments or townhouses and when you buy a lot, you also share ownership of the building's common property along with other owners.
The common property is managed by an owners corporation which makes decisions on how the building is run.
When you buy a lot, you have voting rights that contribute to owners corporation decision making processes.
In most meetings, when ordinary resolutions are voted on, each lot owner's vote is equal to one vote per lot, or the number of votes that owner holds in proxy votes, plus their vote.
It's a system known as "one vote per hand and lot".
However, when other special or unanimous resolutions are being voted on, or poll voting is enacted, a lot entitlement system is triggered where each vote may not be equal — people in larger apartments generally have more votes.
"Your voting power depends on your unit entitlements, which is the figure that is used to calculate your levies or fees. And that's based very roughly on the value of your apartment," Mr Thomson said.
"So people in bigger and more attractive apartments are likely to have more voting power than people in smaller and cheaper apartments."
Special general meeting ousts chair
In February, a group of Aurora owners organised an unprecedented special general meeting for owners corporation one, which was attended by about 200 people and lasted more than four hours.
This group of owners also organised Mandarin interpreters for attendees who don't speak English.
The meeting passed several resolutions including one to remove the committee of owners corporation one, the largest owners corporation at Aurora which included Ms Tiong, and install a new committee.
In her response to the ABC, Ms Tiong disputed the outcome of that meeting and copied in a lawyer from Sinisgalli Foster, who reiterated her position.
Correspondence shared with the ABC said the firm is acting for the committee members who were "purportedly replaced" at the February meeting.
Ms Tiong remains chair of several smaller Aurora owners corporations, but the ABC understands further special general meetings are being planned.
Vanessa, an undergraduate student at RMIT who didn't want to use her full name, was one of the owners who voted to oust Ms Tiong.
She said it had been difficult to live in the building over recent months with policies she finds problematic.
"A lot of issues can't be solved," she said.
"I lost four parcels in half a year. They're not worth much but it's quite annoying.
"Our food deliveries were also being thrown out of the building."
'There's nothing you can do'
Aurora residents have told the ABC they have made reports to VCAT and Consumer Affairs Victoria about disputes in the building but the majority of issues remain unresolved.
There are five cases in VCAT related to Aurora.
Mr Thomson said VCAT has the power to appoint a strata manager to replace an owners corporation committee.
But right now in Victoria the tribunal system is overwhelmed with cases that could take more than a year to be attended to.
"If you're in a building which is seriously dysfunctional, you're stuffed really, there's nothing you can do," Mr Thomson said.
VCAT declined to comment.
The Victorian Strata Community Association (SCA) said the issues at Aurora showed there was a need for better policy intervention into the owners corporation sector by the state government.
SCA (Victoria) president Julie McLean said strata living was forecast to grow in popularity over coming decades.
"Measures can and must be taken now to protect consumer confidence in apartment living, give owners and managers the tools they need to work together in harmony, and ensure greater respect and understanding in strata communities," Ms McLean said.
The state government has been contacted for comment.
The disputes at Aurora have also left some overseas investors like Mr Yu questioning if they should invest in Australia in future.
"I'm not sure … how this would be resolved," Mr Yu said.
"For migrants and overseas buyers, this has had quite a negative impact [on confidence in the Australian real estate market]."
Read the story in Chinese: 阅读中文版
Editor's note: This story was updated after publication with further information on owners corporation voting rules in Victoria. A line was added to explain that when ordinary resolutions are voted on, each lot owner's vote is equal to one vote per lot. A change was also made to reflect that the lot entitlement voting system is only triggered in certain circumstances.
