owners occupied

My third day of unemployment.

I shop early so I don’t have to venture out in the heat of the day. At nine o’clock Dan and Joyce knock on my front door with Feo not far behind them. I thought our ‘body corporate’ meeting was yesterday, but I’m a day out.

Four units occupy our large block, originally owned by the Gunthers, a local real estate dynasty, who sold it to an Indian developer in the late nineties. When I bought the original cottage at the front of the block in May 1999 it sat amid bulldozed rubble. During 2000 I watched the erection of the three units behind my house. Investors bought and tenanted each of them.

The owner of unit 3 railroaded our body corporate into accepting a property manager when the other three of us wanted to self-manage. The manager has done little: mandated annual meetings are not called, repairs are rarely done.

Now we’re called an owners’ corporation. Owner occupiers live in unit 2 (Dan and Joyce) and unit 4 (Feo and Alvena). We’ve been talking change for some time. Today we meet to decide whether to accept a management proposal we sought from the estate agency run by the Gunthers.

Dan and Joyce are in their eighties: Dan wants to change. Feo and Alvena are Chinese, in their thirties. They run a patisserie franchise in a shopping centre. Feo doesn’t want to spend a dollar more than need be. We make no decision, but I am delegated—Dan is too old, Feo’s English is not good enough—to meet our current manager and tell him the state of play.

I ring Brendan. He’s holidaying so I leave a message that I’d like to meet with him.

Rock on.