FLAT CHAT WRAP

Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams•www.flatchat.com.au

All about living in apartments (condos), from dealing with your committee to getting on with neighbours and – a dose of healthy skepticism about dubious developers. Please subscribe by clicking on one of the icons below, to take you to your favourite podcaster.

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Episodes

It’s Byron Airbn-Bay as holiday town “gutted” by online lets

A newspaper interview by our good mate Mark Dapin reveals that online holiday letting is "gutting" Byron Bay.Meanwhile the State government snuggles up to Airbnb with a plan to give every pensioner $100 the first time they let a room to a visitor on the global internet platform.This prompted a call from ABC radio and Josh Szeps (filling in for James Valentine). Let me know when they start giving $100 to every neighbour whose sleep is disturbed by Airbnb party animals next door. Until then, here'...

Apr 16, 2018•21 min

Floating floors and renos

Who's responsible when a neighbour floods your timber floor - insurers can't agree. And then there's the vexed question of compensation for tenants during major renovations ... and more on the latest Flat Chat spot on James Valentine's Afternoons on ABC radio. ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au. Register...

Apr 12, 2018•18 min

Madecomfy spruiks Airbnb profits on ABC radio

Property investors - especially in strata buildings – should switch to holiday rentals instead of long-term tenancies if they want to maximise their profits, says the founder of a company that manages Airbnb-style properties on behalf of landlords.According to MadeComfy co-founder Sabrina Bethunin, a report her company commissioned shows says that short term holiday letting rates are now on a par with hotel room rates.In case you haven’t heard of them before, Madecomfy provides a complete manage...

Mar 06, 2018•4 min

Talking Kings Cross on ABC radio Breakfast

With the first section of my crime novel Perfect Criminals set in Kings Cross, Wendy Harmer and Robbie Buck asked me if the Cross was changing and if it was for the better or worse ... with at least one Potts Pointer pitching in on the phone. ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and answer...

Feb 17, 2018•23 min

New novel … and the old garden land-grab trick

____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website . Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai. Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites....

Feb 08, 2018•19 min

Jon Faine skewers Airbnb as ‘parasites and predators’

Finally, the mainstream media is not buying the Airbnb BS. Have a listen to the the $30 billion global letting agency's talking head Brent Thomas squirm as ABC Melbourne's Jon Faine nails them on their failure to pay tax in Australia."If I was the Premier, I would refuse to meet you," has to be the quote of the year.LISTEN TO IT HEREMeanwhile, in the Flat Chat column currently running online in the AFR I refer to having "previous convictions". If you want to read the whole charge sheet, laying o...

Nov 30, 2017•9 min

Off to Vietnam … with a confession

Does Jimmy really hate Airbnb. No, he says - in fact, he has a confession to make about his trip to Vietnam.And you can read about plans for his next trip next year, right HERE ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website . Rec...

Oct 30, 2017•22 min

Should my strata committee speak for me?

We chat about the heated exchanges on the Flat Chat Forum regarding whether or not your committee should discuss anything except what's going on in the building - and we find another listener whose neighbour has dug a cellar under her unit. Honest! ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and ...

Sep 14, 2017•25 min

James Valentine – Airbnb discussion document

The government releases its discussion document on short-term holiday letting. JimmyT and James V discuss ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website . Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai. Fin...

Jul 31, 2017•24 min

Inflammable cladding

Jimmy, James and callers discuss inflammable cladding - who pays and why it's scarier than you thought. ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website . Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai. Find ...

Jun 22, 2017•25 min

Holiday letting

The government seems to have backtracked on short-term letting - Jimmy tells James Valentine why he's the only person who spotted the shift in attitudes. ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website . Recorded by Jimmy Thomson ...

May 22, 2017•25 min

Roundup: Radio chat finds flaw in holiday let logic

If you are as tired of reading about Airbnb as I am of writing about them you won’t get past the end of this sentence.However, this week I was on the James Valentine show on ABC radio doing my usual Q&A on apartment living and we needed to talk about the recent Government decision NOT to give the Coure report on holiday letting its unqualified support.Predictably, we had no sooner finished taking a call – from a listener whose tenants had illegally sub-let their apartment on Airbnb with disa...

May 09, 2017•25 min

Last word on new short-term letting laws

Actually, that heading is a bit misleading, if not wildly hopeful. The NSW government is due any day to table its response to the Coure inquiry into holiday letting, the most prominent manifestation of which is Airbnb.This morning Radio National ran a track about the proposed laws in which yours truly was quoted extensively. Click on that link to listen.But of course this will not be the last word on the issue. Far from it. Parliament will have to discuss it and MPS will vote on it and, if recen...

Apr 18, 2017•6 min

Roundup: Monstered by tradies with trucks

I was in at the ABC doing my strata spot with James Valentine the other day and the question of monster trucks and the increasing squeeze in apartment block car parks came up.We wrote about that here a few weeks ago but it makes you think that Australia’s love affair with large 4WDs and the fact that half of us will be living in apartments in the next 10 years will reach some sort of crisis point soon.A friend of mine lives in a town house complex where two tradies use their garages as workshops...

Mar 27, 2017•26 min

StrataKops and Airbnb

You’re always hesitant in this game to claim that you have a regular slot, anywhere, doing anything. Or you should be - it's usually a guaranteed precursor to getting the hook.But I guess after almost 10 years of guesting on James Valentine’s Afternoons on ABC radio, I can say that, yes, I do get an occasional 25 minutes of radio fame.So, for those of you who miss it, I am now posting podcasts or, as those of us who can remember when radios had valves call them, "recordings" of these and other r...

Mar 12, 2017•25 min

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