FLAT CHAT WRAP

Residents of the 130-plus apartments in the Mascot Tower apartment block in Sydney's South were evacuated over the weekend when cracks in walls and supporting beams suddenly widened. JimmyT and Sue Williams discuss what this means for the residents of this block and all the others built in Sydney to the same standards around the same time. And they come up with a proposal to at least stem the waves of panic and confusion the next time this happens as, they say, it surely will ...

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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.

For obvious reasons, our podcast this week is about the Mascot Tower crisis. We recorded the podcast before we were aware of the story in today's Financial Review revealing that the developer and builder of the property next door, as well as the local council,  were already facing legal action because of disturbance caused by the construction of another residential  tower in the adjoining lot.Anyway, our podcast explores a number of other issues, including what we can do to  prevent this from happening again, and what we should do when it inevitably does.You can listen to the podcast just by clicking the play button.  And if you prefer to read, a lightly edited transcript of the podcast is further down the page.  Enjoy!If you want to subscribe to the Flat Chat Wrap and get new episodes as soon as they are posted (it’s completely free!), click on this link for iPHONE and IPAD and this one for Castbox (our favourite Podcatcher).  And please leave us a rating … especially if you like the podcasts.https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-28-Mascot.mp3PODCAST #28 - A TranscriptJIMMY:   Cracks appear in another apartment block in Sydney and residents are evacuated at the last minute. What can we do to stop a crisis turning into a catastrophe? I'm Jimmy Thomson. I write the flat chat column in the Fin Review and edit the Flat Chat website ..SUE:     And I'm Sue Williams, journalist and author.JIMMY:   And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.MUSICJIMMY:     Okay, Sue. We just had another example of of cracks appearing in a building. People turfed out onto the street, not able to take their belongings or their their pets or whatever. What do we do? What's happening? What's going on?SUE:     It's horrendous that this could happen again, isn't it, so close to Opal Tower? It's just unthinkable, but then it makes you think that how many other blocks are there, with cracks, waiting to be discovered as well.JIMMY:     Well, when you think about it, the government is saying, oh, we're going to tighten regulations, which they said they were going to do after Opal, but even if they had, even if they’d brought in their building commissioner that they're talking about, would it really have made any difference? I don't think so. This was always going to happen when it was going to happen.SUE:     Right. It's very difficult to say because I guess the inquiry hasn't found out exactly what the problems are yet. They haven't discovered who is responsible? It's always hard when you've got developers using subcontractors, you know, are they actually supervising them well enough and they probably aren't. One has to think, and at a time we've got so much self certification, that seems to be a huge issue as well.JIMMY:  Well, certainly at the time this was built, back in the bad old days when the developers were allowed to choose their certifier. If they knew what was good for them, the certifiers wouldn't not certify a building. We can't assume that's what happened in this case. We shouldn't assume anything really until more investigation has been done. My theory is that the combination of possibly poor building, possibly the building next door has been blamed and it's sitting over the airport railway line. So there's constant rumbling of trains underneath. I don't know if they even hear them, but you know all these tiny little things, it's the butterfly beats its wings on the Amazon and it causes a storm.SUE:     So no, that's right. But in the meantime you, you've got to feel terribly sorry for the owners and the tenants who kind of been left in limbo really not knowing what's going to happen. Obviously the tenants having to pay rent to live in places elsewhere, owners who were living there or having to find alternative accommodation. This is a terrible situation in the 21st century in Sydney and if we get a reputation for our buildings crumbling,

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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, JimmyT and Sue Williams discuss the brand new empty flats that investors are "warehousing" - keeping them locked up and unlived in -  until the property market improves.Then there's the new report about the massive costs facing owners in buildings with flammable cladding - and why our state governments need to do more to help owners..And finally a look at people who get elected to their strata committees for all the worst reasons.Please enjoy ... share ... like ... subscribe. 

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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.

Since our last podcast took us to Russia, we thought we’d stay a lot closer to home with this week’s.A story in the Australian newspaper caught our eye, concerning growing signs that  investors are prepared to mothball their brand-new, off-the-plan apartments.Rather than put their units on the market when both rents and property prices are in a downward spiral, some investors are locking them up until prospects improve.How can this make financial sense?  Well, it may be a massive and totally legal tax dodge.If they have zero income, through no rent, and it isn't their home (because no one lives there) then they are going to make maximum bucks on their negative gearing. All their costs like rates and levies can be set against their other income.Not only that, they may also receive huge tax breaks on various aspects of depreciation, all the time the apartment is sitting gathering value when the market starts to turn.According to property depreciation experts Washington Brown, purchasers of an $850,000 unit could save $135,000 in depreciation allowances in ten years.Now, I’m no tax expert but, even assuming it takes five years for the market to get back to where it was, adding depreciation and negative gearing allowances, and taking into account average sized levies, the ghost apartment owner could save about $100,000 in tax breaks in that time.And then in five years, he or she has a brand new apartment to sell or rent at something approaching the value they paid for – and all for doing nothing except switch off the lights.It’s a gamble but not as much as it seems at first.Meanwhile, our state government supports the idea of scrapping negative gearing.  Wonder how they’ll feel about tax breaks encouraging investors to shutter new homes that should be available for families.By the way, Sue Williams and I don’t even get to the tax issue in our podcast, but we do discuss the social and economic implications for all the people who actually live in these “ghost” blocks.You can hear it here:https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-27-Ghost-towers.mp3And if you missed my monthly session with James Valentine this week, you can hear that HERE.If you want to subscribe to the Flat Chat Wrap and get new episodes as soon as they are posted (it's completely free!), click on this link for iPHONE and IPAD and this one for Castbox (our favourite Podcatcher) and here on Spotify.  And  if you like the podcasts, please leave us a rating - every little helps people to find us.  

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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 ever get the urge to stand for election to your strata committee?  Are you convinced you could do a better job than the existing members? Do you want to join but keep being frozen out at the AGM?Our colleague Sue Williams has written a piece for The Sydney Morning Herald’s Domain section on whether or not you should join your strata committee.The answer to that question, by the way, is yes … and no.You can read Sue’s piece HERE.Meanwhile, here are our five reasons you should join your committee … and five reasons you really shouldn’t.FIVE GOOD REASONS TO JOIN YOUR STRATA COMMITTEE You want to do your bit for the community.Yes, we live in an age when being called a “good citizen” is almost an insult, but if strata living is going to work, it has to be more “one for all and all for one”, than every man or woman for themselves. You have valuable skills to offerAre you an accountant, interior designer, trained mediator, lawyer, architect, builder, tradie or possess any of the other many skill sets that might be useful in a strata scheme?Yes, the owners corp could contract any of these jobs out to paid professionals, but even if they do, isn’t it great to have someone on the inside looking out. If you have knowledge, skills and experience, why not share them with your neighbours? You see problems (and know how to fix them)The second part of that headline is probably the most important. It’s all very well to be able to spot issues that need fixing, but it’s a whole other thing to know what the fix is.Although there’s a lot to be said for getting people to agree that there is a problem – a major hurdle in many strata schemes – but if you have a solution, that’s gold! You have the time and energyIt’s one of the truisms of strata that the very people you want on your committee are often too busy earning the money to pay their mortgages to come home and dive into an avalanche of emails and meetings.But if you have the time and energy as well as the inclination, go for it. If you don’t, someone who has neither will. You want to learnMaybe you are new to strata and, far from thinking you have all the answers, you don’t even know half of the questions.  That’s OK.  Strata is full of know-alls who haven’t even read their own by-laws, let alone looked at the strata Act or Regulations.So join in with an open mind, listen more than you speak and read everything there is to read so that you can contribute effectively now and into the future. AND FIVE BAD REASONS FOR GETTING ELECTED … Pursuing your own agendaIt could be as simple as wanting to make sure your planned renovations go through or a desire to make sure levies are kept to an absolute minimum, regardless of the long-term needs of the building.In the first instance, at the very least while you are making sure you get approval for the spa bath on your balcony (but doing nothing else) you could be keeping someone who has a genuine contribution to make from sitting on the committee.At worst, your own financial concerns could be eroding the value of everyone else’s unit.  OK, you’re on a fixed income; OK, you’re not intending to sell any time soon so property values are of no interest to you.But blocking sensible and essential expenditure just to save yourself a few dollars, is just a wee bit selfish, isn’t it? Keeping an eye on thingsSo you are a self-appointed StrataKop monitoring every decision, are you? You’re going through agendas and minutes with a forensic eye for detail, holding up every discussion with a demand for further explanation and investigation?If that’s you, unless your committee has been getting away with all sorts of corrupt and damaging behaviour, you are probably not helping.  Even worse, you are occupying a seat that might have been taken by someone with more positive intent.Maybe it’s time to start building bridges rather than barriers.

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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 big chunk of this week's podcast is taken up with discussing  how worried we should be about the defamation case taken by the chairman of a small strata building in Manly (you can read all about it here), and what that means to those of us who like nothing more than firing off angry emails to vent our spleen at the powers that be in our apartment blocks.But before that, our regular correspondent Sue Williams has just returned from a trip to Russia where apartment living is much more common than here - but is a very different experience.And off air we were told a story that might explain why President Vladimir Putin is so popular in Russia today.Back in the days before the fall of the USSR, everybody in Russian cities lived rent free in admittedly tiny apartments provided by the government. People were not allowed to own property as that went against Russian Communist principles.After the fall in 1991,  people were basically given the flat they lived in, to own.  But then the criminal gangs started moving in and residents were told they'd be given a house in the outskirts of the cities, or somewhere else entirely, but they had to give their city flat to the mobsters. Those who refused often met a grisly fate.Enter Former KGB chief Putin, who rode to power in 1999 on the back of a tough law and order program. Ruthless and resourceful, he was able to turn the gangsters' fear tactics back on them and suddenly Russian people were no longer afraid of being thrown out of their own homes.Now, what has happened since that is that Putin, according to some observers, has reached an understanding with the higher echelons of the "Vory" as the Russian Mafia is often known, that as long as they don't represent  a threat to the state, they can go about their nefarious business  - although the low-level criminals will still be investigated and prosecuted when a case can be made.But in the meantime, President Putin has the undying gratitude of his people who can turn a blind eye to the excesses of the super-rich oligarchs because they feel safe, resulting in a 75 per cent vote in favour at the last Russian election.Whether or not that story is entirely true is worthy of some conjecture, but the fact that many Russians love Putin because they see him as the tough guy who made them feel safer explains a lot - including why Donald Trump is so keen to get himself some of that Putin magic.You can hear Sue Williams impressions of what it's like to live in an apartment in Russia in this week's podcast. By the way, subscribers to our podcasts will have received this a couple of days ago (partly because I am writing this from a little town three hours out of Tokyo).If you want to subscribe to the Flat Chat Wrap and get new episodes as soon as they are posted (it's completely free!), click on this link for iPHONE and IPAD and this one for Castbox (our favourite Podcatcher).  And please leave us a rating ... especially if you like the podcasts.https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-26-Russia.mp3

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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.

Jimmy Thomson and Sue Williams discuss apartment living in the new Russia and the email exchange that cost a Manly tenant $120,000 in a defamation case.

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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.

JimmyT and fitness trainer Shannon Cleary discuss what works and what doesn't in apartment block gyms ... and what to do if you don't have one.

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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.

Our article this week about the fabulous Parker rental apartment complex in Alexandria, Washington DC, got me thinking about the facilities that are intended to entice us to buy and rent in apartment blocks.One popular item is a gym – but that word covers a multitude of sins.  It could be a fabulous, state-of-the-art facility that would grace any five-star hotel.Or it could be an airless converted store room with neglected and clapped out equipment that’s occasionally augmented by the “donation” of some cheap and useless gear that someone has bought on late-night TV and immediately regretted doing so.So I spoke to residential personal trainer and group fitness instructor Shannon Cleary about what equipment every apartment block gym should have.But it soon became evident that having the latest equipment is not the highest priority.Space to stretch and work dynamically on free-weights might be more valuable than a bank of treadmills, for instance.But the main point she made was that it doesn’t matter what you have in your gym if no one uses it … and uses it properly.A case in point, according to Shannon, is the good old rowing machine. This is a great piece of kit for an all-round work-out: legs, core, arms and heart – if you know what you’re doing.“So many people just have no idea how to use it properly,” she says.  So we have put in a link to a Youtube video (below) so you can see how its done.But first, listen to our podcast. And if that doesn’t inspire you to get down to your gym … or even just go for a walk … nothing will.Hey, you can do both – listen to the podcast while you’re working out.  Have fun.https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-25-Shannon-2.mp3If you want to subscribe to the Flat Chat Wrap and get new episodes as soon as they are posted (it's completely free!), click on this link for iPHONE and IPAD and this one for Castbox (our favourite Podcatcher).  And please leave us a rating ... especially if you like the podcasts.Now, here's the video on how to use a rowing machine properly:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0r_ZPXJLtg 

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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.

JimmyT talks to Tim Sara, a senior  manager at one of Australia's biggest strata management companies - and reveals both the light and dark side of a challenging career. 

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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.