Big Building Approved next door what can you do now? Roof Impact
Well if VCAT and Council say it is definately going ahead, what can you do?
1. Move out 2. Build a wall 3. Make the most of the time and start growing. 4. Open a multi-storey car parking complex in your street.
What about your solar kit on the roof? You might have had some discussion about the impact here at VCAT, but now you need to consider if shadowing is going to affect your roof top.
In developers shadow diagrams they only show the shadows at 9am, noon, and 3pm, at the equiniox ( half way between summer and winter,) and also usually stop at the roofs edge.
Now if you have solar hot water, power, or pool, you may need to move these devices to a new location.
It might also be your clothes line, or vegetable patch that needs moving. Hopefully these expenses were discussed at VCAT…
4 Comments
The apartment building illustrated above, currently under construction, with its issues of over development, over shadowing and poor basement design etc, would not be approved today under the new regulations contained in the C96 amendment, which are almost a return to the original guidelines of the DDO8, first published in 2005.
Council’s recent refusal to grant a permit for a similar development at 191 Foote Street, Templestowe, marks the end of a long period of uncertainty. Subtle changes to the wording of the development formula over the years has enabled the over development of smaller sites in Precinct A.
The C 96 amendment now seeks to remove these anomalies;
Excavation, in conjunction with a flat roof design using a 1 metre height allowance can no longer be used to achieve three storeys instead of two on sloping allotments that have an area of less than 1800sqm. Council now agrees that excessive excavation disguises the true height of a building and previous terms such as Can only occur, May only occur, Should only occur, will now be regarded as Must occur.
Ruben
The new people at the helm of the Manningham Planning department have determined that council will no longer allow developers to flout the building regulations of the DDO8. Which means that the majority of high density apartment buildings will be restricted to main roads and lower scale town house development, mainly occurring in courts and side streets. Whilst these measures will result in a substantial downsizing of Manningham’s target population growth, they will help restore community confidence in planning decisions and limit Vcat appeals which have provided a gravy train for consultants and solicitors
Buyers of lower density town houses will have far less problems with their Owners Corporation (previously known as the Body Corporate), because they attract owner occupiers, but those who have purchased a high rise apartment off the plan and will be buying into an Owners Corporation for the first time, will need to be aware of what they are getting into. It is not just the rules they have to be concerned with—-Owners Corporation buildings can be a hotbed of dispute, with parking at the top of the list, especially when an owner takes over a visitor car park. Noisy renters, loud music, garbage bin control, pets etc. are all the stuff of neighbourhood disputes in confined living. Some people find they are not suited to living in a shared environment. Friends of ours sold at a loss after 2 years because they just could not handle it. It is hard to develop a neighbourly spirit with owners who are not there. With a mixture of owner occupiers who want a well maintained building and investor owners, perhaps overseas, whose only goal may be to maximise profit, there will always be a clash of interests. What made it worse for our friends was that their developer, who had appointed a manager for 5 years, had also retained a number of units giving him a majority vote in the Owners Corporation which made it very difficult to have building defects attended to.
Friend of Doncaster
I believe the main reason for council downsizing its apartment strategy is that it is not viable for developers to purchase homes and consolidate land for apartment development..
Especially since the prices of established properties have surged in the last 12 months (19.2% in East Doncaster) while apartment values have gone sideways, in fact, the larger ones are showing resale losses of up to 8%. Which means that below par established properties, once the target for redevelopment, will now fetch higher prices on the open market than what a developer could afford to pay. Council’s two storey town house development plan, in side streets and courts, might be the answer but council are yet to provide details.
Queens Avenue
So they are changing the entire strategy again are they? A sure sign that the whole bloody thing is unravelling. I have just read a report dealing with the strategy which said the plan was not ad hoc, it said;
“We have some sympathy for residents affected by development in their area, but this development is not ad hoc; it is the result of carefully crafted policy. The impact on the individuals does not outweigh the broader net community benefit of Council’s approach”.
I agree that the spectacular increases and the quality of EP’s in Doncaster will limit ghetto like apartments in the side streets and courts.
About three years ago a senior Manningham officer, said to be the author of the strategy, told a group of objectors that if they were not happy with the loss of their privacy, access to sunlight, noise levels, traffic flow/parking and the visual bulk of a high density development in their street, they should sell up and leave the area……easier said than done when the only buyer of their property might be another developer who would only pay a price based on what he could build on the land and not what a property was worth. So if an owner got stuck with high rise next door and wanted to sell and purchase another home of equivalent standard and similar amenities nearby, outside of the rezoned area, it would not be possible without financial difficulty. Besides approximately seventy thousand dollars needed for legal, stamp duty, removal and selling costs, they would also have to cover the shortfall in the price they would receive below the true value of their home, a total cost of $120,000 or more, leaving most owners with no option but to remain where they were.
Nick