This article discusses owner parking on common property, focusing on whether a body corporate can restrict common property parking to visitors only and limit owners’ use.
Question: Can the body corporate reserve all common property parking for visitors and ban owners from using it, even where some lots have limited on-site parking?
Our committee is rewriting the by-laws for our 45–lot standard format plan complex in Queensland. They want to introduce a new by-law that reserves all common property parking spaces for visitors only and bans owners and residents from using them.
The complex is poorly designed. Some lots have long driveways that can accommodate two large cars or possibly three smaller cars. Other lots barely have half a car space, so their vehicles extend onto the main driveway. Owners with longer vehicles rely on the full-size common property parking spaces when they cannot safely park in front of their lot.
Can the body corporate validly make a by-law that effectively gives visitors priority over owners for common property parking? Would this be considered harsh or unreasonable? If so, is it enough for owners to vote against the proposed by-law at the EGM or AGM to prevent it from being adopted?
Answer: Usually, unallocated car parking areas on common property will be for bona fide visitors.
Usually, unless they are reserved for the use of particular lots under an exclusive use grant, unallocated car parking areas on common property will be for bona fide visitors (and not for the use of owners and occupiers).
Certainly, it is appropriate that reasonable by-laws control the use of common property for parking, including making sure there are an appropriate number of available spaces available for visitor use only. Quite often, the development approval for the scheme will require a minimum number of visitor car spaces, and it could be a breach of the development approval to allow such spaces to be used by owners or occupiers.
Presumably, the driveways you refer to are part of individual lots, which may have a single or dual car garage, and so the second or third vehicle of the residence is parked on the driveway. Where any part of the vehicle overhangs onto common property (e.g., the verge or the roadway), it is likely to amount to a contravention of by-laws relating to obstruction.
The best solution would be to fairly allocate some of the available parking around the scheme as exclusive use to the various lots in an equitable manner (if possible, and provided there are still the minimum number of visitor spaces required by the development approval). However, any grant of exclusive use will require a resolution without dissent and the approval of each owner allocated an exclusive use area. Accordingly, it is likely to be very difficult to achieve the necessary approval of the exclusive use allocations (at least in most medium to large schemes).
Certainly, there are schemes with ‘overflow’ parking that can be separate from visitor parking, and available for use by owners and occupiers. However, in such circumstances, it is important that a properly drafted by-law governs the use of these parking areas fairly and equitably – to balance the rights and interests of the different residents. Such by-law conditions should control the use of the car spaces (such as how long the car spaces can be occupied by the same vehicle, how many spaces can be taken up by each lot, etc.), to prevent the misuse of the parking areas by, for instance, an occupier that may wish to simply park an unused vehicle (possibly unregistered) in one of the spaces for a lengthy period of time without any intention of moving it. Such arrangements and by-laws can be notoriously difficult to enforce, though that is somewhat of a separate issue.
Jarad Maher
Grace Lawyers
E: jarad.maher@gracelawyers.com.au
This post appears in Strata News #773.
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Read next:
- QLD: Q&A Accessible parking in strata: can residents use the visitors’ space?
- QLD: Q&A The First rule of Visitor Parking in Apartments – umm, it’s for visitors!
- QLD: Q&A Can I park an unregistered car in my strata car park Qld?
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