Roundup: Opal mining and balcony madness

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Happy New Year!

A great deal of attention for the last week has been focussed on the Opal Tower crisis, for good reason.

But it’s not just the cracks in that building that have been exposed; the whole defects, planning, design and certification system has come under scrutiny.

And the next major concern, assuming the building is declared safe, will be what has happened to property values and rental rates.

Just as an aside, I noted last week in one of the few quotes coming from strata Minister Matt Kean, he said his government would be looking after renters, residents and Airbnb guests.

Good to know where you fit in the food chain.

Oh, and hats off to the Sydney Daily Telegraph who last week printed an incredibly informative and helpful graphic, explaining the problem.

And with chaos on the trains on New Years Day as well, I wonder if the word “Opal” has ever been in in the media as much as it has in the past week.  My mother always used to say Opals were bad luck – maybe she was right.

Now, between Christmas and New Year there hasn’t been a huge amount of activity on the Forum, but you will find Flatchatters’ comments about the Opal crisis, defects and certification HERE and HERE.

And just for a change of pace, we have a question about who is liable in an accident when residents are continuing to use common property balconies that are under repair and have no safety barriers.

Seriously, someone has moved a sofa and TV onto theirs and another resident is planning a party.  That’s HERE.

We’ll be taking advantage of the quieter holiday period to tweak the website so if you see a “closed for maintenance” page, don’t worry.  We’ll never be offline for more than a couple of hours at a time, so you can always check back in later.

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