FLAT CHAT WRAP

FLAT CHAT WRAP

By Jimmy Thomson & Sue WilliamsSociety & CultureLeisureHome & Garden
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FLAT CHAT WRAP episodes

  • Units boost too late for returning students

    There’s some good news and some possibly calamitous bad news in this week’s podcast.

    Firstly, the number of apartment building approvals was up by more than 50 per cent in December, month on month.

    Then a major league developer has told state governments they need to make much more of an effort on affordable and build-to-rent apartments.

    But all of that is in the future.  Right now, tens of thousands of Chinese university students have been told they need to get back to in-person tuition.

    That means an incoming surge of students, all of whom need to be housed somewhere in a market that’s already collapsing under the strain of massive demand and critically low availability.

    Does this mean we’re heading back to overcrowded apartments and slumlord head tenants renting apartments then cramming them with overseas students? 

    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.

    24 min
  • Waterproofing and Brisbane booms

    The issue we raised last week rumbles on with experienced waterproofers claiming they are being driven out of the industry in NSW while engineers and builders line up to take sides.
    We can see why there was a need to tighten the regulations but if it ends up with competent operators being forced out of the industry, leading to strata schemes not being able to fix their common property or, even worse, going to the "dark side" to get things done, what's really been gained?

    And we take a look at Queensland property prices.  Why have they been soaring when most other states are falling?  Is there room for more growth?  Or has the bubble burst?  

    And, while we're at it, we spell out what we'd be looking for in a Queensland apartment, with one eye on the state's cockamamie management contracts, if we were thinking of investing there. 

    ____________________________________________________


    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.

    29 min
  • Garbage chutes, paparazzi plight and builders' despair

    This week we look at how one of the greatest conveniences in apartment blocks could be not only costing you money but undermining efforts at recycling.

    The humble garbage chute can be a major pain in the wallet if it’s misused, and a threat to recycling if residents chose to drop rather than sort.

    We have advice for a radio superstar who’s having to move out of her home because of paparazzi pests.

    We hear about a builder whose ready to retire because the laws brought in to clear the cowboys out of the industry are making his life impossible – and he’s one of the good guys.

    And we chat about an increasing dilemma in apartment blocks – living with people with mental health issues – and how one couple are trying to prevent their son from being driven out of his home.

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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.

    23 min
  • Rents, roof space and EVs

    We all know there’s a housing shortage and we are seeing signs of overseas workers and students coming back to our cities, so it should be no surprise that rents are going up.

    Yup, that old supply and demand equation never fails.  But the surprise part of all this is how rents on apartments are going up by so much more than on houses.

    We kick that around with some astonishing figure on this week’s Flat Chat Wrap – especially looking at some unexpected areas where unit rents have soared.

    Then we look at the potential for apartment blocks to go up in the world. Got a crumbling block that badly needs fixing? Add a couple of penthouses and sell them to rescue the rest of the building.

    It’s not quite “the sky’s the limit” – the height restrictions in your local council area are.  However, according to an expert in roof space additions, there’s billions of dollars of untapped potential right above our heads.

    Finally, we look once again at electric cars and growing grumbles that being forced to install the infrastructure for car charging will add extra costs to new buildings. 

    How much?  Listen to the podcast or read the transcript.

    ____________________________________________________


    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.

    27 min
  • Podcast: BBQs and secret committee meetings
    A couple of issues popped on to the Flat Chat radar while we were off being festive.One was all about smoking on balconies which, if that wasn’t serious enough, raised the spectre of barbecues being banned from apartment blocks.Is the threat real and would anyone care? Or could we expect to see Sam Kekovich leading a protest march on state parliaments to deter our politicians from making any such unAustralian decisions.While we’re on the subject of threats to democracy (he says, drawing an extremely long bow) why are owners welcome to attend strata committee meetings in some states but not in others?When we say “welcome”, of course we mean tolerated.  But at least that’s better than the situation in Victoria where you have to be invited to see what your elected reps are saying and why they make the decisions they do.If they don’t want you to observe their deliberations, you are stuffed if their agendas and minutes are less than painstakingly accurate.But then what do you do about the angry owner who takes the rule that they can't speak without permission as a provocation rather than a protocol?And finally, did you know that while we are celebrating Australia Day morning (or not, depending on your political inclinations) the Scots will still be celebrating Burns night with their traditional haggis-laden feast, complete with a recitation of the Bard’s ode to Scotland’s national dish (if you don’t count curry and chips).In recognition, with half an eye of an alternative to the BBQ burger burners, we offer you a healthy but tasty option: vegetarian haggis. Not sure if that's unAustralian - maybe you'll need to check out the video below. But, as we say on the podcast, it’s delicious and won’t stink out your or your neighbours’ flats. Enjoy.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq3UpFAwPbATRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00Another Christmas and New Year behind us!Sue  00:02Yes, and a whole new year ahead!Jimmy  00:05 Right.Sue  00:07That's the difference between us, Jimmy. You're kind of like "oh, the year's gone, Christmas is gone... Oh, woe is me." Whereas, I'm thinking "wow, 2023! A whole new year, of new possibilities!"Jimmy  00:18Well, yeah, I wasn't thinking "woe is me;" I'm happy that Christmas has gone.Sue  00:24So the Grinch who tried to ruin Christmas?Jimmy  00:26Right. I think it was 'stole Christmas.' We have a couple of things to catch up on, since we've been silent over the holiday period. There was the couple who managed to (finally) get a ban on their neighbor's smoking on their balcony, because the smoke was coming into their house.Sue  00:48Took them a long time, didn't it?Jimmy  00:50Yes, and then that prompted a comment by the President of the Strata Community Association, that a blanket ban on smoking could lead to a ban on barbecues.Sue  01:02You'd be happy to see that!Jimmy  01:05Well, we'll have a chat about that. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  01:12And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  01:14 And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyBarbecues on balconies... Yes, I know I've got history in this. What do you reckon, Sue?Sue  01:37Well, I know it's your bete noire, isn't it, really? You feel that barbecues have no place on apartment balconies, because the smoke goes into other people's apartments, and so many people just burn off the residue of their last barbecue; that's how they clean it, which can really stink. Look, I have a lot of sympathy with that. But at the same time, a barbecue is part of the Australian way of life. If people look after their barbecues correctly, and they make sure lots of smoke doesn't drift into their neighbours'...Jimmy  02:10But they don't...Sue  02:12Well, yes. But if they looked after them properly,

    ____________________________________________________


    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.

    24 min
  • A funny thing happened on the way to the podcast
    OK, I admit it – we’ve been in holiday mode. Could we have cobbled together a podcast on Sunday morning after New Year’s Eve (or Hogmanay, as we call it in “ma hoose”)? Maybe. Would it have been uplifting, entertaining and enlightening?  Maybe not so much.However, we will be back, renewed and recharged next week when we will have plenty to talk about, starting with the 15-month battle it took for a couple to get the Tribunal (NCAT) just to follow the law on tobacco smoke drift.And we’ll get into the ongoing debate about whether or not owners should be allowed to attend strata committee meetings.It’s a right enshrined in law in NSW (although you have to get permission to speak).  It’s also your right in Queensand (although you have to let the secretary know in advance that you’re planning to attend).But it’s an invitation-only privilege in Victoria.  Why would strata committees want to have their meetings in secret … sorry … private? We’ll pick the bones out of that next week.Meanwhile I notice that, during our break, a lot of readers have been catching up on episodes they may have missed. Just click on the "Our Podcasts" link at the top of the page and it will take you straight there.And, in that spirit, here’s another chance to listen to our podcom Hyperbole Towers, a comedy specially written and performed via Zoom during covid, including a guest appearance by our good friend Todd McKenney.It features a controlling and conniving building manager, a put-upon committee chair, a rebellious strata committee and a mysterious noise emanating from one apartment. What could possibly go wrong?Enjoy and we’ll be back with a full pod of chat next week.

    ____________________________________________________


    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.

    23 min
  • Podcast: Rent bidding ban and too much information
    In this our last Flat Chat Wrap podcast of the year, we kick the tyres of a couple of issues that will have consequences throughout strata. Or will they?And we suggest some holiday viewing aimed solidly at apartment dwellers.Given that half the residents of our strata schemes are renters, recent changes in the law could impact on a lot of people living in and owning apartments and townhouses.The first is the NSW government’s decision to fall into line with Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania and ban rent “auctions”.As of last weekend, real estate agents and landlords will not be allowed to suggest to potential tenants that they offer to increase the requested rent.Will it make any difference to soaring rents? And can tenants still offer to outbid rivals? We take a stab at an answer or two.We also take a look at how much information tenants are expected to give – you will be astonished – just to apply to rent somewhere.With cybersecurity under scrutiny, as exposed in a recent TV report, we wonder is we are giving away too much personal information, and what we can do to limit it without restricting our choices.And finally we talk about three streaming options for your holiday viewing – all with very different strata connections: Only Murders in the Building, The Flat Share on Paramount and High Rise on SBS on Demand.If you don't have the commercial TV services, now would be the time to sign up for their trial periods then binge watch. Don't forget to cancel whn the trial perion is over.And if that’s not enough, you can read the stranger-than-fiction true stories of the “Only Murders…” apartment blocks HERE.Have a great Christmas and we’ll talk to you all again in the New Year.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00Christmas is just around the corner.Sue  00:01Yes!Jimmy  00:02I thought we'd sneak in a quick pod, before we go off for a couple of weeks' holiday.Sue  00:08Okay, great.Jimmy  00:10And part of the reason is that not a lot is happening in strata, or anything else. Everybody's sort of geared-up for the holiday season.Sue  00:19Everything's slowing down, I think.Jimmy  00:21But there's been a couple of things that have come up. New South Wales has introduced no bidding on rental properties and there's a bit of a concern, about the amount of information that tenants have to give out. So that gives us something to chat about. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:44And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for DomainJimmy  00:47And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyThis does not feel like summer in Sydney, does it?Sue  01:06No, the weather's terrible outside. It's really windy and it's been raining, but at least we're almost on holiday.Jimmy  01:13That's true. People might be able to hear the wind outside, depending on how effective this editing software is.Sue  01:21Good luck with that!Jimmy  01:22Yes! The biggest news, well, given that 50% or more of people who live in strata are tenants... Last weekend, the government in New South Wales banned rental bidding. So that's basically where you see an apartment for rent, or a house for rent at a certain figure, and you go along, and the real estate agent says "look, if you agree to another $10 a week, you'll definitely get this." Given that there is such a shortage of rental accommodation around, when people are desperate to find somewhere to live, obviously that exploits the situation. I mean, it's the oldest rule in commerce, isn't it? That when demand outstrips supply, prices go up.Sue  02:14Absolutely. But what happens if people who want to rent a place go in and the rent is $500 and they say to the agent "look, I'm going to offer you $530 a week;" is that outlawed as well?Jimmy  02:28I can't see how it could be. I mean,

    ____________________________________________________


    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.

    26 min
  • Podcast: Living the high life and 50,000 listens
    What a relief! With Sue back in the podcast saddle, and now that we are very much in holiday season, we can lighten the mood a little – especially since we have just registered our 50,000th download.But first we talk about a block that has a limit on home swaps, where overseas owners exchange homes for a couple of weeks at a time.  The restriction may have been legal a couple of years ago but, under NSW Airbnb laws, probably isn’t now.Will the block change its by-law or wait until someone challenges it? It may be a case of “don’t mention the war” at that particular not-very-faulty tower.Then we take a different view of Airbnb from a guest perspective and see how it stacks up against the hotel experience.Sue checks in to the tallest hotel in Europe – and the most expensive she has ever slept in.We both check out the refurbed Rocks YHA with its budget rooms and million-dollar rooftop Opera House views.We compare our hotel experiences with Airbnb stays overseas. And while we’re in the mood, we nominate our favourite hotels in the whole world.  Yes, after two weeks of Jimmy’s rants we’ve turned the Flat Chat fury down to a simmer – it is nearly Christmas after all. But don’t worry, we can maintain the rage into the New Year and well beyond.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00You're back?Sue  00:00Yes! Back to the warmth; away from the snow.Jimmy  00:04Right, it sounds as if it's getting pretty cold in Europe?Sue  00:07It is. Well, it certainly was when I was there and it's got even colder. I thought I was going to die at one point; my organs started shutting down I think, from the cold. I'm just not used to it anymore.Jimmy  00:16I saw the British comedian, Rob Beckett the other week, and he was saying that Australians don't deal with cold very well. He said he was in Melbourne and it got to 19 degrees. He said people were walking around with full-length puffer coats on. He said 19 degrees in London, you decide you'll take the day off and go to the seaside.Sue  00:37That is so true!Jimmy  00:38While you were away, we had our 50,000th download.Sue  00:42Wow, that's a lot of downloads!Jimmy  00:44It is. I mean, okay, that's over two years. I mean, don't get overexcited; it wasn't 50,000 in one week. But in terms of the success of our podcast, we are up there in the top 30 or 40% in the world. Because there are people out there, diligently producing podcasts, that get about 12 people to listen. We're doing better than that. And the number of weekly listeners is going up; you know, it's getting up above 300-350, which is great. As somebody once said, if you hired a local church hall and arranged a meeting every week, you'd be really pleased if 300 people turned up.Sue  01:28Yes, that's fantastic. And so many of our listeners seem to be really enthusiastic about the subject and really connected, which is great too.Jimmy  01:35We'll see what we can do about that, then. So today, we're going to talk (because we're getting into holiday season), we're going to talk about Airbnb and hotels. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  01:51And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  01:54And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyWe were having a chat with a friend the other night, about the rules in her apartment block, because they like to do house-swaps, or in their case, apartment-swaps. So you know, somebody comes and stays in their apartment, and then they go and stay in their house, overseas. Which sounds like a great idea. This building must have a lot of people who've got that kind of arrangement going, because a while ago, they brought in a bylaw, saying you could have a maximum of 3 house swaps a year.Sue  02:41Well, that sounds kind of reasonable, because you wouldn't want every apartment having 12 house swaps b..

    ____________________________________________________


    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.

    29 min
  • Podcast: Victoria’s strata woes fall on deaf ears
    OK, I admit it, I’m becoming obsessed with what is happening – or not happening – in Victoria. And I mean Victoria, Australia, not the capital of British Columbia, as the advertising bot on our podcast provider seems to think.Apologies if last week’s podcast started with a noisy ad for Canadian radio. This is what happens when artificial intelligence turns out to be not as smart as it thinks it is.No, I’m talking about our Victoria where I get a strong sense that strata there is in crisis – and many of the residents don’t even know it while the politicians and the media don't care.If being neglected, taken for granted and exploited is all you’ve ever known, then you think it’s the norm.This also makes me think it’s time our politicians standardised some strata laws.  There is no reason why they should be different from state to state.If the way Queensland handles, say, strata committee elections, works better that how Victoria and NSW do it, then everyone should do it the way they do in the sunshine state.There are so many other ways we could standardise strata laws – if only we weren’t all so damned parochial – and I canvass a few of them in the second part of the podcast.And I want you to tell me what laws you think should be standardised – even if you don’t care which version we use – by writing to [email protected] with “standard laws” in the subject line.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLIt's Sunday morning... Sue is still in Europe; she's in Paris, for the next few days. I've just watched the Socceroos get knocked out of the World Cup by Argentina (which, let's face it, it would have been more of a surprise if that hadn't happened). Argentina is one of the favourites for the competition.We better get on with the show. A couple of things I want to talk about. One of them is the state of play in Victoria; we're seeing reports... It's pretty alarming there. So I want to talk about that.And I want to talk about (while we're looking at other states), what laws could we try to standardise across the states, just to avoid some of the confusion? That's coming up.I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review. And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyNow, before Victorian listeners turn off (because we might be criticising Victoria), and New South Wales listeners turn off (because we're not talking about you)...There's something happening in Victoria that affects all of us.My attention was drawn last week, to a story on ABC Radio, about how the cladding remediation programme in Victoria, has exposed (literally), some serious building defects that have been neglected and means that some buildings are literally rotting from the inside-out.Apart from the issue of cladding (which they're dealing with in their own way); and this is flammable cladding, that everybody wants to have off their buildings.So they're ripping off the panelling there and they're finding that the structure of some buildings, especially older ones, are absolutely rotten from the inside.Now this has been caused; normally by water leaks in the building, which means the buildings' have had defects that have not been fixed.Okay.At the same time, I got a copy of an open letter to the Victorian Premier, their Fair Trading Minister and the Commissioner, from some people in a building, who are saying everything in Victorian strata law is stacked up against the strata owners.For instance, in Victoria, owners don't have the right to attend committee meetings.In New South Wales (certainly) and I believe in Queensland, owners do have the right to attend committee meetings, although they don't necessarily have the right to speak at them (for fairly obvious reasons, because otherwise, chaos would ensue).They can speak if they're invited to. But in Victoria, you have to be invited to attend the meeting. There are other little quirks there,

    ____________________________________________________


    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.

    23 min
  • Podcast: Power grabs and fraudsters – two rants

    This week’s podcast is short but not very sweet (despite it being our 200th). Sue is away in the UK, which allows me to vent about a couple of issues that have been bugging me.They are not particularly new – it’s just I’ve been irked by new examples.The first is based on a post to the Forum which details how a small-scale developer and his family have cynically and meticulously manipulated the votes in their strata scheme.Firstly they inflated their voting power to elect themselves as the committee, then avoided paying levies for the Unit Entitlements that they used to dominate the voting.Then they stacked the votes so that they have a veto over any big decisions the purchasers of their homes may want to make.Is it legal?  Yes, mostly, but they tripped themselves up over one crucial detail.Then we have the issue of phoenixing and, more to the point, what the government isn’t doing about it.In my book of strata nastiness, phoenixing – where a developer walks away from their liabilities over defects, dissolves the company then starts another doing exactly the same thing – is fraud and the perps should be in jail.There’s no point expecting Building Commissioner David Chandler to come to the rescue. These are existing properties, not new builds and in any case, company law is Federal, not state business and ASIC clearly doesn’t care. They’d rather protect the “rights” of businesspeople to screw up and try again than our right to get what we paid for when we buy a home.Meanwhile, apologies for the late arrival of last week’s podcast (and thanks to Chris for the heads-up). Human error meant it was posted late.And getting back to last week’s references to our automatic transcription service getting things wrong, this week it has “pheonixing” as Phoenix Singh – I think I’ll make that my drag name.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00It's Sunday morning and here I am, all alone in our makeshift Flat Chat podcast studio (which is basically my desk, with the door closed). Sue Williams is not here; she's in London, as we mentioned last week. And that's a shame, because this is our 200th episode. Not only that; we are getting perilously close to having had 50,000 listens to the podcast, over the past couple of years, which is a big milestone for us, that's for sure.So this being Sunday, I have to apologise if what follows turns out to be a bit of a sermon. But there's a couple of stories that have caught my attention in the past week, which are all about doing the right thing and the people who do the wrong thing and get away with it. I'm talking about people who take control of their committees of their strata schemes, by pretty dodgy means.And I'm talking about phoenixing developers, who leave ordinary people with huge debts and defects in their buildings. That's a lot to talk about, so we'd better get on with it.I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review, and this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyA couple of stories have come to my attention in the past week, both of which really bothered me. One of them is in the Flat Chat forum and that's about how a family, who are all connected to a developer, have managed to structure things so that they retain control of the building, regardless of the opinions of people who buy in.The other one is a story (I think one with which we have all become familiar over the years), of a developer, who's gone out of business, leaving huge debts for unfixed defects, and has started up another company with a similar name, doing exactly the same thing, and claims that this is not phoenixing. So we're going to have a look at both and see how this can happen, and what can be done about it. So starting with the power-grab; the family power-grab in this story in our forum. Basically, what's happened here is a developer has started building what they call a stage-development.

    ____________________________________________________


    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.

    19 min

About FLAT CHAT WRAP

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All about living in apartments (condos), from dealing with your committee to getting on with neighbours and – a dose of healthy skepticism about dubious developers. Please subscribe by clicking on…

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