What’s more important – saving the planet or looking neat and tidy?  It sounds like a no-brainer but Flatchat was at a forum organised by Willoughby council a couple of weeks ago where that issue was hotly debated.  Willoughby’s Director of Sustainability, Dr Hayden Washington, was speaking  about the many ways apartment blocks can do [...]

Common property is a simple enough idea – every part of a strata building that isn’t specifically owned by one person is collectively owned by everyone.  But there’s always someone who thinks if they own a share of common property, they can treat it as if they owned it all.  QUESTION: One owner in our [...]

 Usually we get owners writing to this column but tenants suffer just as much from strata maddies, if not more.  QUESTION: We have been tenants in a block of about 60 apartments for the past seven years and we love it here – or we did until a new caretaker-manager was hired.  Now I’ve been [...]

We are nothing if not adventurous at Flatchat Towers and a couple of weeks ago we dared to suggest that barbecues and balconies may not be a good mix. As we expected, this prompted a sensible and reasonable discussion of the subject. “What a f***ng joke…no bbqs in aus!!!!!” said the multi exclamating DM.  No, mate, [...]

Parking mad  As more people own more cars and councils restrict the number of vehicle spaces in new buildings, parking is a constant source of irritation.  But who takes priority, even in older blocks – residents with more cars than spaces to park them, or visitors to their building?  QUESTION:  We are a 1970s block of [...]

Our recent article on developers demanding proxy votes in strata unit sales contracts has stirred things up, with one reader writing to tell us they had backed out of a purchase on principle.  You can hardly blame them after the developer insisted on them signing away not only their own rights but also the vote [...]

The phrase “slum of the future” gets bandied around a lot – not least by yours truly – but if you think it’s an exaggeration, take a look at the case of a reader’s mother, a widow on a pension, who bought a brand new unit in Liverpool after her family home got too much [...]