From the Forum: Landlady too nice for her own good
There are times when I think some of our Flatchatters are just too nice for their own good. Take this week’s first correspondent whose tenant has been illegally parking his…
PODCAST: Our year of living dangerously
It’s getting to the end of the year so we thought we’d look back at the last 12 months of apartment living in Australia. Unfortunately, there seem to be a…
Off-the-plan panic at the chocolate factory
Allegtions of “shape-shifting’ have raised their ugly face again, with a tale of off-the-plan owners not getting what they thought they had paid for when they finally moved into their new…
Stage a strata revolt without being revolting
There was a popular saying around at the end of the last century – “don’t get mad, get even”. However, as I often ask people who write to the Flat…
From the Forum: Email address privacy push
The Flat Chat forum has gone nuts this week with what must be close to a record number of new questions, many from first-time Flatchatters. But there’s one long-running dispute…
PODCAST : Email privacy, off-the-plan protection and power grabs
Privacy, consumer protections and how to engineer radical change in your apartment block are the main topics for discussion in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast. A heated discussion in…
How we changed the law on off-the-plan sales
It’s not often in journalism that you can look at a change in state law and say “I had a hand in that.” But the announcement of new protections for…
Say hi to our new best of frenemies
Avid readers of this website may have noticed a new ad appearing on the bottom right of your screens, for LookUpStrata, a “rival” website. This is a result of an…
Make the most of your AGM (and other meetings)
Considering that the AGM is the one time of the year when owners get direct contact with their strata committees, their organisation can sometimes be a little haphazard, to say…
Fiendishly clever ways to curb neighbours from Hell
Nightmare neighbours fall into several categories, but most of them have varying degrees of ignorance, inconsideration, selfishness, bloody-mindedness and lack of awareness. Now, there are innocent parties. The parents of…
Luna reigns for cats and dogs as top pet names revealed
OK, I have never met a cat or dog called Luna, which apparently is the most popular name for females of both species. As for male pets, it seems we…
From the Forum: is your strata manager way too laid back?
There are some committees and strata managers that are just too laid back for their own – and their owners’ – good. How many warning notices do you send out…
PODCAST: We hit 50 … Airbnb, pet bans and nasty neighbours
Amazingly, this is our 50th Flat Chat Wrap which means we have been doing this – the podcast thing – for almost a year. And yet, the same topics come…
It’s Airbn-BS as families are ‘priced out by red tape’
Even in this crazy, mixed-up, high speed, disrupted world in which we live, some things never change. One of them, sadly, is Airbnb’s determination to tug at our heartstrings by…
The claim game – detecting defects is just the beginning
You’ve just bought into a new apartment block and cracks have started to appear, or the roof leaks when it rains, or the fire safety measures wouldn’t stop a tea…
PODCAST: Defamation, fake minutes and holiday packing disasters
This week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast features JimmyT and Sue Williams examining the half-million dollar turnaround in a strata defamation case, a discussion about who’s the boss in a strata…
From the Forum: Facts and fictions in meeting minutes
Imagine you’ve had your AGM, there were a couple of contentious issues, a by-law here and there, a few raised voices, maybe, but eventually it was all resolved and everyone…
Opal chair reveals his year of dealing with disaster
It’s the kind of bad dream that has strata chairs waking up in a cold sweat; being thrust into the heart of a very public building disaster, with residents thrown…