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http://amcis.org.sg/BMSMA-versus-LTSA.php

In our Home page, we said the Land Titles (Strata) Act, Chapter 158, (the LTSA) created more chaos than order for management corporations. The LTSA was imported from Australia in 1967, amended in 1976, and two more times, the last being in 1999, purely to facilitate collective, or en bloc sales. Prior to 1999, collective sales required 100% approval and this made most collective sales impossible. Thus, the housing developers appealed to the authorities for a quicky amendment of Section 84A to alllow the now famous 80% or 90% rule.

Otherwise, the LTSA is simply a misfit in an Asian country with limited land mass and a completely different culture. Take the appointment of a managing agent, for example.

In Australia, managing agents are well-respected professionals and must be trained and be licensed. Not in Singapore where any Tom, Dick and Harry can set up shop and call himself a managing agent. Most of the managing agents here are actually housing agents doubling up as managing agents. A handful were former renovation or building contractors turned MAs during the previous recessions when construction and renovation jobs dried up.

Section 68 of the LTSA provides for the appointment of a managing agent, viz:

".... a management corporation may, by a resolution passed at a general meeting, appoint a managing agent......"

Managing agents take this statement to mean that a managing agent can only be hired at a general meeting and since nothing else was said about removing a managing agent, it was held that to remove or fire a managing agent, a resolution must be passed at another general meeting, whether an annual or an extraordinary general meeting.

The irony is that when a managing agent is unable to perform, it simply served a month's notice, as provided for under its agreement with the MCST, and walk off, without calling for an extra-ordinary general meeting (EOGM) to accept its resignation or pass a resolution to appoint another MA. And interestingly, the new MA claimed it can be appointed to take over without waiting for a general meeting.

But when the Council wants to remove the managing agent, the MA simply refused to tender its resignation. In one mixed development in the Chinatown area, the MA even hired a lawyer to challenge the Council on its removal. The Council then instruct the MA to call for an EOGM, which was initially refused, but relented because the Council instructed the MA to hand over the strata roll so that the Hon Secretary could procced to convene an EOGM.

What happened next was the MA went round the shop units to gather proxies and raised a vote of no confidence on the Council, seeking to re-elect a new Council, with promises to the shop units for special concessions such as allowing the common corridors for the shops to display their goods. At the EOGM, the entire Council was replaced.

Wasn't that chaotic?

Then you have the infamous Peoples' Park's case where the chairman owed more than $700,000 arrears of management and sinking fund contributions for more than two years (because he owned about 30 units), and was therefore disqualified to vote at a general meeting. What happened? Surely most of our readers can remember that case that hit headlines -- the MA took proxies for the outgoing chairman and re-elected the defaulting chairman back into the chair!

Here is the irony -- the SP disqualified from voting, yet could stand for election and be voted back to continue with his offence of non-payment of levies. Isn't this chaotic?

For the first time in history, the management corporations were finally represented by its national body, the Association of Management Corporations in Singapore, AMCIS, in 2001 and these and many other defects of the LTSA were promptly brought to the attention of the authorities. For more than a year, AMCIS lobbied intensively for a complete overhaul of the LTSA, and finally, the Building and Construction Authority, BCA, agreed and formed the POWER Committee in 2002 to review the LTSA.

The rest is history. The new BMSMA was passed in Parliament in October 2004 and brought into operation on 1 April 2005.

On 2 April 2005, AMCIS promptly conducted a seminar to explain to her members the important differences between the BMSMA and the LTSA. The three speakers at the BMSMA seminar entitled "How to make the Strata Laws work for you", were Mr. Ding Hock Hui, Commissioner of Buildings, BCA, Prof. (Dr.) Toh See Kiat, AMCIS's principal legal advisor, and Mr. Francis Zhan, Founding President (who is currently the CEO of AMCIS) who spear-headed the reform of the LTSA.

The three lectures presented by the respective speakers are being posted under our section "Seminars and Workshops". In the meantime, readers may click the link below to download the powerpoint slides on the lecture "Why the legislative changes" by the Founding President, which explains the numerous differences between the two pieces of legislation.

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