Parliament pet petition off to a flying start online
More than 1300 pet lovers have signed up to a petition demanding that blanket bans on pets in strata be revoked, after only two days of it being online on…
Owners win battle over Biowood cladding
Apartment owners battling to have combustible cladding replaced on their buildings have won a landmark legal victory – giving hope to the thousands more facing similar dangers, writes Sue Williams.…
Forum: Cheap insurance leaves owner under water
There an annoying piece of nonsense that repeatedly comes up in strata – and nobody ever seems to learn. What happens is that there’s a fault in common property that…
Podcast: Defect deterrent and travelling wistfully
We cover a lot of ground in this week’s podcast … and by “a lot of ground” we mean pretty much the whole planet. First, we take a look a…
Sneaky decisions made under cover of covid
As the covid-19 pandemic has driven us all back into our homes, the Internet has become a vital tool both in working from home and managing our strata schemes. In…
High price of safety – services rip-off alleged
Legendary movie director Alfred Hitchcock is reputed to have said: “I never said actors were cattle, I said they should be treated like cattle.’ Sometimes you get the feeling that…
Forum: Are these rules for Covid-19 or Airbnb?
Just after we locked off the Forum Roundup last week, we received a post listing a litany of unfair restrictions the poster claimed had been snuck in under cover of…
Podcast: Zoom into your chance to be on the pod
This week we get tangled up in the wiring as we examine the effect of Zoom meetings and electronic voting on the democratic processes of strata committees … and the…
Call for ban on balcony barbies … but not here
The heat has been turned up on balcony barbecues as a cause of fires in apartments … but in a part of the world where you might least expect it.…
Qld strata: Confusing one day, corrupted the next
Even with interstate travel restrictions tightening, rather than easing, we can be pretty sure that travel within Australia will be possible before international destinations come back on line. With that…
Forum: Car cable-eating rats in the too-hard basket
We’re taking a deep dive into the too-hard basket of strata committees this week, starting with one that says there’s nothing they can do about an infestation of rats, partly…
Podcast 84: Missing bricks and strata’s missing links
This week’s podcast is inspired by a question on our Forum asking what to do about two office-bearers who have taken bricks out of common property walls so as to…
What’s stopping your block from being greener?
Living as I do in a building that won an international architectural award for sustainability features in its design – many of which never made it off the drawing board…
Management contracts that are 25-year shackles
Imagine you’ve interviewed for a job and the call comes: “you got the gig … we’re sending over a 25-year contract.” Twenty-five years? That’s half the length of a working…
Testing positive – areas where rents have risen
Coronavirus hasn’t quite killed Airbnb and its ilk but it’s certainly given the Australian short-term rental market a severe headache and a nasty dose of the shivers. Investors running scared…
Forum: Just another 150 bricks (not) in the wall
It’s all too familiar… a couple of people get themselves elected to the committee and soon, instead of enforcing by-laws and strata law, they start making up the rules as…
Podcast 83: Joke dad, garden secrets and pass-the-Corona party
It’s another showbag of conflict, calm and coronavirus craziness on the Flat Chat Wrap podcast this week. First, inspired by a question from our Forum, we discuss what you can…
Falconio facts and fictions – how they got it so wrong
JimmyT revisits the murky world of the TV “investigation” of the Peter Falconio murder … Those of you who’ve been transfixed by the unexplained mysteries and “new evidence” presented by…