FLAT CHAT WRAP

Sue is back from Europe – Huzzah! And that means not just a return of her dulcet tones but an injection of common sense into the proceedings.  And those proceedings are a discussion about the “missing middle” – low to medium rise apartment blocks and how some councils have managed to keep them out of their suburbs.

We look at the cute and occasionally evil tactics that home buyers resort to, in order to get to the head of the queue to purchase the house of their dreams.

We look at how efforts to curb the rampant spread of Airbnb and other short-term holiday lets have fared in cities that have brought in draconian laws.

And we wonder if game theory might help us to solve the housing crisis (as discussed on the Flat Chat website). 

That’s all right here in the Flat Chat Wrap.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

No sooner had we written about how paying levies is often the first thing to go when apartment owners are facing a cost-of-living crisis, than this story pops up on the ABC.

It’s about a woman that got into so much debt that her owners corp eventually had her declared bankrupt.  

In today’s podcast, Paul Morton of Lannock Finance explains why that didn’t need to happen and what the owners corp could have done – at no cost to the scheme – to give the struggling home owner another way out.

Also we talk about an SMH report about the “missing middle” in apartment building, and how the small apartment block that was once the standard model throughout Australian cities could be the compromise solution when the need for more homes butts up against anti-apartment Nimbys.

And we look at proposed body corporate reforms in Queensland – and what’s missing from their modest proposals for change.

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat wrap.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

Flying (almost) solo this week, Jimmy looks at a Sydney Morning Herald story which reveals the posh areas in Sydney where you can upgrade your address without paying the multi-million dollar costs of buying a trophy house.

Karen Stiles, EO of the Owners Corporation Network (OCN) reveals the line-up for the upcoming Strata Matters conference.

And, as the backlash against his revelations of even more dodgy dealings in Queensland’s iniquitous caretaker manager contract system heats up, Jimmy admits that he is biased – albeit against entities that rip off apartment owners, and the politicians who routinely fail to protect them.

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap. 

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

The podcast has an international flavour this week – and not just because co-host Sue dropped in just before she jetted off to Europe.

Reports from Scotland suggest that build-to-rent apartments, one suggested solution to the housing shortage – and rent caps, one proposed solution to the cost-of-living crisis – don’t sit easily with each other.

There are also reports from New York where Airbnb has sued the city for imposing rules on such trivialities as fire safety, over-crowding and building codes, saying they are an attempt to drive short-term holiday lets out of the city.

You can see their point – it’s like claiming that allowing Airbnb is effectively creating a campaign to drive locals out of their homes. (Thinks) Wait a minute! 

We look at the Queensland government’s response to our question about its stated plans (but lack of action) to do something about the iniquity and inequity of the pre-sale of management rights.

And finally, we look at the best places to buy apartments if you want to make some capital gain. 

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

We’re going interstate and all-ages this week but we start with a council on Sydney’s North Shore that has been served with a repair order for defects in a block in which they were co-developers.

According to this story in the SMH, Lane Cove council is finding out the hard way what happens when you get into bed with a developer who goes bust.

After that we look at serious rumblings from Queensland where the government is trumpeting a plan to see 600,000 new apartments in the south-east corner of the state – doubling the number of units in the state in the next 20 years.

Somewhat ironically, that time span is less than the onerous, presold 25-year caretaker contracts that owners will be saddled with, whether they like them or not.

Queensland’s strata managers want to know what happened to the state government’s plans to change the laws into something less… um… anti-democratic... corrupt(?).

And finally we look at how over-55 downsizers and retirees could save between 20 and 80 per cent on the cost of a home by moving into schemes where doof-doof music and screaming kids are effectively banned.

Sounds like a win-win-win to us, and it’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

It’s very much a mixed bag in this week’s podcast, not least because what’s good news for some in property prices is, inevitably, bad news for others.

But first, we have a chat about embedded networks, what they are and how apartment buyers get tricked into paying for things that should be charged to developers.

And, with mainstream property media finally catching up – we first raised this issue a couple of years ago – we suggest a way apartment buyers can get around these scandalous rorts.

Then Sue brings us up to speed on property prices, including what’s going up and where.  And we examine how realistic it is to want to put a freeze on rents – and have a look at the one are in Australia where rent caps are working.

Then we look at a victory for the benighted residents of the Vicinity building – the one that’s being propped up, literally, while the developer has gone into receivership and the company’s supremo has disappeared somewhere in the Middle East.

And finally, we celebrate the publication of Jimmy’s new novel – and explain why it has been published under a different name. 

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

This week we look at two apartment blocks that it’s pretty safe to say are at the opposite ends of the social spectrum.

The first is a Housing Commission block that has just won the NSW Premier’s architecture award, stimulating serious high-rise envy and which could be an antidote to Nimbyism as well as the new form of property selfishness, ANTE …“And Not There Either”. (We call it ANOTE in the podcast, but, hey, it’s new to us too!)

At the other end of the scale,  there’s the block being built in Brisbane which is six levels of whole-floor apartments that allow you to park your car next to your home.

Seriously.  You drive into the parking bay, the lift takes the car up to your floor and you drive the vehicle into a glass-walled garage that allows you to drool over it from the comfort of the adjoining pad.  

And let’s face it, if you can afford $9million for a flat in Brissie, your car is likely to be pretty drool-worthy. 

We have an animated chat about whether Housing Commission tenants should be allowed to put their subsidised apartments on Airbnb (or similar holiday rental websites).

And we discuss how dubious, non-academic surveys are of little value except to generate clickbait stories to promote the purveyors of “lies, damned lies and statistics”. 

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

This week we look at why so many strata disputes are getting stuck between NSW Fair Trading's mediators and NCAT's tribunal adjudicators - maybe it's because they don't talk to each other.
And maybe it's because some disputes are between right and wrong and compulsory mediation can be a big fat waste of time.  
As if that weren't bad enough, NCAT doesn't even communicate internally.  Why else would a strata manager sacked from not one but two large buildings be given total control - with no owner input allowed - of another scheme?
We look at the places where rent is more than mortgage repayments and we look at moves to get gas cookers out of apartments.
They're coming for your stoves! Well, no, they're not - unless you believe the rabble-rousers and dog-whistlers at Fox News.
That's all in this week's Flat Chat Wrap.

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

There’s only one story in strata this week – Toplace, the developer of the benighted Vicinity building, went into receivership, leaving owners with an estimated bill of between $50m and $100m to rescue the sagging high-rise.

Sue and to a lesser extent the Flat Chat website has been following this saga from day one. And it has a lot of moving parts, reading more like crime story than a property yarn.

There are disgraced politicians, anonymous death threats, absconding directors, fist fights at strata meetings, conspiracy theories (and genuine conspiracies), misinformed overseas and absent investors and heartbroken resident families.

And there, right in the midst of it all, NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler holds the line, refusing to be seduced, deterred or intimidated in his relentless pursuit of quality building practices in the apartment industry. 

This week’s Flat Chat Wrap lifts the lid on all that and, sounding more like a true crime podcast than a chat about apartments, follows the timeline from high-rise dream to low-rent disaster.  

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

Whether you love or loathe Airbnb, you have to admit its founder, Brian Chesky, is a pretty smart guy.  Anyone who can parlay an idea to rent an airbed in a spare room into an $80 billion industry has to have more than good luck going for him.

So when he starts promoting a shift back to people welcoming travellers into spare rooms in their homes – rather than letting whole homes to complete strangers – you have to assume there’s something afoot.

There’s a “perfect storm” brewing in the holiday and residential rental market and it’s all pointing towards simple economics forcing Airbnb to embrace the genuine sharing model it first launched all those years ago.

Could market forces do what cities and states around the world have failed to achieve – get tourists into spare rooms and renters into empty flats?

This week the Flat Chat Wrap lays out the elements that could, at long last, turn back the holiday letting tide.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.