Owners Corporation fees for having common walls

Hi all,

I am curious to know if there should be any owner corporate fees for a townhouse I am looking at. In this case, the common property, is only the wall separating the townhouses.

Background
I am in Victoria and looking to buy a townhouse. This townhouse is on a block with 3 other townshouses (4 in total) (see attached of a plan of subdivision).

If you have a look at the attachment, the lot I am interested in is lot 4. For those who can not see, the boundaries between lot 3 and 4 are divided by a common wall, and a bit of fencing in the front and backyard. There are no common property, other then the wall that is in between townhouses to divide the boundaries of the property.

When I looked at the s32 notice, the OC certificate indicated that the OC did not levy any fees on its lot owners.

I am confused why this is the case. I thought there would be fees, in particular, insurance. From my understanding, when there is common property the OC has to take out insurance. However, I know there are exceptions, namely if you are on a 2 lot subdivisions. But in this case, there are 4 townhouses.

Questions
1# My question is, should there be OC fees, or should the OC have been taking out insurance for all townhouses because of the common wall dividing each townhouse? (I would like to point out that the plan of subdivision did not explicity say the walls were common property, but rather, the walls were shown as the median when it showed the boundaries of each lot).

Thanks
 

Attachments

  • Plan of subdivision.jpg
    Plan of subdivision.jpg
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Yes. Each townhouse has its own street frontage. Is this an important consideration?

Yes - if there was a shared driveway it would be common property. As it is however, you are not different to a terrace house say in carlton or richmond. The separating walls are lterally that - separating, so you can consider your building insurance goes "halfway" into the wall.

The Y-man
 
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