How to handle the holiday let threat to your homes
Next to airlines and restaurants, one of the businesses hit hardest by Covid-19 restrictions has been Airbnb and its imitators. The online holiday letting agency has apparently suffered an 85…
by-laws
Podcast 71 – Redesigning flats for work and a legal view of solo meetings
Sometimes the way we want to live influences architecture, sometimes architecture influences the way we live. There are still older blocks dotted around Sydney’s harbour suburbs where someone who wanted…
D-Day looms for Airbnb apartment ban by-laws
D-Day for apartment blocks in holiday areas of NSW is just around the corner – where D stands for “Dump short-term letting”. On April 10, the new NSW strata regulations…
New rental laws give tenants more rights
New laws for residential tenancies are about to come into force in NSW, with their general thrust being to make like better for renters. Given that more than half the…
From the Forum – timber floor trials and tribulations
We’ve always been staunch advocates of taking rogue flooring installers all the way to the Tribunal when they flout by-laws and common decency just so they can lay down their…
ROUNDUP: What’s the rule on catch-all by-laws?
There’s an interesting twist on the question of by-laws and rules that came in the other day – can the owners corp create enabling by-laws that allow them to create…
‘Fun police’ jibe as $1100 fines threatened over noisy kids
A story about a strata management company threatening residents in an apartment building with $1100 fines if playing children make too much noise is bouncing around the internet. The story made…
From the Forum: Can we ban Social Housing tenants?
Here’s an issue that hasn’t raised its (very) ugly head for a while – what can you do about potentially disruptive social housing tenants who’ve been dumped in private residential…
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…
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…
Flat Chat Wrap #46 – cracking down on by-law breachers and bad builders
JimmyT thinks of changing the name of this week’s episode to Hard Chat (but won’t because he’s scared of Tom Gleason) as he’s going in hard on two very different…
From the Forum: Stray cats and rat runs
Some people like cats, others can’t abide them, but one Flatchatter is being driven nuts by some feral cats and, more to the point, the resident who feeds them. If…
PODCAST: Airbnb curbs, pet ban by-law bounced and free money
We cover a lot of ground in this week’s chat with journalist and author Sue Williams, including two old favourites – Airbnb and pet bans – and a brand new…
More curbs on way for Airbnb hosts as WA plans register and by-laws
Barriers are going up across Australia in an effort to curb the out-of-control spread of illegal holiday lets, with both NSW and now WA considering strata scheme by-law bans, mandatory…
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…
ROUNDUP: Paint or varnish? Another strata cover-up
Every so often I get the feeling that there must be a strand of DNA that makes people both nit-picking and want to live in strata. Take the post from…
Roundup: Strata chair blocks Airbnb by-law vote
Can anyone give us a definitive answer on whether or not it’s OK to pass by-laws banning Airbnb? We ask because this week we received an email from a Flatchatter…