It’s a bit of a catch-up in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap and a look to the immediate future, too. We’ll be getting abreast of the news that NSW is planning to tighten regulations on strata managers in the state – a move that was announced a couple of weeks ago when Sue was off air. What will this so-called crackdown mean? Will really bad strata manag…

In this week’s podcast we ask leading strata lawyer David Sachs to run the rule over some of the questions in our Forum. For instance, can the owners corporation charge Airbnb hosts the difference if insurers increase premiums because there are short-term holiday lets in the block? Is it okay to have a paper only AGM with the committee elected by p…

This week on the Flat Chat Wrap we get a glimpse behind the scenes as NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler is a guest at a “town hall” meeting for members of his team. In it David outlines some of the Building Commission’s achievements over the past five years, including the creation of a “defects library” so that certifiers, owners corporation…

The tax office is coming after double-dipping landlords who claim all sorts of things they shouldn't, or just claim for stuff the wrong way. And what about levies? It turns out some are tax deductible and others aren't. But which? By the way, in the podcast we say 86 percent of owners who use tax agents get their returns wrong, in fact the ATO says…

A slightly shorter but more pointed podcast this week as Sue reports on plans to demolish two affordable-rent apartment blocks and replace them with one luxury block with fewer, but presumably high-end apartments. It's another potential blow to the supply of affordable housing in desirable areas. City of Sydney have said “no” so the developers have…

This week we take a swing at polarising polititicians who are hoping to fire up the Nimbys against medium-density housing. They know it's what the state needs, they know it will help resolve the housing crisis, they don't have a viable solution, but hey, if it means they can get a few more votes in marginal constituencies, to Hell with the homeless…

The Podcast takes a musical twist this week when we discuss the ear-bending plight of residents of four apartment blocks in the Sydney suburb of Meadowbank who have been subject to an opera singer practising his scales for 90 minutes every Sunday. How bad can it be? The perp is clearly talented and may even think he’s doing his neighbours a favour …

This week’s podcast is mostly devoted to embedded networks, what they are, why they can be good or bad, and what you can do to make them work for your strata scheme. To that end, we chat to Joseph Arena of Embedded Networks Arena, a company that will analyse your embedded network contracts – e.g. for energy and hot water systems – and tell you how …

The only story in strata in the past week has been the decision by Building Commissioner David Chandler to hang up his hard hat and retire in August. So we thought the time was right to look at what he has achieved, the challenges he's faced - like being encourage by his then Minister to have a sit-down with a very dodgy developer - and the legacy …

This second part of Lawyer In The Hotseat opens with an apology for promising a discussion on ebikes in last week's podcast, forgetting that it's actually in this, the second part (promise). Otherwise our discussion with strata lawyer David Bannerman covers renovation by-laws and the value of by-laws that would stand up if challenged at a Tribunal …

As promised, this is the first part of the recording where JimmyT fires questions at leading strata lawyer David Bannerman. Topics include: Does your strata manager have to give you access to the strata roll (including other owners' email addresses)? And what do you do if they don't. What are the new strata laws all about? What do you do about do-n…

This week’s Flat Chat Wrap covers a lot of ground. including a prison cell in in a studio flat – seriously! – in the same small town in England where our very own Sue Williams cut her journalist teeth. We take a long, hard and highly suspicious look at how real estate pictures are altered to make us think we’re getting something that just isn’t the…

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 …

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, …

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 o…

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 ill…

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 prop…

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 (wher…

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 nu…

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 …

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 w…

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 …

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 ba…

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 …

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 languag…

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 s…

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 acc…

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 …

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…

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” … unl…

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 apart…

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 rortin…

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 Jimmy’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 reside…

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 l…

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 l…

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 a…

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, …

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 se…

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 m…

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 getti…

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 th…

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 occasional…

No sooner had we written about how paying levies is often the first thing to go when apartment owners are facing a cost-of-living crisis, than this story pops up on the ABC. It’s about a woman that got into so much debt that her owners corp eventually had her declared bankrupt. In today’s podcast, Paul Morton of Lannock Finance explains why that di…

Flying (almost) solo this week, Jimmy looks at a Sydney Morning Herald story which reveals the posh areas in Sydney where you can upgrade your address without paying the multi-million dollar costs of buying a trophy house. Karen Stiles, EO of the Owners Corporation Network (OCN) reveals the line-up for the upcoming Strata Matters conference. And, a…

The podcast has an international flavour this week – and not just because co-host Sue dropped in just before she jetted off to Europe. Reports from Scotland suggest that build-to-rent apartments, one suggested solution to the housing shortage – and rent caps, one proposed solution to the cost-of-living crisis – don’t sit easily with each other. The…

We’re going interstate and all-ages this week but we start with a council on Sydney’s North Shore that has been served with a repair order for defects in a block in which they were co-developers. According to this story in the SMH, Lane Cove council is finding out the hard way what happens when you get into bed with a developer who goes bust. After…

It’s very much a mixed bag in this week’s podcast, not least because what’s good news for some in property prices is, inevitably, bad news for others. But first, we have a chat about embedded networks, what they are and how apartment buyers get tricked into paying for things that should be charged to developers. And, with mainstream property media …

This week we look at two apartment blocks that it’s pretty safe to say are at the opposite ends of the social spectrum. The first is a Housing Commission block that has just won the NSW Premier’s architecture award, stimulating serious high-rise envy and which could be an antidote to Nimbyism as well as the new form of property selfishness, ANTE …“…

This week we look at why so many strata disputes are getting stuck between NSW Fair Trading's mediators and NCAT's tribunal adjudicators - maybe it's because they don't talk to each other. And maybe it's because some disputes are between right and wrong and compulsory mediation can be a big fat waste of time. As if that weren't bad enough, NCAT doe…

There’s only one story in strata this week – Toplace, the developer of the benighted Vicinity building, went into receivership, leaving owners with an estimated bill of between $50m and $100m to rescue the sagging high-rise. Sue and to a lesser extent the Flat Chat website has been following this saga from day one. And it has a lot of moving parts,…