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An owners corporation re-roofs when the common roof has failed, not because one lot has a stain and a loud email. The decision needs a written scope, a price for that scope, and the approval path the manager matches to the Owners Corporations Act. Roof Revival Melbourne can inspect the common roof and write the scope. We do not pretend to be the chair, the manager, or the lawyer.
Shared roofs fail in shared ways. A walk-up in Elwood, a 1970s block in St Kilda, a row of townhouses under one continuous tile lid: the leak arrives in one bedroom and the cause is often common property. The lot owner sees plaster. The owners corporation owns the decision if the roof is common. Those are different problems, and they get tangled when the committee tries to buy a roof the way a household buys a hot-water unit, from a single quote, between two meetings, with no photos.
A better sequence is slow on purpose. Confirm the roof is common. Inspect it once, properly. Write one scope. Price that scope with more than one contractor if the rules or the politics require it. Then let the manager say whether a committee decision, an ordinary resolution, or a special resolution is the instrument. We will not invent that instrument in a blog post. The Act and the plan of subdivision outrank a roofer’s confidence.
The first call is often a ceiling. We still find the path, because a common roof can have a local defect. A single flashing over one lot may be a repair that the committee can authorise without a re-roof debate. Three lots wet from the same tired tile field is a different meeting. Starting with replacement because the emails are angry skips the repair that would have held, and starting with another tube of silicone because the emails are expensive skips the replacement the field has already earned.
Photos belong to the whole owners corporation, not to the loudest lot. Ridge conditions, sarking, the far elevation nobody can see from the street, the box gutter between wings. A report written so a lot owner who was not home can follow it is the report that survives the AGM. Jargon and a single total do not.
The work, when it is truly a re-roof, is roof replacement in Melbourne. On a block, that page is the trade. The governance sits around it.
Committee members compare badly when the quotes describe different roofs. One includes scaffold and asbestos process. One assumes tile disposal is free. One replaces gutters. One leaves them. The arguments feel like arguments about price and are arguments about nouns. Give every contractor the same scope, or ask one inspection to produce the scope the others must price. Comparisons of unlike lists produce a false bargain and a variation war in month two.
The scope should name access. Shared driveways, car stackers, and a roof that can only be loaded from the street change the program more than the tile choice. It should name whether residents stay. They usually do. It should name protection of courtyards that feel private and sit under common eaves. A lot owner’s planter is still in the drop zone.
Materials are a common-property decision with a streetscape attached. Replacing a tiled block roof with metal changes the building, not only the leak. Overlays, planning, and the plan’s own rules may constrain that. We flag the constraint. We do not discover it after the deposit, and we do not tell a committee that Colorbond is automatically allowed because it is modern.
A re-roof on a block is a large number next to an annual fee. That is why the approval path matters, and why a contractor who offers to “split the invoice so it stays under the limit” is offering a paperwork trick rather than a roof. Do not ask us to do that. Fund the job the roof needs, through the process the manager specifies, including a levy or a loan if that is the owners corporation’s tool. We can stage genuine construction stages. We cannot stage a fiction.
Insurance claims sit beside this and are not the same decision. Storm damage to a common roof may be claimable. Ageing bedding may not. The Victorian insurance-claim note is the household version of that split. On a block, the policyholder is usually the owners corporation. The lot owner’s insurer is often the wrong envelope. Send the claim through the manager with the inspection attached.
Planning bands for a single house start around $20,000 and move with size. A block is not a single house. Anyone who quotes you a house band for twelve units from the footpath is guessing. Measure, then meet.
The contract should be with the owners corporation, not with the committee member who made the introduction. Notices of cover, where the price and the building require them, go to that party. Residents need a one-page version of the program: start, noisy days, courtyard rules, who to email if water appears during the strip. The chair should not be the site supervisor. Give us a single contact.
Handover photos go to the manager and into the records. The next committee, who did not see the old roof, will otherwise relitigate a finished job from a Facebook memory. Defect calls come back to the contracting party with those photos. Individual lot owners should not be hiring a second roofer on common property because they disliked a colour.
Most lot owners never stand on the common roof. They will vote from a ceiling photo and a fear of a levy. That is a bad pair of documents. The inspection has to show the far elevation, the box gutter, and a tile in the hand if the tile is finished, so the vote is about a thing. A single total on a slide, with no pictures, produces a no, or a yes to the cheapest unlike quote. Neither is a decision about the roof.
Give the quiet lots the same pack as the wet lot. The owner who is dry this year is paying too, and they are right to ask why their intact ceiling should fund a re-roof. The answer is the photos of the field, not the distress of the neighbour. If the photos only show one flashing, recommend the repair and let the re-roof wait. Credibility at the next AGM is worth more than a large job this month.
Minutes should record the scope that was approved, not “the roof quote”. When the variation arrives, the minutes are what the new committee reads. Vague minutes plus a vague quote are how a project doubles. We will keep our variations photographic. The owners corporation should keep its decision equally specific.
Send suburb, storeys and two roof photos. Roof Revival Melbourne — 0426 516 883 · info@roofrevivalmelbourne.com.au
