Every other owner of a unit in the scheme owns an undivided share in the common property with you – these are your fellow members of the Body Corporate.
If you own a property you have the right to use and enjoy it, but you may never abuse your rights of ownership by exercising them in a way that unreasonably affects the use and enjoyment of your neighbour’s right to use and enjoy his property.
A heightened degree of neighbourly consideration is always needed in a sectional title environment.
If you cannot or simply will not take your neigbour into account in what you do, or don’t do, PLEASE DON’T BUY INTO A SECTIONAL SCHEME!
If you want to play your music at deafening volumes, have raucous parties to celebrate The Cheetah’s victories and The Lion’s defeats (or vice versa), rev your Honda Hawk at 1 o’clock every morning, keep an African Grey that you taught to curse your nosy mother-in-law, practise Beethoven on your baby Grand or exercise your constitutional right to take a brisk morning walk in the nude – then DON’T BUY INTO A SECTIONAL SCHEME!
The Sectional Titles Act does not permit an owner to cause a nuisance or disturbance to other owners.
Sometimes ‘nuisance’ can be subjective: one man’s nuisance is another man’s therapy! I once had a client whose Zen garden and fountain with softly flowing water was driving his neighbour to distraction, and to such an extent that legal action was apparently necessary.
On the other hand, always slamming doors in your flat, letting your kids practice tennis against the walls or play cricket in the passage, and subjecting your neighbours to billowing clouds of daily dagga smoke, are all valid examples of nuisance and disturbance.
Even babies crying or puppies yelping for hours on end can be extremely irritating!
After attempting to approach your noisy neighbour yourself and settling the problem in an amicable manner, only then consider the option of litigation.
There are alternative dispute resolution mechanisms that should be considered before resorting to litigation, such as mediation or arbitration. Whichever way you look at it though, it will end up costing you money.
Ultimately you also have to consider that tomorrow morning (and all the mornings after that), you have to wake up and probably see your neighbour in the car park. It would be far better to be able to say “Good Morning Tshepo, have a good day!”, than to start the day plotting your next diabolical move to ‘get Tshepo back’ for yesterdays’s noise!
