Questions on collective sale laws

Source : Straits Times – 25 Aug 2009

I REFER to last Friday’s letter by the Ministry of Law, ‘Rights of all owners adequately protected’.

I am particularly troubled by the statement: ‘We have taken steps under the Land Titles (Strata) Act to ensure the rights of all owners are adequately protected and provide recourse for those who feel aggrieved for any reason.’ For any reason? According to current laws, the Strata Titles Board will consider only financial objections. Non-financial objections are deemed irrelevant. So anyone objecting to a collective property sale for non-financial reasons has no legal recourse.

Also, an objector to a collective sale may be ordered by the Strata Titles Board to pay the legal costs of the majority consenting owners if his objection fails. For an individual, the prospect of having to pay legal costs is intimidating and makes any application to the Strata Titles Board to object to a sale a non-starter.

I also refer to the aim of land use optimisation, said to be the policy consideration behind the collective sale laws. What specifically is meant by ‘optimisation’ and how is it evaluated? Is it linked to national good, which is more heartfelt and intangible? Or is it to be measured in terms of economic or financial benefits only, and if so, whose?

Are collective sale laws retained because the benefits outweigh or justify the social costs and detrimental effects of the sales? These are – among others – destruction of social communities caused by pitting neighbour against neighbour, demolition of good buildings for commercial profit and emotional distress of losing one’s home.

Finally, I am curious why only strata title owners bear the burden of this presumably national-interest public policy. If land use optimisation is the aim, there should be a nationally applied policy by which no property owner (not even owners of good class bungalows) is exempt from having his property compulsorily acquired if he is not optimising the use of the land he owns.

Jeannette Chong Aruldoss (Ms)