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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Jordyn Beazley

‘Completely blindsided’: new owners of strata properties shocked by special levies

apartments
Apartment owners say they are increasingly being lumped with special levies for maintenance work without fair warning. Photograph: Diego Fedele/AAP

About three months after Jake* and his partner bought their apartment in Sydney, they faced an unexpected bill of more than $100,000. It was a special levy for major repairs needed to fix problems with the building’s waterproofing, but it was not flagged in the strata report or the previous year’s annual meeting minutes that had informed their decision to buy the apartment.

“We did our due diligence, everything we were advised to do,” says Jake, who has taken on another job to pay off the levy at $10,000 a month.

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