One of the suggestions that I made in my overly lengthy submission to the strata law consultations was that seriously incompetent strata managers should face serious penalties, including potentially being…
Do you know what your strata-living tribe is? Are you economically engaged, young and jobless or under-employed, battlers, established owners, downsizers or even public housing tenants? Professor Bill Randolph of…
This week, I slipped down the ultimate strata rabbit hole – NSW Fair Trading’s consultation questionnaire in which they invite us to tell them how we think strata laws could…
You may find this hard to believe but there was a local council in Sydney which, until a couple of years ago, would not give planning approval for two-unit strata…
When does a residential lease end? According to the standard lease (in Victoria) it’s on the date when the lease expires, unless a different arrangement is agreed. According to Tenants…
This week’s podcast may be the first of 2021 but 2020 doesn’t get away that easily. Last year will be remembered in global politics as the year of Brexit, Trump,…
We received a plaintive “please explain” on the Flat Chat website recently. A reader wanted to know why their swimming pool and spa remained resolutely closed when the rest of…
Sometimes the dumbest problems in strata are cause by the simplest, most innocent actions … usually allied to people not thinking things through. Take Flatchatter Wangdang whose small block has…
A story in the Sydney Morning Herald last week should have sent an unseasonal chill through the corridors of NSW Fair Trading and the whole of the state Government. In…
OK, stop, relax, breathe. We’re not taking a break these holidays so much as easing our collective foot off the gas We thought that, rather than drag someone out of…
Covid or no covid, it’s been a tempestuous year in strata in Australia. From a win for pet owners in NSW to dubious stats from Tasmania, there’s been plenty to…
Bathroom Chronicles, Part 12 Enough of this whingeing – we love our new bathrooms. Why the complaints? Maybe we were too close to it and saw the sausages being made,…
So, you’re living in a block where the powers that be don’t want to spend any money on anything. Trouble is, it has lovely old iron lace balustrades on which…
There’s an old saying: “if you want to make God laugh, tell him you have a plan.” When this column appeared in the Australian Financial Review last week, it opened…
With Christmas rapidly approaching and Covid-19 closing in on us again, we thought about not doing a full podcast this week. A quick intro and replay of Jimmy’s most recent…
We should never underestimate the power of a lawyer’s letter, especially in a strata dispute. At the very least, it lets the recipients know what the law is and, importantly,…
While some strata schemes struggle to deal with the fact that their “no pets” by-laws have been rendered obsolete by the recent NSW Court of Appeal ruling, others seem to…
It’s very much a tale of two slices of strata in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast. To begin with, you can listen to two over-privileged, entitled professionals (us) whingeing…