Property Developer clashes with Owners

Breakfast Point Community Hall

BREAKFAST POINT is a tidy, waterfront village of more than 2000 cute, Martha Stewart-style homes near Cabarita.

Behind these matching doors, however, a war is under way between one of the state’s most powerful property developers and a group of residents fighting for control of their own strata committee.

“This is about natural justice,” said Ian West, a Labor upper house parliamentarian and resident of the $1.65 billion, 52-hectare waterfront estate. “When you have bought one of the front doors and have invested your life here, then you are entitled to have a proper say in how the facilities are run.”

Mr West is among a group of about 70 residents who are taking representatives of Rose Group - the developers of Breakfast Point - to the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal, alleging it is using a legal loophole to control the residents’ community association.

Last year the NSW parliament changed the law to stymie Rose Group’s attempts to force Breakfast Point residents to sign over their proxy votes to the developer.

Now Breakfast Point Pty Ltd (Rose Group’s representatives on the Community Association) is arguing it should be accorded more than 50 per cent of total votes on the committee. Dominating the association would allow Rose Group to control millions of dollars of future development at Breakfast Point.

Under a complex part of the Community Land Management Act, once a third of a master-planned development has been built and sold, the developer’s control of a community association is restricted. After this deadline is passed, the developer’s votes must be cut by 66 per cent in value.

While agreeing to the discount of most of its votes to one-third of their previous value, Rose Group subsequently bought new parcels of Breakfast Point land called Lots 25 and 26.

They are arguing that the votes for these land plots - worth 4468 of the total 10,000 votes at Breakfast Point - should not be discounted because they were bought after the “initial period” had passed. Counting the Lot 25 and 26 votes at full value would deliver control of the community association to the developer.

“Breakfast Point Pty Limited is exercising its legal rights in full compliance with the Community Land Management Act,” Rose Group’s chief, Bryan Rose, said. “The definition of ‘community’ is wider than those who live at Breakfast Point … It includes all those who have a unit entitlement in the Community Association. The spirit of community has been central to Rose Group plans at Breakfast Point since its inception.”

Residents do not agree.

“This has implications for everyone in NSW living on a community plan,” said one resident, who asked not to be named. “This is a new way in which a developer may assert an influence over a community association which was never intended; it is a question of a developer wanting to control the whole place in their best commercial interest.”

Another resident, Don McKenzie, said: “Rose has effectively wrested control of the community association from the community.”

• Source
• Breakfast Point