FLAT CHAT WRAP

It’s another bumper podcast this week with some topics revisited, some from the Forum and others that are fresh out of the Flat Chat hot cross bunfight oven.First up, we take a deeper dive into the case of the doctor who was denied the opportunity to charge up his electric car from common property power because … good question!You can read the dubious reasons given for sealing off the car park power socket (because that's what the committee did) HERE.You might think he could have made the effort to get his landlord to jump through all the various hoops required to get a by-law passed.But when you consider that a by-law probably wasn’t needed, and that it was easier to sell the car than do all that, you can sense the frustration rising like the power level on a fast-charge battery.Also we kick around the news that the state government has done a backflip on its plans to require sustainability measures to be built into new strata blocks, and for them to be kept away from flood and fire-prone areas.And we look at an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute which has some praise but quite a lot of criticism about the way various state governments, as well as the Feds, responded to the pandemic in terms of housing.We pose the question that’s been running hot in the Flat Chat forum about whether a tenant who’s been told she can’t use the car park because the driveway is being resurfaced is entitled to a rent rebate.We revisit the question about what happens to your ‘pay-as-you-go’ deposit for an off-the-plan apartment if you suddenly can’t make the payments.And Jimmy talks about how a run-in with a debt collection company made him suspicious of the recently announced push towards digital checks on potential tenants.If you want to know how a misplaced dot in an email address can get you close to being put on a credit blacklist, this is the podcast for you.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00Another packed agenda today, Sue Williams.Sue  00:03Okay, Jimmy Thomson, I'm ready.Jimmy  00:05Well, I hope so! We've got the doctor who wasn't allowed to charge the electric car. We've got the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute report on the response to the pandemic, as far as housing is concerned. We've got something off the forum, about a tenant, who was told that she can't use the carpark for at least a week, because they're resurfacing the driveway, and that has sparked a huge debate on the Flat Chat forum. We've got a couple of updates about Third-i and their pay-as -you-go deposit scheme and an update on the thing we ran last week about tenant checks, by a company called Equifax. That is a lot!Sue  00:50Okay, we better get started then!Jimmy  00:53I am Jimmy Thomson, I wrote the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:57And I'm Sue Williams. I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  01:00And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyOkay Sue, I think we mentioned this a couple of weeks ago; you ran a story in the Sydney Morning Herald (and online this week), and it got picked up by radio. You have received a lot of correspondence; some a little bit unsavoury, I believe.Sue  01:36But others are very supportive and others are very constructive, as well.Jimmy  01:41And it's about a doctor who was not allowed to charge his electric vehicle in his apartment block, for reasons that are beyond him and I have to say, beyond me. So, what's the story?Sue  01:56Right, he's a tenant in his apartment building. He bought an EV and he was charging it up; there was a power point in the garage, so he was powering it up, on that power point. The owners corporation said no, you're not allowed to use that power point, because that's common property. He said well, I'm very happy to pay. It's going to cost about $10 a week in electricity, to charge my car; I'm very happy to pay you $10 a we..

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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.

A couple of weeks ago we received a press release from a company called Equifax who are a data analysis company that specialises in credit checks, among other things.Those “other things” include being asked by the NSW state government to establish its proposed ratings system for apartment developers which is, we probably all agree, a good thing.The main thrust of the press release was that Equifax’s National Tenancy Database (NTD) could do a lot of the tenant checks that rental agents currently do “manually” i.e. calling up your references, employers and previous landlords or agents.But it goes further than that. Their checks would include tenants’ credit ratings, criminal records, company directorships, bankruptcies and even, it seems at first glance, whether or not they have taken their landlords or their owners corporations to a state tribunal with any kind of claim.Since we recorded the podcast, Equifax have assured as that they only mentioned tenants rights and claims as an example of how the burden on rental agents has increased - something they claim would be reduced by using their database.They have no plans to include tenants' assertion of their rights on the National Tenancy Database reports. We have to take them at their word but the information on claims against landlords and owners' corporations is out there, on the record somewhere, so it's an area worth watching In any case, if you’re a property investor, you may think this is a good thing.  But we are pretty uneasy about how data mining could play out for tenants who, after all, make up half the residents of strata schemes in Australia.By the way, we’re still digging and this will be the topic of an upcoming column in the AFR.Elsewhere on the pod, we discuss why developers have been pushing hard to have some of the hard-won and well-thought-out environmentally responsible planning controls scrapped.As is always the way these days, no sooner had we talked about it than the government asked “how high?” when the developers said “jump!”We also look at why apartment purchasers are drifting back to lifestyle developments, rather than low-cost, no-frills blocks.And we discover a point of NSW strata law that seems to mean that if your owners corp loses a case against you at the tribunal, they can’t pay their expenses out of the admin fund but instead have to raise a special levy from all the other owners except you.That’s all in this week’s podcast.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00We've got a stack of stuff to get through today... A new process for assessing tenants, a thing about how your owners corporation can't charge you for what it costs them to take you to NCAT. You've got a couple of stories as well?Sue  00:14Yes, about new proposed planning laws, and how developers are really arching up against those, and also, how apartments with lots of facilities are suddenly back in fashion again.Jimmy  00:36Right. I'm Jimmy Thomson. I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:41And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  00:44And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]Sue  00:59So, what's this new scheme about landlords, trying to check up on tenants?Jimmy  01:03Okay, so this arrives (as so many press releases do these days), as a survey of property managers. It's quite interesting. They say that property managers are being overworked, unnecessarily.Sue  01:17What's a property manager, is that a strata manager or building manager?Jimmy  01:20No, it's an agent, a rental agent.Sue  01:23Oh, I see.Jimmy  01:25So, property rental agents are being overworked, because of the pandemic, partly; because of tenant's loss of income and impacting their ability to make rental payments. A higher volume of tenancy applications, compared to properties available for rent.Sue  01:44Yes,

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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’s podcast discovers a new way of buying property – or at least putting down a deposit.The problem for many prospective home buyers is that, all the time they are saving for the deposit on a new home, prices keep rising so the amount they need to save gets more and so the property is always just out of reach.But we've heard about a new proposal that's been introduced where you can put down a relatively small deposit on a new flat and that add to it every week so that by the time the unit is ready, you’ve got enough in the bank to go and get a mortgage.Now, as frequently happens on the pod, someone in government is clearly hacking into our conversations as we record them, and changing policy to suit.So while we were musing about how hard it would be to raise a 20 per cent deposit over two years, the government was renewing its policy of allowing first-time home buyers to only put down five per cent deposits.All of which makes the new CoPosit plan even more feasible. You can have your smashed avo and eat it, and hear all about it here.Back to the pod we discuss the best and worst strata managers and we take a look at a couple of stories fresh off the Flat Chat Forum, including what to do if one committee member drives everyone away and how to get more people to come along to meetings.That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00A couple of interesting things have come up this week; we have a new way of buying an apartment.Sue  00:07Oh yes?Jimmy  00:08It doesn't involve Bitcoin. It's a new way of getting a deposit together, which sounds quite interesting. We are going to talk about strata managers, good and bad and we're going to dive into the forum again, to see what weird and wonderful stories have come out of the Flat Chat forum, on the Flat Chat website. We've got a lot to talk about. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:38And I'm Sue Williams. I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  00:41And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyNow, be honest Sue, have you ever heard of coposit before?Sue  01:01Never. I can say that with a huge amount of confidence. So, it's a corruption of the word deposit, is it?Jimmy  01:08Co-deposit. It's a portmanteau word, that's got two words in it.Sue  01:14Oh, okay.Jimmy  01:15Like J-Lo.Sue  01:17 Or Scomo.Jimmy  01:18Yes. This is co-deposit.Sue  01:23Coposit.Jimmy  01:23They should have called it coposit, couldn't they?Sue  01:25They did call it coposit.Jimmy  01:26Did they?Sue  01:27Yes.Jimmy  01:27That's a good thing, then. Alright, so what is it? We've got a press release; we've never come across it before. Sounds...Well, on the one hand, it sounds incredibly mundane, because it's all about a project; an apartment project in Newcastle, called Dairy Farmers Towers? Wouldn't you just love to live there?Sue  01:52I could grow fat, just thinking about it, really. Presumably, it's on the former site of a dairy or something?Jimmy  01:59Yes, the big Dairy Farmers bottling plant in West Newcastle. They have come up with a way that they think will get new homebuyers (first-time homebuyers, especially), into the market. As we have constantly said, in this podcast and on the website, and in your stories; the difficulty for people trying to get into the market, is that they save for a deposit and as they're saving for the deposit, the price is going up and up and up and that deposit is getting further and further and further away. So, these people have come up with this idea of coposit, where you put up $10,000 (so you've got to have some money), but then you pay off the rest of the deposit, while the building is being built.Sue  02:49Oh, that's interesting. So, in theory, you only need $10,000 deposit,

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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’ve plundered the Flat Chat Forum for talking points this week, but first we discuss an issue that’s come to Sue from one of her Domain readers.Did you know that if you buy an apartment off the plan and the finished unit varies from the contract design by more than 5%, you can ask for a discount or possibly even rescind the contract?But how about if the plan for the whole scheme has changed considerably? For instance, if the building is much closer to other buildings than you were originally led to believe?What if there isn't as much green space as you were promised, or if the view that you were sold is about to be blocked by another building?It seems that not only do you have no recourse, the developer doesn’t even need to tell you that they have lodged an amended plan with the council.This week we pull that topic apart in the podcast and see what comes wriggling out from under those stones.Getting back to the Forum, we have a look at the whole question of what is and isn’t common property.And we discuss the plight of an owner – or perhaps her neighbours – who’s been issued with a notice to comply because of her late-night chats in her backyard of a townhouse complex.We also get into the area of strange noises from other apartments and wrap up various questions and answers raised about the whole business of fire safety inspections.That's all in this week's Flat Chat Wrap.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00It's forum week, on Flat Chat.Sue  00:02Oh, what's that?Jimmy  00:03I've just invented it. It's where we can talk about things that have come up on the forum.Sue  00:10Oh, yes? Have you had lots of things come up?Jimmy  00:11I get lots and lots of things come up. I get two or three things come up, but then lots of people respond; some of them making more sense than others, it has to be said.Sue  00:13And more sense than you?Jimmy  00:25Often this is the case. We've got a lot of material to get through. I am Jimmy Thomson, I wrote the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:36And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  00:39And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyWell, having announced 'forum week,' our first story isn't about the forum, at all. One of the listeners to this podcast contacted you with a strange story... It's strange, because I'm surprised it hasn't ever come up before.Sue  01:12Yes, I've never encountered anything like this before, either. Basically, this person bought an apartment off-the-plan in the inner west and then subsequently, the developer changed the plans. She made the point that unfortunately, she's bought the place, but she's surprised, because it's changed quite a lot.Jimmy  01:32Now, is this the apartment that's changed?Sue  01:34No, it's the area of the apartment complex. Her apartment was meant to look out onto greenery; a really lovely view. Now, it looks as if (from the amended plans), it's now going to be looking out onto other buildings. The buildings are much closer together than they were originally, in the original plans. She made the point (quite rightly), that it's interesting; when developers do change DA submissions...When they amend them, they obviously have to reapply to council and then the local council will let all the ratepayers within that area know about these these amended changes. Ratepayers are then able to have the opportunity to object, or to not do anything, but the people who have bought into the building, because they're not ratepayers (unless they live nearby anyway), they're not hearing about these changes, because the developer doesn't have to let them know.Jimmy  02:30Wow! Do you think the developer should have to let them know?Sue  02:34Yes, absolutely, because this lady made the point that the only time you're actually going to be told is; you can go on..

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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.

Entitled, arrogant, ignorant and occasionally abusive – those are some of the accusations that have been levelled at the latest band of baddies to emerge in strata: downsizing Baby Boomers.Obviously, this doesn't apply to all Boomers - because we are members of that ageing club too. But, as we discuss in this week’s podcast, making the adjustment from being kings and queens in their own McMansion castles is only half the story.Finding out that they don’t even own the external walls of their home can come as a shock to some (but not all) downsizers, not to mention the rules and regulations they are subject to.And all of this is a bit too much for some (not you, of course!) who are used to people listening to them and doing their bidding without question, and who take their frustrations out on strata managers, building managers, committee members and neighbours.Also in the podcast, a new report asks why so little has been done to remove and replace flammable cladding from our apartment blocks.And we ask how generous Airbnb is really being with their website that allows hosts to offer their holiday lets to people rendered homeless by recent floods.What they’re not doing, despite publicity to the contrary, is offering free housing to flood-affected families. What could and should they be doing? We give our rating. TRANSCRIPT IN FULLDue to dubious quality of the original audio supplied to our transcribers, there may be some discrepancies between the following text and the podcast, which has been re-edited and now sounds as good as ever. A big thanks to our heroic transcribers.Jimmy  00:00Last week, we spoke briefly about the floods in northern New South Wales and the impact that Airbnb, Stayz and the other holiday rentals could have on the homeless emergency up there. That's been picked up by a couple of MPs, so we'll be talking about that today. You've got some updates on the flammable cladding situation and we're going to talk about the looming problem in strata (according to some strata managers), which is Baby Boomers. That's all in this week's podcast. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:47And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  00:50And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyLast week, we mentioned the possibility of people who have Airbnb properties, helping out people who have been rendered homeless by the floods, especially up in northern New South Wales, which is Airbnb central, basically; apart from Sydney City. There's a lot of holiday rentals up there.Sue  01:28And also in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast.Jimmy  01:33What happened after we recorded our podcast last week, is that two MPs, Tamara Smith and Jenny Leong... Tamara Smith is the MP for Ballina and a Greens MP and Jenny Leong is the Greens' spokesperson on housing. They've come out saying that there's a housing crisis already, and there was before the floods up in northern New South Wales (which was greatly exacerbated by holiday rentals). According to an article in The Guardian, there were more than 6260 Airbnbs operating in the area and there was a shortage of about 2300 homes, for long-term rental. Now, we don't know how many Airbnbs were affected by the floods; I'm sure there were some, but I think we can safely say that the situation has not been improved with the floods. Now, Tamara Smith...Sue  02:38And Jenny Leong...Jimmy  02:39They're saying "look, we need to get all these properties that would normally be long -term residential rents, we need to get them back into the residential rental market, just to alleviate a situation which was already bad, but is now horrendously worse."Sue  02:57Because most of these people; their houses have been damaged so substantially, it's not like they can just clear up and move back in, is it?Jimmy  03:04No, I mean,

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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.

One of the problems with preparing a fairly light-hearted podcast like the Flat Chat Wrap is that there are a lot of serious issues around that you just can’t ignore but you don’t want to trivialise.Right now the Eastern states are dealing with the immediate problem of devastating floods or their aftermath.  What does this have to do with apartment living?We hear about the smart thinking, fast-moving residents of one block who successfully prevented their two-storey underground car park becoming a watery grave for their cars.Then there’s the issue of what happens in multi-storey blocks when the power to the lifts is knocked out?And we ask the question, should we even be allowing people to build houses in flood plains and if not, where can they live?  Are apartments the answer?Lightening the tone, we have a chat about the by-laws we loath and those we wish we had.And we even have something nice to say about Airbnb, in the context of that other major story dominating the news, Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00If there's two stories we can't avoid at the moment, it's the floods and...Sue  00:06Shane Warne.Jimmy  00:07The third story is Shane Warne, yes. I was just reading; he used to have a nightclub in his basement.Sue  00:15Yes, I think his parties were quite legendary.Jimmy  00:18Look, he lived life to the full. It's tragic that he's gone, but we're not going to be talking about him anymore, but we are going to be talking about floods; a tiny little story about Ukraine and we're going to be talking about bylaws, and the bylaws you wish you didn't have and you wish you did have. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:44And I'm Sue Williams, I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  00:47And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyIt looks like the whole of the eastern seaboard has been affected by floods in the past week. Absolutely horrendous, Biblical floods. While one is tempted to say "hey, do you believe in climate change now," the fact is that ordinary people are suffering a lot and businesses are being destroyed.Sue  01:27Absolutely and many of them, have only just got over the floods of a few years ago and they're now having to clean up again, from floods now, which must be absolutely heartbreaking.Jimmy  01:36There's a couple of aspects of this that interest me from a strata point of view and one of them is, what happens to strata buildings, when the floods knock out electricity?Sue  01:47And also, in Brisbane (which is obviously, always badly affected by floods); did you hear about one apartment building in New Farm in Brisbane, where the residents all realised that the Brisbane River was about to break it's banks, so they rushed down to the basement and managed to erect these makeshift barriers, to hold the water back, which actually saved the basement of the building, because they had two levels of underground car parking, which would have both been underwater, had they not all rushed to help? They did it within 30 minutes... Isn't that clever?Jimmy  02:23Well, somebody should employ them now, to develop something for all the other buildings that might be affected. You think about some of those buildings there... When the electricity goes, of course, the lifts go. Now, in our building, it would mean people on the 19th floor would either be stuck there, or they'd have to climb those stairs up and down, to get in and out. Is my memory tricking me, but did we once live in a building that had a big diesel electric generator in the basement, to supply electricity for the building and in an emergency?Sue  03:02Yes, that rings a bell with me, as well. It was the backup generator.Jimmy  03:06I don't think that this building has one.Sue  03:08No, I don't think so.Jimmy  03:09

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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.

They say strata is a world of contradictions and never has that been so obvious as this week when one report reveals a shortage of housing, most of which will need to be filled by apartments, yet one of our biggest and most highly regarded apartment complex builders has gone into voluntary administration at a time when apartment prices are rising.Is it because materials have gone up but the availability of skilled workers has gone down, both due to the pandemic? Probably, to some extent. Or is it partly just bad timing?But could it be that the idea of building a 366-unit scheme plus transport hub, plus 10-cinema complex, in Brisbane was too many eggs in an already brimming basket?We have a look at the Probuild collapse and what it could mean for their purchasers and the industry as a whole.Maybe some of those apartments were (and still are) going to be second homes or holiday let investments for Sydneysiders.  Sue looks at people who have the best of both worlds with handy pads in the city and glorious getaways in the country.Apparently selling your big house in the burbs to buy a small flat in the city and a cottage in the country is called “right-sizing”, a term surely coming to sales brochure near you, soon.Also we celebrate our sponsors Lannock being selected to manage the NSW government’s interest-free loans for flammable cladding remediation.And we introduce a free training program for strata schemes to find out all they need to know about electric vehicle (EV) charging.That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.TRANSCRIPT IN FULL Jimmy  00:00They say it never rains, but it pours and it's certainly been pouring...Sue  00:04My gosh, has it ever!Jimmy  00:07And it's true about stories as well, it seems. We've got a whole bunch of stuff to talk about today. What have we got, Sue?Sue  00:14I think at first, we are going to be talking about the shortage of new apartment dwellings; new figures have come out, which are a bit shocking.Jimmy  00:21And then there's the collapse of Probuild and news about loans for flammable cladding,Sue  00:27Yes, remediation work, for flammable cladding.Jimmy  00:30Well, we'd better get on with it. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:36I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  00:39And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyAccording to a report presented to the Property Council conference last week, we have a huge housing shortage, in New South Wales.Sue  01:05Yes, particularly of apartments...Jimmy  01:07That's Sydney, I suppose, especially. They're saying that, because apartment completions have nearly halved, from their 2017-18 peak of 30,000 and free-standing houses have come back (in terms of builds), then that's left a huge gap for housing the numbers of people that we need to house. Michael Koziol has written about this for the Sydney Morning Herald. I know I tend to be a bit cynical, but one minute we're hearing there's going to be a glut of apartments and the next, we're hearing that there aren't enough; what's going on?Sue  01:45Well, I think in the past, there have been gluts of apartments in different areas, where there's been a huge concentration of development (like maybe in Green Square in Sydney, and in Victoria, in the Docklands), but really, we should be getting a lot more apartments, all around transport hubs. That's really still not happening; we are getting a few, but mostly, there's a few houses being built around transport hubs, which provides nothing like the density we actually need, to accommodate a growing population.Jimmy  02:16Do you remember a couple of years ago, there was this fantastic plan to build apartment blocks on top of railway lines?Sue  02:25Yes, and it's happened in a couple of cases, but nowhere near enough.

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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’s podcast is given over to one topic – but it’s a fascinating one: What are we going to do about Australia’s older apartment blocks?Sure, there’s been a lot of attention given to the blocks currently under construction or recently completed, with our special guest this week, NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler shaking up the whole industry by demanding work is up to standard or, effectively, the apartments can’t be sold.He has a few horror stories to tell about buildings that seem to be undertaking major reconstruction but on the ground it's strictly amateur hour stuff.And, in a considered personal response to a question asked at the Owners Corporation Network seminar last November, which is definitely not an official state government position, he is worried about the 50,000 unit blocks over 25 years old in NSW.The problem is that for many, repair and maintenance issues over the years have led to patchworks of surface repairs while the infrastructures of the blocks have deteriorated.The nightmare scenario - admittedly one that's extreme - is the Miami Beach apartment block collapse back in June last year in which 97 people died. There, the condo board (strata committee) was quibbling about the expense of fixing serious structural problemsSo what’s the answer when even collective sales to developers to knock down and rebuild might not be an acceptable solution for home owners?Although quick to confirm this is only his personal view of the situation, David Chandler outlines the extent of the problem and explores one potential solution.  TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00I caught up with Building Commissioner, David Chandler, the other day.Sue  00:05Fantastic!Jimmy  00:06And as usual, he has a lot to say about the state of apartment blocks in New South Wales. But, his focus is changing a little bit to older apartments, so we had a long chat about that and he's got a lot to say, so I think we'd better just get on with things. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I wrote the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:27And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  00:30And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.Anybody who's been reading Flat Chat, or listening to this podcast for the past year or so, will know that David Chandler, the Building Commissioner for New South Wales, has been shaking up the new apartment developers, dropping in on sites and near-completed buildings, and forcing them to fix things, or face the prospect of not getting occupancy certificates. But late last year, at a conference organised by the Owners Corporation Network (OCN), someone asked him what he was planning to do about older buildings. So, I contacted David and asked him the same question, now that he's had a chance to consider it. First of all, he wanted to outline the extent of the problem and I have to warn you, that the audio at the beginning of this recording is a bit rough, because of the circumstances under which we recorded it. But it gets better; a lot better, pretty quickly, so hang in there. Here's David Chandler.David Chandler  01:39It was a great question and it's time to start fleshing out what's the scope of the conversation, because we can now see an increasing number of buildings that are over 25 years of age, and that number is growing and so while we're adding stock, we're also growing the older stuff. While it's okay to say that nearly 40% of strata apartment buildings were completed in the six years prior to the survey conducted by us last year, that still means that 60% were constructed prior to that, and we're starting to now put some numbers on the number of schemes. There's nearly 50,000 over 25 years old. It was those concerns that people at that OCN meeting, were starting to become exercised about.Jimmy  02:23David then went on to say that a lot of the maintenance of older buildings has been carried out w..

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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.

It’s Airbnb (and Stays etc etc) all the way in this week’s podcast (sorry!) as we discuss the implications of Jimmy’s belated discovery that the Sydney-only by-laws banning holiday lets only apply to investor-owned apartments.Yes, resident-owners and even tenants can list their flats on Airbnb and any of the other platforms (preferably those that don’t destroy fond memories with insipid renditions of Beatles songs) with a limit of 180 nights a year.Why would anyone let their own home to holiday guests, ask NSW policymakers?We try to explain that six months is just enough to make it worth retirees putting their stuff in storage while they cruise the oceans of the world. It also represents 52 long weekends a year, plus Christmas and New Year, to people who have somewhere else to stay during prime holiday rental periods.Later we chat about this story where an anti-holiday letting by-law was rescinded because a couple of clauses went just a bit too far.And Sue previews her article for Prestige Domain in the AFR where property finance experts ask the key question all Airbnb hosts should consider – is it really worth it?Finally, we look at the proposal to offer government top-up loans to first-time home owners against the equity in the property and why it has a whiff of pre-election promise from a government that can’t bear the thought of putting money into affordable housing (in case poor people take advantage, one assumes).That’s all in this week’s podcast.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00I just realised, that we are tracking at about 31,000 downloads of this podcast.Sue  00:09Wow! That's amazing!Jimmy  00:10And it's partly because people are finding the new ones, and then going back through the library. We're getting about 80 listeners a day.Sue  00:22Wow, that's fantastic!Jimmy  00:23 About a year ago (just over a year ago), we were getting 80 listeners a week.Sue  00:27Wow, that's fantastic. I think people are much more interested in strata now, and lots of us are living in it, and lots of us are affected by the issues, maybe.Jimmy  00:36And I think more people are listening to podcasts.Sue  00:39Yes, of course.Jimmy  00:42In today's show, we will be talking a lot about Airbnb; I've got two or three very distinct approaches on that (including an Airbnb bylaw that has just been bounced by NCAT), and we're going to be talking about this plan to loan first-time homebuyers money against the equity of their house or apartment, which the New South Wales government is planning to do. A lot to talk about; we'd better crack on. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  01:20And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy  01:23And this is the Flat Chat Wrap. I made a fundamental journalistic error, in the past year or so...Sue  01:44Really?Jimmy  01:44 Which I've only just realised, and the error was to assume something...Sue  01:50Which makes an arse of you and me...Jimmy  01:54No, we're not! An 'ass,' of you and me! The new laws that came in on short-term letting last month (and partly, earlier last year), allowing bylaws to be created in strata schemes... I thought that the two things were you couldn't prevent people from having short-term letting, when they were letting their principal place of residence and I thought that was about sharing. You know, the genuine sharing, not the bullshit. I assumed (quite wrongly), that those two parts of the law; one was to stop Airbnb's in apartments, where you had commercial lets and the other part was to allow people to share their homes, so that they would be there when people came to visit. This confusion was partly caused by the planning regulations, which define hosted and unhosted and this is just New South Wales. I mean, everywhere else,

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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.

There’s another very mixed bag this week but it’s mostly good news in these trying times.Up in Queensland, the tribunal there is chipping away at restrictive pet by-laws in a building called Trafalgar Towers where one resident was forced to carry her blind dog up 12 storeys to their home.The Body Corporate has now been told in no uncertain terms that the by-law is invalid and to get it off their books.As this story details, this is the same building that not only tried to ban other people’s pets when their caretaker had his own dog in the building, but then tried to force owners to transport their pets across common property in cages.Later in the podcast, we also discuss whether you would ever buy an apartment in Queensland, as part of a much broader chat about a report on rentvesting.As described in detail in this story, the co-authors of a forthcoming book called The Female Investor, have set out to show women how they can secure their financial futures through the ownership of property.And as a side issue, they have identified areas where property prices are relatively low but demand for rental accommodation is high.That makes these areas strong candidates for potential rent-vesting, where you rent a home in an area where you want to live, but invest in an area where you can afford to buy, let the property and take advantage of all the taxation and other benefits that follow.Finally, we discuss how to find a good strata manager – and avoid a bad one.  That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy  00:00It's all happening up in Queensland.Sue  00:01Yes?Jimmy  00:03It's kind of like they've woken up, up there, to stuff that's happening in strata and they've started going "hang on; we can't keep doing this stuff." The latest thing is a place called Trafalgar Towers, which has been taken by owners for the second time, I think, in  five years, in issues over pets.Sue  00:24Oh yes, this is the building that wouldn't allow pets to go into the lift, isn't it?Jimmy  00:28Yes, so we'll talk about that in a minute. We're going to talk about rent-vestmint...Sue  00:33Rentvesting.Jimmy  00:35Rentvesting, and that's where you rent a place you want to live in; buy the place that you can afford and rent that out to other people.Sue  00:43That's right.Jimmy  00:44So it's one way of getting into the property market and, we've had a letter asking how do you choose a good strata manager, so we'll be talking about that, too. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  01:00And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain and the Sydney Morning Herald and the AFR.Jimmy  01:05And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyTrafalgar Towers in Maroochydore has been in the news, again. They have a bylaw about pets and the bylaw says that you cannot take your pets in the lift.Sue  01:34How many lifts have they got?Jimmy  01:37I don't know; doesn't matter.Sue  01:39They would have more than one lift; they'll always have two lifts, at least.Jimmy  01:43So, a couple who owned an apartment there (and I think it was on something like the 15th floor); they were told... When they bought the place, they had two dogs, and they were told there are no pets allowed here and about four or five years ago, somebody challenged this, because the caretaker's dog was allowed in the building.Sue  02:07One rule for him and another for everybody else!Jimmy  02:10The whole caretaker thing in Queensland is just a joke anyway. So, they managed to persuade them to allow pets, but they created this pet bylaw that said (back then), things like, the pets had to be carried in a contained cage, at any point that they were on common property, and had to be taken down the fire stairs and brought in and out by the side-entrance..

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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.