Having braved the wilds of Scotland and the woes of Covid, we are back with a brand new Flat Chat Wrap podcast, with our usual mixture of optimism and, it must be said, the occasional bout of weary skepticism.The optimism stems from the plans for a new high-end apartment block that will bring owners together with key worker in affordable rentals, plus some social housing.And the remarkable thing about this is that the purchasers of apartments costing up to $2.4m actually like the ides of having ...
Jun 28, 2022•25 min
Welcome to the second part of Lawyer In The Hot Seat, in which strata lawyer (and Flat Chat sponsor) David Bannerman invited us on to his webinar.This week, Jimmy asks and David answers your questions about the NSW strata information hub and whether it might deter people from taking office-bearer roles in strata committees.On short-term letting, David suggests that an over-crowding by-law may be the most effective way of dealing with abuses, especially with its much higher fines.We discuss strat...
Jun 06, 2022•30 min
Amid all the discussions on this website about strata law, regulations and by-laws, we spend a lot of time talking about the way things ought to be and the difference with how they really are.David BannermanEvery so often it helps to cut through all the wishful thinking and speculation to get some definitive answers and so we were delighted to be asked by David Bannerman of Bannermans Lawyers to participate in his monthly webinar.In fact, it’s worth pointing out that this was actually his show, ...
May 30, 2022•29 min
The first thing that happens after a new government is elected is that the Prime Minister and the party divvy up the ministries.The next thing after that is that they look at what they have promised during the election campaign and work out how much of it they can or want to implement.In this week’s podcast we ask if the new Labor government’s commitment to co-owning homes with first-time property buyers is going to take the heat out of the property market … or just make it worse.And will the go...
May 23, 2022•28 min
This week on the Flat Chat Wrap, as we approach the election, we are looking again at the various parties housing policies and wonder what they really mean.We recorded this before the announcement that young people will be able dip into their Super to help fund the purchase of a flat or house if the Coalition holds on to power, and the revelation on ABC radio that they couldn’t find a single economist who thought it was a good idea.I mean, do young people have much in the way of super anyway?Ins...
May 17, 2022•30 min
Imagine you are the chair or secretary of a strata scheme. You can cope with fielding a reasonable number of messages via the strata manager or building manager.It’s a mixed bag, some of the messages are simple and straightforward, some are well-intentioned if occasionally ill-informed, and there’s the odd one that’s abusive and ignorant.It’s all part of the cut and thrust of strata living and one way or another it lets you know what people in the building are thinking.Then one day, you start ge...
May 10, 2022•28 min
Sometimes the fur flies at weddings, and things can certainly get catty between landlords and tenants but, as we explore in this week's podcast, a woman has taken things to a whole new level in an effort to get round restrictions on pets.This story about the woman who married her cat started in Sidcup, just outside London, and has gone around the world and back again. But Jimmy did some digging and discovered that on just about every occasion, it has been misreported.It's not the cat-lady's faul...
May 03, 2022•28 min
In this week’s podcast we dive into the exciting world of flat-sharing … something neither of us have done for at least 30 years.How different can it all be in the Third Millennium? Well, for a start, we didn't have the internet, where you can advertise your flat or yourself, including pictures, to see if you may be a better match than just turning up at the door with a deposit.But there’s more than that. There are now all sorts of useful apps to help you function as a group of like-minded resid...
Apr 26, 2022•35 min
This week, we delve into the dark arts employed by real estate agents and property stylists to persuade you that an absolute lemon is, in fact, your dream “forever home.”How come that beautiful tapestry is on the wall of this humble abode? Why are all the lights on and the windows closed?Why are there three real estate agents from the same firm at a viewing of one relatively humble unit? We have some answers that will amaze and appal you.Also in the podcast, we try once again to shed a light on ...
Apr 19, 2022•36 min
It’s another bumper podcast this week with some topics revisited, some from the Forum and others that are fresh out of the Flat Chat hot cross bunfight oven.First up, we take a deeper dive into the case of the doctor who was denied the opportunity to charge up his electric car from common property power because … good question!You can read the dubious reasons given for sealing off the car park power socket (because that's what the committee did) HERE.You might think he could have made the effort...
Apr 12, 2022•34 min
A couple of weeks ago we received a press release from a company called Equifax who are a data analysis company that specialises in credit checks, among other things.Those “other things” include being asked by the NSW state government to establish its proposed ratings system for apartment developers which is, we probably all agree, a good thing.The main thrust of the press release was that Equifax’s National Tenancy Database (NTD) could do a lot of the tenant checks that rental agents currently ...
Apr 05, 2022•35 min
This week’s podcast discovers a new way of buying property – or at least putting down a deposit.The problem for many prospective home buyers is that, all the time they are saving for the deposit on a new home, prices keep rising so the amount they need to save gets more and so the property is always just out of reach.But we've heard about a new proposal that's been introduced where you can put down a relatively small deposit on a new flat and that add to it every week so that by the time the uni...
Mar 29, 2022•32 min
We’ve plundered the Flat Chat Forum for talking points this week, but first we discuss an issue that’s come to Sue from one of her Domain readers.Did you know that if you buy an apartment off the plan and the finished unit varies from the contract design by more than 5%, you can ask for a discount or possibly even rescind the contract?But how about if the plan for the whole scheme has changed considerably? For instance, if the building is much closer to other buildings than you were originally l...
Mar 22, 2022•27 min
Entitled, arrogant, ignorant and occasionally abusive – those are some of the accusations that have been levelled at the latest band of baddies to emerge in strata: downsizing Baby Boomers.Obviously, this doesn't apply to all Boomers - because we are members of that ageing club too. But, as we discuss in this week’s podcast, making the adjustment from being kings and queens in their own McMansion castles is only half the story.Finding out that they don’t even own the external walls of their home...
Mar 15, 2022•36 min
One of the problems with preparing a fairly light-hearted podcast like the Flat Chat Wrap is that there are a lot of serious issues around that you just can’t ignore but you don’t want to trivialise.Right now the Eastern states are dealing with the immediate problem of devastating floods or their aftermath. What does this have to do with apartment living?We hear about the smart thinking, fast-moving residents of one block who successfully prevented their two-storey underground car park becoming ...
Mar 07, 2022•35 min
They say strata is a world of contradictions and never has that been so obvious as this week when one report reveals a shortage of housing, most of which will need to be filled by apartments, yet one of our biggest and most highly regarded apartment complex builders has gone into voluntary administration at a time when apartment prices are rising.Is it because materials have gone up but the availability of skilled workers has gone down, both due to the pandemic? Probably, to some extent. Or is i...
Mar 01, 2022•31 min
This week’s podcast is given over to one topic – but it’s a fascinating one: What are we going to do about Australia’s older apartment blocks?Sure, there’s been a lot of attention given to the blocks currently under construction or recently completed, with our special guest this week, NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler shaking up the whole industry by demanding work is up to standard or, effectively, the apartments can’t be sold.He has a few horror stories to tell about buildings that seem...
Feb 22, 2022•29 min
It’s Airbnb (and Stays etc etc) all the way in this week’s podcast (sorry!) as we discuss the implications of Jimmy’s belated discovery that the Sydney-only by-laws banning holiday lets only apply to investor-owned apartments.Yes, resident-owners and even tenants can list their flats on Airbnb and any of the other platforms (preferably those that don’t destroy fond memories with insipid renditions of Beatles songs) with a limit of 180 nights a year.Why would anyone let their own home to holiday ...
Feb 15, 2022•33 min
There’s another very mixed bag this week but it’s mostly good news in these trying times.Up in Queensland, the tribunal there is chipping away at restrictive pet by-laws in a building called Trafalgar Towers where one resident was forced to carry her blind dog up 12 storeys to their home.The Body Corporate has now been told in no uncertain terms that the by-law is invalid and to get it off their books.As this story details, this is the same building that not only tried to ban other people’s pets...
Feb 08, 2022•36 min
This week the pod is lighting up (but not inhaling) the smoking ban placed on a Queensland apartment resident who’s been ordered to take her habit inside and off her balcony because her smoke is a hazard to the neighbour upstairs.There are so many aspects to this, not least that her block has a designated smoking zone and her committee has been rapped gently but firmly on its knuckles for declining to enforce its own by-laws.Why does this mean for Queensland smokers? Are they retreating to the t...
Feb 01, 2022•28 min
This week the pod takes a deep dive into the murky waters of fire safety, how we ignore it at our considerable peril and how this essential part of our strata lives is ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous contractors.This discussion was prompted partly by the terrible fire in New York a couple of weeks ago when, it seems, doors left open during a relatively small fire allowed smoke to spread through the building, killing 17 people by asphyxiation.And we were also drawn to a Forum discussion abo...
Jan 25, 2022•30 min
There’s an air of cynicism – or maybe it’s just weary experience – around this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast, but we only have ourselves to blame.Last week we were touting the potential for a mandatory strata management contract – like the residential tenancies lease in that the legal conditions would be fixed, but the financial terms would be variable – and realised we were joining a chorus of support for the idea, notably promoted by the Owners Corporation Network.What we and they didn’t reali...
Jan 18, 2022•25 min
Like a wayward teenager who stayed out too late, Airbnb is creeping back into our lives, hoping to avoid our parental wrath, but finding a less than loving reception waiting for it.As we discuss in this week’s podcast, the holiday/retirement town of Noosa, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, has had enough of badly behaved holiday renters’ shenanigans.In a few weeks the shire council there will bring in a “rapid response” hotline on which neighbours can report disruptive behaviour – that’s the old-f...
Jan 11, 2022•35 min
This week on the pod we ask the question, if Strata doesn’t belong in Fair Trading, then where should it go?As Jimmy explains in this column (which also appeared as an op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald) our brand-new Fair Trading Minister Eleni Petinos has also been given Small Business on which to attach her training wheels.So now strata isn’t just a part of a huge, rambling and largely unconnected and complex ministry, that department itself is parked in a side street off another ministry, wh...
Jan 04, 2022•34 min
Are you stuck at home because state borders aren't as open as they want us to think, or you can't go anywhere until your covid test results come out?Maybe you're self-isolating because someone in your family went to a herd immunity superspreader party. Or you just don't feel like running a gaunlet of unmasked festive huggers.Perhaps you're stuck in a traffic jam on your way to somewhere ... anywhere ... nice.Or you're in queue for a covid test that doesn't seem to be getting any shorter.Here at ...
Dec 28, 2021•23 min
It was Monday morning and we had just finished editing the podcast when we got the word that NSW had a new Fair Trading minister.Meetings are cancelled, lunch is postponed, and schedules are re-drawn for the simple reason that this is, in our world, a big deal.Eleni Potinos may have been a media footnote in the cabinet reshuffle instigated by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet this week, but for us she is big news.There are four things that jump out, for those of us who have been close observers of s...
Dec 21, 2021•32 min
If there is one person in the strata sphere who’d say Building Commissioner David Chandler is not the Strata Messiah, it would be the commissioner himself.As we discuss on this week‘s podcast, he cringes at every mention of himself as some sort of saviour, constantly deflecting all the abundant praise he gets onto his team.They no doubt deserve all the kudos they can collect, but Jimmy wonders if the BC is, even just subconsciously, trying to avoid a similar fate to another NSW Commish.He means ...
Dec 14, 2021•29 min
With two major chunks of strata legislation landing last week – Victoria’s new laws and NSW’s proposals for a revamp of theirs – we pick the bones out of the plans and read their entrails for signs of what’s in store in the future.As usual, there are a few significant changes plus much tinkering around the edges, in both areas, but it’s what the perceived need for these new laws reveals that’s most interesting.How cosy are the developers and strata managers of Victoria? How many kickbacks and fr...
Dec 07, 2021•32 min
This week a massive review of NSW strata laws landed in Parliament and it’s given us a lot to talk about … perhaps a little too much.As you will see from this story, there are proposals about educating committees, defining what their members do and making it easier to sack individual members.There are suggested rewrites for the rules on pets and assistance animals, so that you don’t force vision-impaired residents to carry their guide dogs across common property.There are many much-needed regula...
Nov 30, 2021•33 min
This week in the Flat Chat Wrap podcast we take a deep dive into the strata managers’ code of ethics.We touched on the topic in the Forum last week and its worth revisiting as the NSW branch of the Strata Community Association is about to officially launch its state government-approved Professional Standards Scheme.The SCA (NSW) Code of Ethics underpins its professional standards and the built-in disciplinary procedures add some heft to its definitions of what is acceptable and unacceptable beha...
Nov 22, 2021•31 min
