99 year lease on GF apartment's private area

Sorry if this has been covered previously, the search function doesn't appear to be working (I get a blank screen).

A ground floor apartment with a large outside area is for sale in a 4 unit block (2 down, 2 up). We have been told the private outside area is on a 99 year lease. How does this affect future changes to this space? There's a garage that I'd like to extend out the back, some concrete to change into garden etc and wondering if the lease arrangement would make this difficult. I suspect the 99 year lease is a way of keepng changes under the control of the owners corp, at the same time I guess also insured by them too.

Can anyone shed some light on this? The pros/cons/controls over 99 year leases would be beneficial for me!

Am going to get my conveyencer to review the sect32 but was interested in opinions, experiences.

Thanks.
 
Settle down now - here's a SERIOUS reply.

Buckerooni, I suspect what you are referring to is an apartment with a lease to give exclusive use to part of what would otherwise be common area?

Just check if the lease is transferable.

Hubby's parents bought into a retirement village and, as an inducement to buy, were able to negotiate a 99 year lease over an area beside their villa that was lawn beside a driveway. The fence was moved (at their expense) to incorporate this area into their courtyard. From what I can gather, no formal lease was ever signed. There were doubts from the beginning that it would be transferred to a future buyer.

Every now and then the centre manager gets narky and makes noises about taking it back. Hubby's father says - go right ahead but you have to pay to move the fence. So far it is a bit of a standoff.

You need to sight the lease document and then see what the BC attitude is towards your suggested improvements. Even with a lease this is considered common area so you may be limited to what you can do with it.

Then again, you may be talking about something entirely different.
Marg
 
Thanks Marg, glad you could put a lid on the schoolyard humour! Although I thought I wasn't doing myself any favours.

The area in question is the land around the apartment which I thought would normally be on the title - as it's private space exclusively for the unit. here's a photo from outside, which should clear things up:

pic.jpg


and the plan:

plan.jpg


Is this highly unusual for the area marked in diagonal to be a 99 year lease? It seems a bit strange to me, but I haven't dealt with ground floor apartments before.
 
From what I can gather, it looks as if the area in question is only accessible from the unit that owns the lease.

Is the garage included in the 99 year lease (shown with diagonal lines)? Usually the garage is on the title of the unit. What about the driveway?

You will probably find that council regulations require a certain amount of common space. Hence the designation of that area as common space, but for all intents and purposes it is only able to be used by the unit it surrounds.

Only the BC will be able to tell you if you can alter the area in any way.
Marg
 
From what I can gather, it looks as if the area in question is only accessible from the unit that owns the lease.

Is the garage included in the 99 year lease (shown with diagonal lines)? Usually the garage is on the title of the unit. What about the driveway?

You will probably find that council regulations require a certain amount of common space. Hence the designation of that area as common space, but for all intents and purposes it is only able to be used by the unit it surrounds.

Only the BC will be able to tell you if you can alter the area in any way.
Marg

Hi Marg,

The garage is part of the lease, only the actual unit is on title. From what I can gather, one of the owners in a top unit got all pissy about the unit below and their formal privilege on the outside area (the 'common' but 'private' area outside of the unit's footprint but within the fence) this exercise cost ALL tenants 5K in legal fees to sort out this via a court case - nice one neighbour! After this I gather they got the 99 year leases made up.

Based on this carry-on we kept clear at the auction today, not the kind of melrose place utopia we're looking for! 2/23 camden st, st kilda east - went for 511K with about 6-7 bidders having a red-hot go. A little high for my liking anyhow! Our PPOR upgrade search continues...
 
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