From The Forum: Dog-minding in a one-bedder
We are all for the entrepreneurial spirit, here at Flat Chat … except when it comes to turning your apartment into a business that has a detrimental effect on other…
Changes bring us a baby-step closer to uniform strata laws
Changes to strata laws are on the way or being considered all over Australia and the first cab off that rank will be modifications to NSW conveyancing laws due to…
PODCAST: Defect loans, Airbnb rules and sneaky sex in the spa
It’s a real mixed bag in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast – finance, Airbnb and sneaky sex. Sue Williams and I start our dissection of the week’s strata news…
OCN blasts ‘hands-off’ regulations after Four Corners TV report
Australia’s main apartment owners’ organisation claims unit residents have been left in the lurch by developers and builders thanks to “hands off” government regulations that allowed the construction of sub-standard…
Why low-cost defects loans are not enough
Despite the first rumblings of discontent among some commentators, NSW seems likely to offer strata owners interest-free loans to rectify defects in apartment buildings. And so they should. In fact,…
How Fireys may save us from holiday let hell
The NSW government released their discussion document of the proposed new short-term letting regulations this week and, of course, they make interesting reading. I will be examining the proposal for…
Building blocks – an engineer on what went wrong and how to fix it
There’s an old joke about engineers – an optimist sees a glass half full, a pessimist sees a glass half empty, an engineer sees a glass that’s not designed for…
From the Forum – Ratings sites for blocks, managers and agents
There’s an idea that‘s been floating around for a while now, that we should have a ratings website for good and bad apartment blocks and/or strata managers and rental agents.…
PODCAST: From block parties to hijacked high-rises
It would be fair to say that Flat Chat’s approach to apartment living and strata law over the years has been robustly non-academic. We use often cite anonymous sources, anecdotal…
Is the Vertical Village just another urban myth?
A couple of years ago a friend bought an apartment in a small block near Sydney airport. She based her choice on location, the look of the place and, of…
From the Forum: Record readers prove every dog has its day
We had a record number of visitors to the website last Wednesday – more than 1800, if you must know – an event that always sets me off wondering what…
How Airbnb hastens the end for Queensland’s on-site caretakers
Can two wrongs make a right? First of all, let’s define “wrong”. I reckon the commercial exploitation of residential apartments through online holiday letting is wrong. I also think Queensland’s…
Embedded networks – the latest scam coming to a block near you
If crumbling buildings in Sydney and towering infernos in Melbourne are doing nothing else, they are drawing attention away from a sneaky scam that could cost new strata owners a…
PODCAST: When a look through a window lingers longer than it should
If you live in apartments for long enough, at some point you’re bound to catch a glimpse into other people’s lives. Most of us look away, hoping that the same…
Booked: Academic who discovered 85 percent of our blocks are defective
Over the past few weeks, usually in the context of our crumbling apartment blocks, we have frequently heard that a fairly recent UNSW study found that 85 per cent of…
From the Forum: Strange case of the dog that goes wee-wee in the night
There’s so much going on in strata at the moment that we barely need our usual weekly roundup of Forum questions and answers. But then there’s so much going on…
Why Opal owners are really suing the state government
News that residents of the Opal Towers are planning to sue the State Government over its alleged failure to guarantee the building standards of their crumbling apartment block may be…
LISTEN: TV dramas set in apartment blocks
There’s so much doom and gloom around strata at the moment you feel you’re missing out if your apartment block isn’t on fire, falling down or both. So we’ve decided…