As we have said many times before, managing any business or body corporate takes a wide range of skills and knowledge.
Even after over 45 years of managing large and small sectional title schemes, I still learn something new every day.
How then do trustees accumulate skills to allow them to guide the sectional title scheme that they are voted to be trustees for?
Quite honestly, very few indeed have the knowledge and skills required.
I will ask a simple question: how many trustees have ever taken the time and trouble to read the Sectional Titles Act and the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act, also known as the STMA, and how many of them have understood them?
Quite honestly, I personally have found the new Act to be badly written, confusing, complicated and contradictory.
Not an easy piece of legislation to understand at all.
I would suggest that many trustees would find it a laborious piece of legislation, not at all easy to understand.
Few trustees understand the reserve requirements, whereby the body corporate must save towards long-term reserves for every item that needs to be attended to or replaced over a period longer than a year or that these reserves need to be accounted for each year and kept up to date.
Also, not many trustees understand the purpose of the three yearly revaluation of the property to ensure that the replacement value of the insurance policy is kept up to date and reasonable.
No, the STMA and Sectional Titles Act even without the Value Added Tax, Financial Intelligence Centre Act, Community Schemes Ombud Service and the Protection of Personal Information Acts are difficult to understand and I wonder how many trustees are able to understand and intermit any of these Acts if they have ever read them.
• Mike Spencer is the founder and owner of Platinum Global. He is also a professional associated property valuer and consultant with work across the country as well as Eastern Europe and Australia.