It feels like the dust has settled a little too quickly on the Netsrata Scandal , as exposed by ABC TV. There has been no public statement on it from the state government or their professional body, Strata Community Australia (NSW). But strata managers are hurting, as even the most cursory skim of LinkedIn posts will attest. The good operators know they are being tarred with the same brushes that have seen the SCA-NSW President resign - and it doesn't feel fair or good. You could argue that they...
Apr 18, 2024•29 min•Season 7Ep. 15
Are we building the wrong kind of apartments for families? There’s a very interesting report in the Sydney Morning Herald about a survey that suggests that the cookie-cutter apartment designs we see all around us may be fine for singles and couples but are all the wrong shapes and sizes for families with growing kids. How can this be? For a start, a two-bed units – three-bedders are well outside the price range for most young families – are configured with a main bedroom, maybe with an ensuite (...
Apr 11, 2024•25 min•Season 7Ep. 14
It's interesting listening to the podcom Hyperbole Towers - the podcast comedy we recorded almost four years ago - to hear how much has changed. There's a reference in there to pets not being allowed - that's gone. And the whole episode centres around a by-law permitting owners to meet online. That's now part of the fabric of strata law. But some of the issues are timeless, not least how strata committees bring together hugely diverse people who under other circumstances might cross the street t...
Apr 04, 2024•23 min•Season 7Ep. 13
As you’d expect, a lot of this week’s podcast is taken up with the resignation of the SCA-NSW President and Netstrata boss Stephen Brell, as well as the ABC News story and its follow-up that exposed his company’s business practices.. We’re taking the stance that Netstrata is not the only strata management company engaging in dubious (though not illegal) practices and allegedly concealing what were effectively strata insurance commissions is not the only breach of trust between many strata manage...
Mar 26, 2024•27 min•Season 7Ep. 12
The Flat Chat Wrap comes to you from a whole other country – or at least half of it does – with Jimmy in Saigon trying to finish his fourth novel (writing, not reading). While there he has discovered that there are very similar problems with overseas investors as we have here in Australia. Continuing the travel theme, Jimmy and Sue discuss the proposed changes to Airbnb laws intended to correct the “light touch” legislation currently in place. And we can’t mention travel without referring to Mil...
Mar 21, 2024•27 min•Season 7Ep. 11
There are myriad reasons why apartment rents are getting closer to and even, in a couple of areas, have overtaken the rents demanded for houses. Is it because the immigration tap has been turned back on for people from countries where they aren't horrified by the prospect of living in apartments/ Is it because more, especially younger Aussies (wherever they originated) are seeing the benefits or apartment living outweighing the drawbacks. Or is it just that landlords have decided its time to sto...
Mar 14, 2024•24 min•Season 7Ep. 10
In this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast we look at a report that building commissioner David Chandler has issued a stop-work order at a Wollongong construction site after structural defects were discovered in a 149-unit apartment block. According to a story in on the ABC news site , Mr Chandler said the prohibition order followed the detection of a number of issues in the Crownview building in the last few years with $37m already spent on remediation but new problems with critical cable tensioning...
Mar 07, 2024•24 min•Season 7Ep. 9
In this week’s pod we look at “placemaking” which seems to be designing communities just to make them nicer places to live. By nicer, of course, we mean places that don’t stress you out in the walk to and from the station every day. More trees and open spaces are a start, but then open spaces are exactly where developers want to put buildings. And trees generally get in the way of that. We look at the NSW government’s plans to bring more high and medium rises to where there are shops (rather tha...
Feb 29, 2024•24 min•Season 7Ep. 8
We’ve lifted a post from the Flat Chat Forum this week to illustrate two issues – one basic common sense, the other highly contentious. The post explains how a strata manager managed to legitimately charge $17,000 for sending out five emails. Obviously, our advice would be to read the small print in your strata management contract with a focus on what the worst-case scenario might be. The other is the issue of whether the strata committee should have every owner’s email address – something way t...
Feb 22, 2024•24 min•Season 7Ep. 7
This week on the podcast we are talking about YOU. At least, we are talking about your pet hates, as defined by our highly unscientific and totally skewed poll on who irritates you most in your strata scheme. The poll is on the Flat Chat home page and you can see the results when you vote. Sneaky way to get clicks? Not really. We simply don’t want to influence your choices. Also we have a look at what’s happening – or not happening – at the Balmain Leagues Club site where plans for a new block h...
Feb 14, 2024•26 min•Season 7Ep. 6
There’s some good news, some bad news and some great news in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap. The good news (for investors) is that apartment prices and rents are going through the roof in Brisbane. The boom is being stimulated by preparations for the 2032 Olympics and an influx of new residents. Of course, what’s good news for investors is generally bad news for tenants and not only are they facing rising rents and shortages of available properties in the Sunshine state, they’d think twice before es...
Feb 08, 2024•25 min•Season 7Ep. 5
This week we take a deep dive into the next swathe of proposed NSW strata reforms which will include attempts to cut through the baloney and BS and make it easier for owners to overturn unfair contracts. What does that mean, exactly. Well, when you realise that the maintenance fee for your stormwater drains actually includes the cost of installing them – which should have been borne by the developer – then that would be unfair. Or when your strata management contract has a clause that says you a...
Feb 01, 2024•32 min•Season 7Ep. 4
When newspaper reports presented the story about the defects in the Lachlan's Line apartment block in Macquarie Park, as if it was another Mascot Towers, Building Commissioner scolded journalists, assuring everyone that there was no need to panic. There would be no evacuations, he said, but admitted his department might need to consider the language it uses when alerting the public to problems in apartment blocks. Meanwhile a fire that gutted a unit in Bondi has alarm bells ringing over eBike ba...
Jan 24, 2024•27 min•Season 7Ep. 3
After three pods in a row about Mascot Towers, we decided you (and we) needed a break so we are heading off to the seaside – figuratively, not literally – to see how property prices are doing on the North and South coasts of NSW. One report has said that prices in some coastal areas have bounced back more than those in the city, while others have said there are bargains to be had outside (but not too far) the city limits. So what’s going on? We know office workers are being encouraged to go back...
Jan 18, 2024•24 min•Season 7Ep. 2
We’re back and this is an absolute blockbuster, which, considering the topic, is an oddly ironic term. Last week Sue had an exclusive interview with NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler about the benighted Mascot Towers – the building that started crumbling about five years ago and whose evacuated former residents have been living in rental accommodations since. Did I say five years? Turns out the towers had defects long before that. So how did David Chandler wrangle a possible (read probabl...
Jan 11, 2024•32 min•Season 7Ep. 1
We have an absolute rock star podcast guest this week, in NSW Building Commission Policy Director Angus Abadee. Angus gave us a good 20 minutes of his valuable time to explain what the recent expansion of the building commission means, as well as the significance of the new laws passed recently. The topics touched on included how they identify and approach developers they think might be cutting corners and building defects into their blocks – with a 90 per cent hit rate in that regard. How they ...
Dec 12, 2023•25 min•Season 6Ep. 48
Don’t know if Building Commissioner David Chandler has a hotline to Santa but with the Building Commission being boosted from 40 to 400 inspectors , you’d have to think his Christmas wishes have come true. Then there’s the government plan to compel developers to include affordable and social housing in their schemes if they want to get approval – no trade-offs or sneaky deals for added floors. And there are the first hints of the proposals to open up land around rail hubs – which would be accide...
Dec 05, 2023•21 min•Season 6Ep. 47
It’s a packed Wrap this week with a lot happening in and around strata. Global credit rating and data analysis agency Equifax – the people who measure how many of David Chandler’s gold stars developers should get – have conducted a survey into how confident apartment buyers are in the properties they plan to purchase. The answer is “not very” … unless they have a few of those highly sought-after gold stars to add some shine to their sales spin. The Mascot Towers saga has taken another twist with...
Nov 29, 2023•25 min•Season 6Ep. 46
In this week’s Flat Chat Wrap we talk about the proposal to introduce architectural pattern books in NSW. Will they mean even more cookie-cutter apartment blocks or will it simply result in the buildings that we need in a hurry not looking like they were designed in a primary school handicrafts project? Then we look at what has happened at an apartment block that was only a few years ago named as the best residential building in the world. Falling planter boxes and rising concern about flammable...
Nov 21, 2023•28 min•Season 6Ep. 45
Some big, big issues have shuffled shamelessly into the glare of the podcast spotlight his week. Firstly we talk about the buying and selling of management rights and how that has become a huge, $8billion dollar business nationally. Should we be worried that this is starting to creep into NSW and Victoria from Queensland, where the legalised rorting of apartment owners through pre-selling the rights to run their buildings all began? What does it mean for owners in new buildings in the other stat...
Nov 15, 2023•24 min•Season 6Ep. 44
The Wrap has gone all-electric this week, starting with Sue resolutely defending her e-scooter in the face of growing fears about fires from Lithium-ion batteries (and J immy’s column from the AFR). So what causes ebike and escooter battery fires? How do you prevent them? What is “thermal runaway”? And what can apartment blocks do to keep its residents safe when there are potentially dangerous batteries being charged up inside units in the block? Also, without the slightest sense of irony, we di...
Nov 07, 2023•31 min•Season 6Ep. 43
In this week’s Flat Chat Wrap we welcome freshly minted Strata Commissioner John Minns (not to be confused with NSW Premier Chris Minns) to tell us about his new role, his challenges and hopes. For the past two years John has been NSW Property Services Commissioner, keeping an eye on real estate agents, strata managers and building managers – and lots of ancillary professions and trades. Now he’s taking strata under his wing in an expanded role – and it’s quite an expansion. In today’s podcast w...
Nov 01, 2023•34 min•Season 6Ep. 42
We’re heading across the border to Victoria this week where the Greens are flexing their balance-of-power muscle by demanding changes to the state housing program, as detailed in this post on the Flat Chat website. We ask what it is that they want, and which demands they are most likely to negotiate away to get other elements of the deal over the line. Will it be their demand for 30 per cent of all schemes to be affordable or social housing? Or will it be the stringent curbs on Airbnb and its il...
Oct 25, 2023•31 min•Season 6Ep. 41
In this week’s podcast we find ourselves victims of the kind of scams we have been warning people about for a couple of years. We are about to go to the first AGM of our new apartment block and have discovered there is a very meaty embedded network rort afoot. Rather than pay for a vital piece of infrastructure, our developers want us to lease it at an exorbitant rate and one which will add up to be double what they say it costs. How can that be? What can we do? You’ll have to listen to the podc...
Oct 17, 2023•25 min•Season 6Ep. 40
There’s good news for those abandoned covid fur-babies and the apartment residents who’d love to offer them new homes. The highly dubious tactics clearly aimed at deterring people from having pets in apartments – workarounds for the ban on blanket pet bans, if you like – will be knocked over in proposed changes to NSW strata law. Application fees, pet bonds and demands for additional insurance cover will be no more. These are among several tweaks to strata law on the way in NSW but you’d better ...
Oct 11, 2023•28 min•Season 6Ep. 39
This week, we open up with a chat about our increasingly popular polls and the surprising results this week revealing what annoys you most about your neighbours. Then we take a look at what NSW Premier Chris Minns really means when he “declares war on Nimbys”. If as this article suggests , he may use his power to let his minions, aka senior civil servants, rule on projects held up by recalcitrant, backsliding local authorities, what does that mean for suburbs that have steadfastly held out again...
Oct 04, 2023•24 min•Season 6Ep. 38
Busy, busy, busy in the Flat Chat bunker this week. We start with a wrap-up of what went on at the Owners Corporation Network (OCN) Strata Matters conference last week including a grab-bag of politicians talking about what’s been done and what still needs to be achieved in strata. Then, prompted by a thought from Sydney MP Alex Greenwich that NSW might consider a tax on short-term holiday lets, like the one announced in Victoria, Jimmy rips into the “idiotic” discussion of the proposed tax on Vi...
Sep 27, 2023•27 min•Season 6Ep. 38
This week we introduce you to the concept of “downvesting” – no, it’s not a singlet fashioned from duck feathers, but a growing trend whereby impending retirees buy a property that they plan to downsize into but rent it out until they are ready to make the life-changing move. And we investigate the challenging concept of de-cluttering and how getting ready to move house could change your mind about moving at all. We take another look at Build-To-Rent and how one superfund, the majority of whose ...
Sep 20, 2023•26 min•Season 6Ep. 37
This week in the podcast, Sue reports back from a two-day seminar about property investment with the news that, yes, more apartments are going to be built in Australia and yes, some people are worried that there simply won’t be enough skilled labour or materials to get it done as quickly as we all want and need. However, there is some innovative thinking, whether it’s about how to deal with Nimbyism – bribe the buggers with tax breaks, says Yellow Brick Road boss Mark Bouris – or allowing “mum a...
Sep 14, 2023•23 min•Season 6Ep. 36
Sue is back from Europe – Huzzah! And that means not just a return of her dulcet tones but an injection of common sense into the proceedings. And those proceedings are a discussion about the “missing middle” – low to medium rise apartment blocks and how some councils have managed to keep them out of their suburbs. We look at the cute and occasionally evil tactics that home buyers resort to, in order to get to the head of the queue to purchase the house of their dreams. We look at how efforts to ...
Sep 06, 2023•27 min•Season 6Ep. 35
