A Standard Is a Boundary

Say one owner in a sectional title complex encloses a balcony with glass without asking the trustees, and the trustees let it go because it looks quite neat.

Before long another owner has put up a carport in the visitors' parking, and someone else has painted a front door bright red against the complex's colours. When the trustees finally object, each owner points to the balcony. The rule about changing the look of the building and using the common property has not changed on paper, but in practice the boundary moved on the day the first exception was allowed.

Holding a standard is cheapest at the first, smallest test. A polite letter from the trustees about the balcony, asking for an application and proper approval, costs one awkward conversation. Enforcing the same rule after several owners have copied it can mean formal disputes, possibly a complaint to the Community Schemes Ombud Service, and neighbours who no longer greet each other at the gate. A rule that bends for the first tidy exception has become an opening offer, and the other owners read it exactly that way.