FLAT CHAT WRAP

Every so often – about once a month – I get invited on to James Valentine’s Afternoons on ABC 702.Last week the topic was pets in apartments – partly because that was all anyone was talking about.So we had a couple of people ringing up with their pet questions and complaints, all of which has indirectly added to a pet-heavy Flat Chat website this week.And that was exacerbated by my response to a question about whether or not there was a guide to the best dogs for apartments.Listen Here“Oh, yes,” I blithely replied.  “You’ll find it on the website.”I wasn’t sure where but I knew it would be there … except it wasn’t. I don’t know how I managed to convince myself that I’d already done this, but I did and I hadn’t.Which is why I spent my weekend digging through and collating the opinions of half a dozen websites purporting to offer the definitive list of the best dogs for units.If you are interested, you can find that info here.  Otherwise, if you missed the session on Afternoons, sit back and enjoy our chat from last week which we hope was entertaining and informative.Transcript in fullJimmy  00:00Every so often (I won't say regularly, because it's anything but regular), but just about once a month, I get invited onto James Valentine's Afternoons on ABC 702 radio. Last week, James asked me on to talk about pets, because everybody's talking about pets. Nobody's talking about anything else except pets at the moment. I thought that would make a very good podcast. I'm Jimmy Thomson. This is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]James  00:55Hello, Canberra, hello, Sydney, hello, Newcastle. Three of the great cities of this nation, combined together with one radio show. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. For those in Canberra who haven't encountered Jimmy Thomson, let me set the scene for you. Jimmy Thomson (for longer than even he cares to remember and for longer than most people can), has been looking at the strata rules of largely, New South Wales and the ACT. Now, you might think to yourself, ‘wow, he sounds like an interesting fellow,’ and this is the odd thing about Jimmy Thomson… He makes it very interesting. As more and more Australians (in all those cities I'm describing), end up living in apartments and strata and townhouses and the like; more of us have got to get our head across what that means and what some of the issues are. Jimmy runs a website called www.flatchat.com.au  He's also written for the Domain and the Herald for many years on these issues. You can follow up on anything we're talking about today by going to www.flatchat.com.au  and you can look at the debates they've had and the issues that have been there. We found it very, very helpful (and many have, listening to this), to get Jimmy in to talk through changes as they're coming along. Now, we decided to have something of a Flat Chat special today, because Jimmy and I were linked in to a discussion on Twitter, about an assistant dog. Jimmy, g’day!Jimmy  02:27Good afternoon.James  02:31Good afternoon. Nice to have you have you along, as always. Look, I'm so annoyed. I can't believe that our building manager is having another go at removing Buddy from the building; Buddy being a dog. We've got the Assistant dog jacket and approval. This person has now gone to their employer and they've sent a letter, because now the building manager is saying ‘oh, the dog is overweight; the dog is over a weight limit. The dog is too big for the building.’ The building manager hates dogs, and it's making it so difficult to deal with this. This is an Assistance dog. These are these marvelous dogs that will be trained in all sorts of ways to help people with all kinds of disabilities, mental health issues, and all the rest. It is absolutely fantastic thing. If there's one dog you might want in your apartment building, it would be an assistance dog. It'll be really great; it will be well-trained and would abs..

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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.

In this week’s podcast we give the NSW Parliament’s deliberations on it’s new strata pet laws a kick along.As reported here, the Lower House has taken a good six months to deal with a procedural Bill that would have promoted sustainability and tidied up several odd loopholes in strata law.However, it was tagged with an amendment that would have meant pets could only be excluded from apartments if it was detrimental to the animal.Listen HereThe amended Bill, which was approved by the Upper House with its Animal Justice Party alteration, had zero chance of being approved by the Legislative Assembly. Right or wrong, the majority Coalition government was simply not going to approve open slather for pet owners in strata.So Sydney MP Alex Greenwich stepped in and wrangled a compromise that basically says pets could not “unreasonably” be refused domicile in apartment blocks while getting a commitment to a parliamentary report on what “reasonable” actually means.And that’s where we hop in with our ten cents worth on the podcast. Rental as anythingElsewhere in the pod, in light of the tax and planning breaks now on offer from the NSW government, we discuss the rise and rise of build-to-rent apartment blocks – there are 40 “in the pipeline” according to real estate marketing giant CBRE.But will they be snazzy upmarket facilities-filled developments like Mirvac’s Liv Indigo? Or will they be cheap and cheerless, renters-only versions of the cram-em-in, stack-em-high chicken coops beloved of some well-known developers?  Time will tell.Commish kicks buttFinally Sue chats about her recent conversation with Building Commissioner David Chandler.  Six months into his much-hyped crackdown on dodgy developers, is he making a difference, especially with regard to confidence in our high-rise buildings?We dig around for evidence.Zany Zoom callsAnd keeping things upbeat, Jimmy points us to these two videos.The first, is balm to the soul of any strata chair or secretary who’s had to deal with unruly members at an online committee meeting.If you are one of the few people on the planet who hasn't already seen this, it made a global viral video heroine of Council Clerk Jackie Weaver and her ruthless handling of obstreperous members of Handforth Parish Council in England.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB3P_0GAi0IAnd on a lighter note, there’s the lawyer who appeared on a Zoom video as a cute little talking kitten. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcnnI6HD6DUAlmost as amusing in the video from Texas is the warning in the top left corner that recording the meeting was an offence. Well, that really worked.But maybe if we all had to adopt animal alter egos, online strata meetings would be a lot less fractious and a lot more fun.Enjoy the podcast and let us know what you think of the new format on [email protected] In FullJimmy  00:00Big news on the pet front this week in strata.Sue  00:04Yes! it's all happening, isn’t it?Jimmy  00:04We've got ‘build to rent’ to talk about and you've been chatting to Building Commissioner, David Chandler?Sue 00:14Yes, that's right.Jimmy  00:15Is he making a difference; let's find out, later on. I'm Jimmy Thomson. I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:24And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain with the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age.Jimmy  00:29This is the Flat Chat Wrap. Well, let's get straight into it. The New South Wales lower house (which is actually the most important bit of Parliament), last week debated an amendment to their sustainability strata bill.Sue  01:01That was the one where there was an amendment put on by the Animal Justice Party, wasn't it?Jimmy  01:05Yes. This was originally a bill that was all about fixing up loose ends.

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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.

The Flat Chat wrap this week is taken up with three main topics.The first is a petition to parliament to create a blacklist of bad landlords … launched by someone who is a landlord herself.Victoria is about to get one next month and it seems only fair that, if NSW tenants can be put on a blacklist that makes it harder for them to get rentals, then bad landlords should also be named and shamed in the hope they sharpen up their ideas to get good renters.You can find links to the petition here.Listen HereOur second topic is the “skyscratcher” hotel planned for Pitt St,  Sydney.  In the podcast we erroneously reference the architects’ (Durbach Block Jaggers) website as the home of some caustic comments.In fact, we were thinking of the excellent Dezeen online architecture and design magazine (from which we pilfered the illustrations on this page). Check it out if you are at all interested in innovative building design. And by the way, some reader comments on that site say the plan was just a kite-flying attempt to get publicity and that  development application to City of Sydney had been withdrawn after objections from neighbours.That doesn’t seem to be the case if you look at the detailed application documents HERE on the City of Sydney website.If you’re excited by innovative high-rise architecture (even though it’s an hotel) have a look at Dezeen for more detail.And finally we found the pet-friendliest apartment block in Sydney which has its own cat café.  However, we’ve also found another one in Surry Hills called Catmosphere which offers cat yoga (among other things) for feline-deprived locals.It’s bookings only so don’t just turn up or the fur will fly.Transcript in full.Jimmy  00:00Bad landlords and skinny buildings; that's what we're going to be talking about today. That new building in Sydney, they’re describing it as a sky-scratcher, because it's too thin to be called a skyscraper.Sue  00:17Hmm, interesting!Jimmy  00:19I think they're splitting hairs there. They are our main topics of conversation and a move to have a blacklist of bad landlords. I’m Jimmy Thomson; I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue  00:32And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain with the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age.Jimmy  00:37And this is the Flat Chat Wrap. [MUSIC]Sue, you've been talking to somebody about a blacklist for landlords?Sue  00:58Yes. They had a really bad experience renting property, and they're actually also a landlord themselves, so they know what they're talking about. They had a bad experience; lots of things went wrong. Repairs, problems, and the landlord's mother used to visit their home without giving notice and all that kind of thing. They went to Fair Trading, then they went to NCAT and got an order against their landlord. They feel that there are lots of lousy landlords out there, and they deserve to be highlighted so that when you go to rent an apartment or a house, you actually know…Jimmy 01:36What their track record is.Sue 01:39Yeah. Whether they have good tenant references; whether they've had rulings against them in NCAT in the past. Whether they've got a bad reputation or whether they're a great landlord.Jimmy  01:49Well, a blacklist is not going to list people who are great landlords, so that's a kind of separate thing, isn't it?Sue  01:56Sure, okay. I think you’re splitting hairs, now Jimmy!Jimmy  02:00We've got a blacklist for tenants, right?Sue  02:02Yes, that's right, and that's a privately-run blacklist. I think that's quite difficult; it's very hard to get off of once you're on there.Jimmy 02:09Yeah.Sue  02:10There should be an equivalent for bad landlords.Jimmy  02:13So, you get on the tenant’s blacklist by defaulting on your rent; damaging property. First of all,

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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.

Hi, did you miss us?  We took a little break last month but we are back with our new, improved Flat Chat Wrap podcast.We – Sue Williams and JimmyT – are now working on the basis that less is more. We are still going to talk about the apartment living issues of the day, large and small, to keep you informed and amused.But we’re going to put a clock on it so while our thoughts may occasionally wander down the odd tangent, our chat will never meander.We’re aiming for somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes per episode which is just long enough for a decent coffee break or a short commute.Listen HereDo let us know what you think and please, by all means, feel free to suggest topics we could discuss.  It’s always good to get fresh ideas.This week we talk about the growing disparity between the median prices of apartments compared to houses and why this is happening.  And you can also read more about that HERE.Jimmy will be talking about the window-sized hole he found in strata renovation regulations and how Fair Trading dodged the opportunity to fix it.  You can also read more about that HERE.And Sue explores the world of community and neighbourhood Facebook pages while Jimmy dreams of a Mexican restaurant called Three Chihuahuas.On with the show (we did say it was going to be short and sweet).Transcript in FullJimmy  00:00And we're back. And in case you thought you dropped into the podcast halfway through, we're back from a little break we took over the holidays, to give you the Flat Chat Wrap again. Hello, Sue.Sue  00:11Hi, Jimmy, nice to be back!Jimmy 00:13Happy New Year.Sue 00:13And the same to you.Jimmy  00:15Today we're going to be talking about a flaw I found in the New South Wales strata regulations, and you've got something about apartment sales?Sue  00:26That's right. There's a huge report on apartment and house prices this week by Domain.Jimmy  00:33And there's a new piece of hardware being used for the Flat Chat Wrap now; it's a clock. We're gonna try and keep it tight. People seem to like podcasts that last less than half an hour, so we'll keep it tight, keep it snappy, keep it going. Keep it light, keep it funny, keep it short, keep it sweet. I'm Jimmy Thomson. I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review and edit the Flat Chat website.Sue  01:02And I'm Sue Williams, a property writer with Domain.Jimmy  01:05And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.Growing gap in house and unit prices JimmySue, there's been a big report about the difference between apartment prices and house prices.Sue  01:28The latest Domain house report came out last week, and it showed house prices surging remarkably all around the country, but unit prices either rising a little bit or even falling in some areas. The gap between house prices and unit prices has now reached a record 66%. So, the median house price is 66% more than the median unit price, which is the biggest gap they’ve ever had.Jimmy 01:57Why is this happening?Sue  01:58Dr. Nicola Powell, the research analyst with Domain, says it's for a number of reasons. Investor activity is down, and investors mostly buy apartments. Because rents are down and the number of tenants are down as well, because we don't have overseas students coming in. We don't have people migrating here and they usually go and live in apartments as well. People are moving to regional areas and coastal areas, because they want more space. Or, they're moving out of apartments, because they want more space in a house as well. And they want to be able to work from home, so they need a study.Jimmy  02:34There's a COVID effect, and there's people working from home.Sue  02:39Big COVID effect, yeah. There was a really big move towards apartments, but it seems that COVID has kind of slowed that down,

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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.

Do you know what your strata-living tribe is? Are you economically engaged, young and jobless or under-employed, battlers, established owners, downsizers or even public housing tenants?Professor Bill Randolph of UNSW department of the Built Environment was recently interviewed for an extensive feature in the Sydney Morning Herald in which he discussed a survey that reveals the reality of who is living in apartments in Sydney, rather than who is presented on the glossy sales brochures.We are not all, it seems, middle-aged middle-class couples sipping chardonnay on our harbour view balconies.  Far from it.Listen HereEven less likely are we grey-haired newbies who’ve retired and downsized, or been in the same apartments for decades.These tribes do exist, for sure, but not in the numbers promotional material would have us believe.It’s a deliberately shorter (and we hope, sweeter) podcast this week as we dig into the question of who really lives in apartments and why.Awful apartmentsAnd there was another SMH article that caught our eye in the past week or so; a treatise by architecture writer Elizabeth Farrelly about how awful it is to live in a shitty apartment in a crap building in a crowded area of the city.Hey, Liz, we could have told you, if you’d only asked. But, seriously, she makes some very valid points, mainly that too many buildings and apartments are designed for sale to people who have no idea what they’re getting into, or to investors whose only thought is the bottom line.To add economic insult to infrastructure injury, they are often managed by cabals of connected professionals whose main purpose seems to be to find ways of extracting more money from renters and owners rather than charging reasonable fees for making their lives more liveable.All of which led to a discussion on this week’s podcast about expectation and experience.Basically, if you have moved from a grossly overcrowded one-bedder in a building with no facilities, are you going to complain about living in a fairly squeezy two-bedder in a block where the lift occasionally breaks down?25 floors, no liftsAs an extreme example, we cite this block in Chongquing, China, which has 25 floors but no lifts.  However, as we explain, it’s not as challenging for penthouse residents as it sounds.The key to all this is money.  If you have enough of it, you can make choices.  If you don’t, you have to choose which compromises you are going to make, whether they be between location, size, facilities or liveability.That’s why it make sense to rent when you first set up home, than help pour money into the developer feeding trough by pursuing this national obsession with owning property regardless of who built it and how well or badly it’s managed.Finally,  we manage to mention the Infinity building in Green Square without mentioning the reason we are mentioning them … it has won The Urban Developer’s Development of the Year – High Density Residential award.There’s all that and more, including a question for regular podcasters: do you like to hear other voices on the pod or would you rather just hear Sue and JimmyT in shorter podcasts (or a bit of both?). Let us know on [email protected] can catch up with our ramblings in the transcript below.Transcript in fullJimmy  00:00Do you know which apartment tribe you're a member of?Sue  00:03I think I'm part of the tribe, ‘economically-engaged.’Jimmy  00:06Okay, you're not ‘established-owner or downsizer?’Sue  00:12Well, I guess I could be ‘established-owner’, but they’re kind of over 65. I’m not over 65. A long way off, Jimmy.Jimmy  00:21I am! I'm part of both of those things; both of those tribes. There was a big article in The Sydney Morning Herald recently and we're going to be talking about that today. I'm Jimmy Thomson.Sue  00:32And I'm Sue Williams.

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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 may be the first of 2021 but 2020 doesn’t get away that easily.Last year will be remembered in global politics as the year of Brexit, Trump, the Covid-19 Pandemic, and the Trump-rump. Democracy in the USA is hanging by a thread but it will survive.Talking about democracy, on a much more local level, we look back at the battle over “no-pets” by-laws and how it tore apart two apartment blocks, and made NCAT look pretty foolish too.Listen HereInevitably, we examine the entrails of holiday lets like Airbnb. In NSW, in particular, the slow drip feed of legislation to control the hitherto unfettered spread of holiday lets was a lesson in what happens when politicians make half-baked decisions that they neither fully support nor the consequences of which they fully appreciate.Meanwhile, Airbnb’s flacks continue their policy of answering only the questions they wish you’d asked rather than those for which we require answers.Sadly, it seems, Stayz aren’t much better these days, especially when it comes to manipulating statistics.  It makes you wonder how dumb our politicians have to be to fall for all this claptrap.Collateral damageIt would be nice if someone just came out and said “we desperately need tourist dollars and apartment residents – especially renters – are just collateral damage in the ongoing battle for bucks.  Please go and live in a crappy area where no one wants to go and give us some peace.”We also look at the effect of the pandemic across Australia and realise that it’s all intricately intertwined. Covid-19 lockdowns and lock-outs forced a lot of holiday letting hosts out of the market – which was great news for renters – but then compelled people to holiday nearer to home, which saw holiday lets come roaring back when locals who could travel replaced all the foreign visitors who were not allowed to come here.Oh, and the lockdowns persuaded lots of apartment owners to get pets, which takes us back to the first item.DefectsThen there was the continuing story of apartment block defects and the powers finally granted to Building Commissioner David Chandler to put the blowtorch to the belly of dodgy developers.  We won’t see the results of his handiwork for years, when apartment blocks stop falling over.And we talk about changes to the legislations of various states plus build-to-rent, the new (old) way of renting. One landlord, no strata committee, great facilities, long leases and no bond.See, something good did come out of 2020 after all.Transcript in fullJimmy  00:002020 was a pretty horrific year across Australia, and you'd think the only story in town was COVID-19, but we're looking back at the whole year, purely through the prism of strata. There's a lot to talk about. We'll try and get it all into this episode. I'm Jimmy Thomson.Sue 00:21And I'm Sue Williams.Jimmy 00:22And this is the Flat Chat Wrap. Jimmy2020, Sue?Sue  00:40It was a huge year, wasn't it, in lots of ways?Jimmy 00:42Glad to see the back of it.Sue 00:43Yes, absolutely. Let's hope the next one is a good one.Jimmy  00:47COVID 19; it affected just about every aspect of Australian life, but there was other stuff going on, especially in strata. What was the big story that stuck out for you in 2020?Sue  01:01I think it must be pets. I mean, that's COVID-related as well, because lots of people got pets because of COVID.They were stuck in lockdown, so they wanted some company and we had that incredible decision by the Appeals Court, to uphold one owner’s claim that a blanket ban on pets was unconscionable. Therefore now, in essence, all apartment buildings in New South Wales have to allow pets. Nobody can impose a blanket ban,Jimmy  01:30They can impose restrictions on what they do in common property, but that was huge. I don't know if it undermined or supported the whole Tribunal..

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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.

OK, stop, relax, breathe. We’re not taking a break these holidays so much as easing our collective foot off the gasWe thought that, rather than drag someone out of their post-Christmas coma to be interviewed on the Flat Chat Wrap podcast, we’d give you a chance to reprise some of our most listened-to episodes of the past year, some of which you might have missed or want to hear again.In fact there are two “normal” episodes that stand out as our most downloaded. Episode 91 – Crackdown on Dud Developers and Episode 87 – Comedy, coffee and a new way of renting .In Ep 87, we first discussed build-to-rent apartments, had a chat with the owner of a café in an apartment block, and announced the completion of our Pod-Com “Hyperbole Towers” (which you can hear again by clicking on the link below).Pets, pets and petsIn Episode 91, we spoke to Karen Stiles, Executive Officer of the Owners Corporation Network, about the impact Building Commissioner David Chandler is going to have on new apartment builds in NSW.Given this week’s news that another major developer has gone bust,  he certainly has his work cut out.Apart from those podcasts, anything with “pets” in the title rated well, no doubt due at least in part to the shenanigans that saw NSW “no-pets” by-laws revoked, reprieved and then re-revoked.  These included Episode 89, Episode 92, Episode 95  and Episode 96.But these podcasts and the rest aren’t not all only about pets – there’s plenty of other stuff going on in strata for us to get our teeth into in these and other episodes.NeglectedFor the record, our most neglected podcast – at least since we trebled our listeners by moving platforms from our previous hosts, the podcast equivalent of witness protection –  was Podcast 68: Six months of Sundays, classic movies, perfect pods.Maybe it’s because when it went out in April, this episode didn’t have it’s full title attached. Or maybe it was the content – how to survive lockdowns with a smile.  It may be interesting to listen back to hear how we thought we’d fare as the pandemic spread.Sue Williams and I (JimmyT) will be back next week with a full and fresh episode as we review the year in strata across Australia.By the way, I have changed the podcast archive link on our front page to Google Podcasts as Apple iTunes doesn't seem to offer more than 10 old episodes. Let me know if you have an issue with any of that.But, meanwhile, sit back and enjoy (again) Australia’s first podcom (podcast sitcom), Hyperbole Towers and listen to its benighted committee, forced to meet on Zoom with all the back-stabbing, power plays and nefarious goings on that you’d expect.And, once again, thanks to our special guest Todd McKenney for adding some stardust to the show.Listen HereAnd for those of you who don't yet pod - and it's as easy as clicking on play, above - here's the script in full. You're missing half the fun but enjoy anyway.Hyperbole Towers - The Script   Scene 1: the cafe  FADE IN:  NARRATORIt's 12 minutes past six PM on a  post-lockdown evening and Charlie Lee, chair of the Hyperbole  Towers strata committee, is  wondering where the rest of its  members are.    SFX: Mobile phone ringing  ALFIE(In phone)  Hullo. Building Manager Alfie here... I'm sorry I'm in the  middle of a meeting.  CHARLIENo, you're not.  ALFIE(In phone)  I most certainly am... oh...  hello, Madame Chairperson... I am  in the meeting. Where are you?   CHARLIEI'm in the cafe. At the meeting.  Where are you? And where is  everybody else?  ALFIE(In phone)  We are meeting online, Madame  Chair. As required.  CHARLIERequired?   ALFIE(In phone)  Our new by-law. Remember we had to  pass one so we could have meetings  on Zoom or Skype?  CHARLIEDuring the lockdown? How could I  forget? Four hours of mindless  arguments punctuated by three  resignations,

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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.

With Christmas rapidly approaching and Covid-19 closing in on us again, we thought about not doing  a full podcast this week.A quick intro and replay of Jimmy’s most recent stint on the James Valentine’s afternoons on ABC Radio 702, and that ws going to be it.But once we got chatting, all sorts of topic came up, such as, what is this obsession with toilet roll every time there’s a hint of trouble on the horizon?Why do some people “need” to have 10 times as much as they could possibly use outside of a combination of the apocalypse and a seriously bad curry.Listen HereAnd why does that outweigh other people’s reasonable hope that they'll find a couple of rolls still for sale on the shelf when they pop into the supermarket?Are we turning into Trumpians, with their "me first, stuff you!" attitudes?And talking about those who lack a highly developed sense of community, we hop into the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers who use their belief in conspiracy theories about microchips in the vaccine and how only old people get Covid-19, to justify not wearing masks on trains and buses in the midst of a pandemic surge.As Jimmy writes in an upcoming column in the Financial Review, there’s no vaccine to prevent or cure stupidity.But, the worrying thing is, the theories might be stupid but some of the people who believe them clearly aren't.We discuss a friend of Sue’s who is an intelligent and articulate woman but who says she probably won’t take the vaccine when it gets here because of fears that it contains a chip created by Bill Gates that will be able to track and monitor us wherever we go.Jimmy likes the idea of this chip and says it could be used the same way as with missing pets, to check who you are and where you belong if you ever go missing (like after a Christmas  or New Year’s Eve Party).All this is in the podcast and the transcript. What’s not in the transcript is the session on the James Valentine show but that’s worth a listen, if only for the question about whether or not visiting dogs now have to be allowed in apartment blocks now that by-laws banning pets are defunct?If you haven’t listened before, just turn up your speakers, connect your earpods or plug in your headphones, and click on play near the top of this story.  It’s the most fun you’ll have in strata without breaching any by-laws.The transcriptJimmy 00:00It's kind of hard to stay positive at the moment, isn't it?Sue  00:03Yeah, I think COVID has come back and kind of depressed us all.Jimmy  00:07With a vengeance, and a lot of our friends who were planning to go away for Christmas and New Year are stuck at home.Sue  00:14Yep.Jimmy  00:15We'll just have to entertain them.Sue  00:17Yeah, and I think there's a lot of that going on; the ‘new orphans’ are being entertained by friends who've actually bought food and have food, whereas they’ve got empty cupboards.Jimmy  00:26But I was in the supermarket the other day, and, empty toilet roll shelves! They were filling them up again, so obviously, they're ready for it this time, but what is this strange obsession with…Sue  00:39It's good news for my local newsagent. I don't know if you've seen it, but it’s packed with toilet rolls, and hand sanitizer because I think it arrived all a bit too late for the last one.Jimmy 00:51So, he's had it in a cupboard somewhere, or a warehouse?Sue 00:53No, not at all; it’s completely taken over the shop. All the newspapers and magazines and cards and lollies are all kind of around the edge, because he's got so much stock. He's obviously got nowhere else to put it. Hopefully, this will be good news for him at least, because I do feel sorry for him. He's obviously incredibly over-ordered.  It's so sad every time you go in here.Jimmy  01:17Anyway, we will try and keep your spirits up. I'm Jimmy Thomson.Sue 01:30

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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 very much a tale of two slices of strata in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast. To begin with, you can listen to two over-privileged, entitled professionals (us) whingeing about what went wrong … and right … when we decided to renovate both bathrooms in our flat at once.BOTH bathrooms? “When I was a lad we had a pothole in the road, and used gravel for toilet paper  …” says one of Monty Python’s Yorkshiremen.Listen HereRegular readers of this website will have been following our reno (mis)adventures on this website for the past few weeks so we thought it was  time to reveal all our triumphs and failures on the pod.From the too-flimsy door that started it all to the crack that appeared in a newly plastered wall, the whole catastrophe is there for your schadenfreude listening pleasure.Free legal adviceAnd quickly moving from entitled renovators to hard-pressed strata residents facing more urgent issues not of their own making, we have belatedly discovered a completely free strata legal service for NSW, based in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Marrickville.Lawyer Justin Abi-Daher joined us on the pod to answer questions about the service like:How long has Marrickville Legal Centre been covering strata?Who is on their strata team and what are their areas of expertise?What is the most common issue or issues that are brought to them?What do they do when both sides of a dispute asking for help?What is the extent of their involvement? E.g. would they ever represent a client at a tribunal or in a mediation?What is the most common piece of advice they give strata residents once they were in the midst of a dispute.To what extent do they find themselves having to explain residents' basic rights and responsibilities?Is there one piece of strata knowledge that surprises people more than any other?Finally we ask this not-for-profit hero to explain how they get their funding and why they need more so badly right now.You can read more about Marrickville Legal Centre HERE and look at their website HERE.  And remember, their strata service isn’t just for Marrickville – it’s for the whole of NSW.If you’re not into podcasts – and really, you’re missing half the fun – you can read a transcript of the pod below.TranscriptionHere. slightly later than usual, is this week's podcast transcribed in full.Jimmy 00:00We've got a Christmas gift for our readers and listeners this week; free legal advice.Sue 00:06That's a good gift.Jimmy 00:07Some people will say, ‘well, you give legal advice all the time,’ but we don't really, because we're not allowed to. We just kind of point people in the right direction. Later on, we're going to be talking to somebody from Marrickville Legal Center and they do offer free legal advice for strata owners and residents, specifically resident owners, rather than investors and tenants.Sue 00:31Sounds like a good Christmas gift.Jimmy 00:33I think it is. Before that, we're going to be talking about our bathroom renovation, because that's been keeping people entertained for the last few weeks on the website. I'm Jimmy Thomson.Sue 00:45And I'm Sue Williams.Jimmy 00:46And this is the Flat Chat Wrap. MUSICBathroom updateJimmy How this bathroom thing started, was trying to fix my bathroom door.Sue 01:07That's right, because your bathroom door was a bit too thin.Jimmy 01:13Yes, and it’s the guest bathroom, so privacy was at a minimum.Sue  01:16And tell us how that worked out, Jimmy?Jimmy  01:19Well, the bathroom door is untouched and, in the meantime, we've renovated two bathrooms.Sue 01:26This is like $45,000 later. The one thing that we wanted, is still not yet done.Jimmy  01:33I said I wanted the bathroom door fixed. You said ‘hey, if you're going to have the bathroom door fixed, why don't you just renovate your whole bathroom?’

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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.

In this week’s podcast we catch up with what’s happening at Mascot Towers as owners in the ill-starred building prepare for their day in court.Specifically, they will be pursuing legal action against the developers of the apartment block next door, construction of which, they claim, undermined the foundations of their block.Meanwhile they are facing tens of millions of dollars in defect rectification bills to the point where the repairs may cost more than the block is worth.And the people next door say they have pictures of cracks in the Mascot building before they'd so much as turned a sod. Then we talk to Scott Aggett a vastly experience real estate agent and ace negotiator with his company Hello Haus on some of the highly developed tactics that have seen him buy and sell 27 properties just for himself.Scott is a hired gun for people who think they can get the property they want for less, but aren’t sure how to do it. His biggest success?  Saving a buyer $800,000 off the purchase of an apartment in London.It’s a fascinating interview which includes an insight into the classic error single women make when they are negotiating property sales or purchasersListen HereAs usual these days, our podcast is available as a transcript, interpreted by a computer, then made sense of by a human.Transcript in fullJimmy 00:00I was talking to a lawyer the other day, about a building with a large rooftop. The Owners Corporation claim that there's efflorescence (that’s salt coming up from underneath the tiles), ruining the tiles on the rooftop and he said they'd spent something in the region of $260,000 on various experts, and lawyers’ fees to take this case against the developer. He said then the developer turned up with their expert witnesses and said that the efflorescence was coming from cheaply-made planter boxes on the rooftop. So, the developer said, “okay, my bad. I'll give you $9,000 for new planter boxes.”Sue  00:48Oh, my god. Did the developer put those planter boxes up there, then?Jimmy  00:52Yes, they put them up there. Presumably, they're saying “okay, yeah, we shouldn't have put such cheap planter boxes, so yeah, we'll replace them. Off you go.”Sue  01:01Oh, my god. Is the damage still there?Jimmy  01:04The efflorescence… You can scrub it off the surface, but those salts (if you don't cure the problem), keep coming up through the tiles. So, if there is no problem underneath the tiles, then it's going be okay.Sue  01:20Why didn’t they say that before? Why didn't the other side's expert witness ever even look at that?Jimmy  01:25You wonder. We're going be talking about defects and court cases, because you've been following up on the Mascot Towers’ story. And we're going to meet somebody who makes a living from negotiating property prices down. I'm Jimmy Thomson.Sue 01:42And I'm Sue Williams.Jimmy 1:43And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyMascot Towers, Sue; you've done a story for the Sydney Morning Herald, Domain?Sue  02:04That’s right. I think we were all wondering what happened to Mascot Towers, because it's been 18 months now, since all those owners were evacuated from the tower and you kind of wonder what's happening. I hadn't heard anything for a while, so I put in a few calls. It turns out that they're having their day in court, next week, on the 11th of December. The case is finally getting to the Supreme Court, after all this time. It's the owners of Mascot Tower versus the developers of Peak Towers, which is the building next door. You’d probably remember; they were evacuated because the building was starting to sink, and they said it was because the developers of the building (which is just adjacent to it), had been tunneling down for this…Jimmy 2:50Digging down for a carpark.Sue 2:51That's right, for a basement carpark and had tapped into the underground water table..

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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.