Q&A: Our caretaker restricts our short term guests’ access to common facilities…
Question: How can we stop our body corporate’s caretaker/letting agent from wrongly restricting our short term guests’ use of common property?
We short-term let our lot through a rental provider who is not our onsite caretaker/letting agent.
The caretaker/letting agents have repeatedly confronted our guests, saying they cannot use the swimming pool, the pontoon to tie up a boat or jet ski, and cannot park a jet ski in our lot’s car park. Our guests have provided written incident reports, stating they felt uncomfortable and that the caretaker imposed incorrect restrictions on them.
How can we end this behaviour so our guests don’t feel unwelcome or misled? It is also unclear whether this person is acting as a lot owner, caretaker, or letting agent when speaking to our guests. Guidance on the appropriate path forward for each of these roles would be helpful.
Answer: Your next steps will come down to what you can prove, and what the ‘angles’ are that the onsite manager is using.
Some onsite managers have gotten into fairly big trouble for these sorts of hijinks. There are many potential ways to approach the issue. As a general rule, I like to see the evidence first, whether that’s photos of signs on the pool gate (‘Guests of Onsite Management Only’), mobile phone recordings of non-letting pool guests being told off, or even statutory declarations from angry tenants (and I’ve seen all of these things in my time). In my view, it’s always best to get the evidence first.
That’s including so that once you know you actually have a problem, you can assess the scope and severity of it. One swallow does not make a summer, and one ‘bad day’ of the onsite manager is rarely actionable. Once you have the evidence, you’ll also, crucially, understand the onsite manager’s ‘angles’. That is, what particular issues or restrictions are they pushing to try to annoy your tenants? No doubt, this is in the hope that the tenants won’t come back, which is stupid, because that will hardly make you want to put your unit into the onsite manager’s letting pool!
You have mentioned potential angles, such as the use of the pool, the pontoon and the car parks. If that is their angles of attack, then you can take legal advice about both what (you can then prove) the onsite manager is saying and/ or doing, what the real position is, and, if there is a difference between the two, what you can do about it.
We don’t give ‘advice’ here, but we do discuss similar situations and what other people have done in them, or what principles may apply. When I have seen and been able to prove behaviour such as this in the past, I have seen the affected lot owners take various approaches to solving the problem. This has ranged from indirectly (through the body corporate committee and then the body corporate) on the one end, all the way through to directly, on the other end, by squaring up to the onsite manager, giving them a chance to mend their ways, in default of which the lot owners then made complaints to the Office of Fair Trading (against the onsite manager in their capacity as a letting agent).
What you do in your instance will come down to what you can prove, and what the ‘angles’ are that the onsite manager is using, and where that leads you, in terms of the best ‘bang for buck’, to address the issue/s. The best person to help you make that assessment is a good, experienced strata lawyer with a balanced point of view. You don’t want an anti-management rights lawyer, just as much as you don’t want a pro management rights lawyer.
This article by Queensland Partner Michael Kleinschmidt first appeared in March 2026 edition of The QLD Strata Magazine from LookUpStrata Pty Ltd.
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© Bugden Allen Group Legal Pty Ltd. This is general information only and not legal advice. You should not rely on this information without seeking legal advice tailored to your specific circumstances.
