Pets in apartments: Owners can be slugged with costs and restrictions

While pet lovers can no longer be banned from bringing their dog or cat into their apartment building to live, they can still be slugged as much as $300 for the privilege, a NSW tribunal has ruled.

They can also be forbidden from stopping to pick up their mail while in the lobby with their pet and from having a friend with a pet visit them – unless they’ve already applied for, and been given, permission by their owners corporation.

The landmark judgment by the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) means that other apartment buildings throughout the state will be free to impose similar strict conditions on pet owners.

“But I feel those kind of rules are just unnecessary and show over-zealous management of a building [by] imposing such rules on pet owners,” said retired businessman Bob Roden, who unsuccessfully brought the action against his Kings Cross apartment tower, The Elan, protesting against the introduction of the slather of strict rules.

“Charging owners $300 for permission to keep a pet isn’t any benefit at all to an owners corporation, which has a budget of millions and millions of dollars. I argued that such rules were harsh, unconscionable or oppressive, but the tribunal ruled against me.”

The NCAT verdict could have repercussions for all the apartment buildings that are now being forced to allow pets after a change in the state law on August 24 made it illegal to unreasonably forbid the keeping of pets in strata buildings. That followed the Court of Appeal decision in the case of Jo Cooper, who successfully pushed for the overturning of a blanket ban on pets at her Darlinghurst building, Horizon.

Many could now introduce similarly onerous rules on pet ownership. Barrister Richard Gration, who acted for The Elan owners corporation, said: “It’s going to be quite an important precedent for other strata schemes.

“They’ll be able to introduce fees for the extra time and expense it costs to process people’s pet applications and insist that visitors have to get permission to visit with pets. Unless this latest decision is appealed, that will stand for all the schemes in NSW.”

At the tribunal, senior member David Charles said he accepted that the bylaws were “necessary for the proper management, administration, control, use or enjoyment of the lots of the strata scheme and common property … [They] enhance or preserve the other lot owners’ enjoyment of their lots and the strata scheme property … and therefore are not harsh, unconscionable or oppressive.”

The Elan was one of the high-profile Sydney buildings, along with Horizon, that had never permitted pets but ended up changing their bylaws as the new laws came in on animal bans and included a number of regulations that some pet owners said were unfair.

Mr Roden, 75, was one of the owners who’d previously campaigned to have the ban lifted, and he was later voted onto the strata committee and appointed secretary.

When he’d started the proceedings in NCAT, however, he was removed from the committee by a special resolution of owners at an extraordinary general meeting, supported by more than 80 per cent of the vote.

The chair of The Elan, Dr Claire Hooper, said: “We are now hoping to put this behind us and move on as a community.”

As for Mr Roden – whose dog-owning partner wasn’t able to move in with him because of The Elan ban until her pet eventually died – he has now taken ownership of a six-year-old golden Labrador called Brandy.

He says he will pay his $300 to apply for permission to have her live in their apartment. “I won’t be appealing the decision,” he said.

“I’m taking it on the chin in good spirit and don’t hold any anger or hate against anybody.”