FLAT CHAT WRAP

Jimmy Thomson talks to Sue Williams about why she loves apartment living and would never live in a house.

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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 while ago I received a complaint from a reader that I had used the phrase “the very best in apartment living”.‘Very best”, she argued, implied that there was something good about living in a flat, and since this was clearly a stupid and perverse idea, I was being dishonest.Now, I have to admit that, running a website that sets out to solve people’s problem does have a fairly negative beginning: no problems, no website.Most of the people who come here, or read the Flat Chat column in the Financial Review, do so because they have questions, doubts or concerns.That said, I suspect there are people who live in houses who read Flat Chat so they can feel better about their choice of dwelling: “Martha, the roof’s caved in after last night’s storm, but at least we don’t have to pay levies!’But even coming up with positive solutions has to start with someone, somewhere being disappointed, confused or angry (or all three) about something.With all that negativity around, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that I actually like living in an apartment.  In fact, I love it and wouldn’t live in a house in the city for quids.So when I heard that my regular strata sparring partner Sue Williams was writing a feature for Domain about why she loves apartment living, it was too good an opportunity to refuse.“Come and tell us what’s so good about it,” I said. So she did and that’s this week’s podcast. Enjoy.https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-18-Joys-.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 what the various parties are offering strata residents and owners  in the run-up to the NSW state election.

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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 hard to believe that we'll be voting on Saturday (March 23) for, possibly, the first new government in NSW in eight years. It's also hard to believe that we have a fixed term of four years here in NSW while the Federal Parliament has a maximum of only three years ... if they get that far.Three years is too short.  New Federal governments tend to spend the first year undoing the work of their predecessors, the second pursuing their own agenda and the third getting ready for the next election.On the other hand, four years seems a bit too long when the wrong people are in power.  Right now we face the prospect of a hung parliament with the odious Mark Latham potentially holding or at least contributing to the balance of power in the upper house through his candidature for Pauline Hanson's ("we're not very racist") One Nation.Four years of Latham? Somebody, somewhere is taking bets on how long it will be before he and Pauline fall out and he, like so many of her elected members, wanders off on his own.All of which has very little to do with apartment living.  I may be biased but I have to say that, apart from the Shooters, the Coalition seem to have the least interest in the lives of apartment residents ... and that may be being unfair to the Shooters.The enthusiasm with which they were ready to hand our homes over to unrestricted holiday lets was utterly shameful.   Immense gratitude and congratulations are owed to the Owners Corporation Network for making some MPs aware of what was about to happen to their strata-dwelling constituents, saving the day (to some extent) at literally the 11th hour.There's a lot of politics on Flat Chat at the moment - and there will be more, no doubt when the dust has settled on the Election.But if you are still undecided who to vote for, listen to our latest podcast for an instant guide. https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-17-Election-.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.

Labor spokesperson for Better Regulations and Innovation (and Fair Trading) Yasmin Catley calls in on the Flat Chat podcast ... and part two of the chat with OCN chair Phil Gall.

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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 were very lucky last weekend to catch up with Labor spokesperson for Better Regulation and Innovation Yasmin Catley who, current polls suggest, is a very real prospect of being NSW’s next Minister for Consumer Affairs (she will ditch the Ministry of Long Names title).Yasmin has been getting a lot of coverage in Flat Chat recently for one simple reason – she has been talking about strata and things she wants to do to make our lives better.Better Regulations Minister Matt Kean has, admittedly, been pre-occupied with the Opal building and the cladding issue (not that he’s doing much on that front except scaring people, according to this story).Mr Kean was also invited to chat with us on the podcast but we didn’t even get a response.  He’s a very busy man, not least because if the Liberals lose, his mentor, the premier, will probably be rolled and he’s her numbers man.For the record, I won’t be voting either Labor or Liberal in the NSW election and at various times I have promoted the efforts of Liberal Fair Trading Ministers Roberts, Dominello and Kean (although the latter turned out to be a huge disappointment when it came to Airbnb).But it’s refreshing to have someone who has a real chance of making a difference talking about issues that are important to us, the people who are living in apartments right now.Yes, building defects are important, but the changes proposed by the government will only affect blocks that haven’t even been started yet.Meanwhile they have let us down on Airbnb-style holiday lets, flammable cladding and making builders and developers responsible for defects that exist right now.In this week’s podcast, Ms Catley makes a very convincing argument as to why she would be a better champion for apartment residents – owners and tenants – than anyone in the current mob.She’s proposing a register for holiday lets, an opt-in option (with the default being no holiday lets) for Airbnb in apartment blocks, more protection for tenants, a strata commissioner and shifting strata to housing and and building and away from broken toys and dodgy mechanics.  In short, it’s more about people living is strata rather than profits for developers and investors.Also, we pick up the second half of our chat with Owners Corporation Network chair Phil Gall, when we get into Airbnb (again), why most politicians don’t get strata, Fair Trading (we disagree) and the future of OCN.I won’t say too much more.  Just listen to the podcast … it might make you think again about which way you are going to vote next week.You can listen to the podcast by clicking here. Enjoy.https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-16-Yasmin-.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.

JimmyT talks to OCN chair Phil Gall about how the Owners Corporation Network gets stuff done despite bring underfunded ... and what their cladding seminar offers apartment owners

____________________________________________________


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 used to be that when anyone talked about problems in strata, the perennial topics were the four Ps – pets, parking, parties (the noisy kind) and puffing (the smoke wafting from your neighbour’s balcony into your home).These days you are more likely to find yourself talking about Airbnb, inflammable cladding and building defects. Why?  For the simple reason that there’s a lot of them about.It still beggars belief that state governments are happy to hand their housing and planning policies over to a bunch of trendoids working in a hi-tech office in San Francisco.All those years of carefully evolved rules and regulations – the kind that stop your neighbour from turning their home into a business – get tossed out of the window.Why? Because some slick advertising and highly dubious business practises purport to free you to do as you wish with your property and make a lot of money.Of course, you haven’t been able to do whatever you wish with your property since the first village idiot stood for the first local council.  This is even more the case in strata, where a big chunk of your home environment is shared with other people who pay for their fair share of the upkeep.Then along comes Airbnb, presenting like a social service but behaving like the rapacious global mega-corporation that they are.If that weren’t bad enough, we have our buildings covered in flammable cladding – two microscopically thin sheets of aluminium over material that is basically a gel made of petrol.How are the two connected – have a look at the story on this page about the backpacker whose un-extinguished cigarette on the balcony of an illicit holiday let started the Lacrosse fire in Melbourne four years ago.These are the main discussion points in my podcast with Owners Corporation Network chair Phil Gall who, apart form anything else, explains why flammable cladding is even more dangerous that it seems.Next week, we tackle building defects and why apartment owners really need to stick together. But for now, here’s the first part of our chat.https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-15.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.

JimmyT rants about Airbnb, defects (and the Opal Tower report) and cladding ... and explains why we'll never get a Royal Commission into the apartment building industry.

____________________________________________________


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.

I was intrigued this week by the announcement by the Federal Labor leadership that they plan to pour some of the money from their proposed “honesty tax” on banks into lawyers to help ordinary people get back what they’ve had chiselled out of them by unscrupulous money people.What a great idea. Make the baddies pay for people to help their victims. Now, how about a defects tax on developers to do just the same?OK, developers aren’t making the shed-loads of moolah that the banks are coining – the latter’s profits went UP the day after the Banking Royal Commission issued its damning report – but they are doing OK.And we are never going to get a Royal Commission into property development for the simple reason that neither side of politics is squeaky clean in that regard, and irrespective of how upright and honest they are now, no Labor or Liberal Coalition leader wants to lift that particular rock to see what’s still wriggling underneath.Also, in the week in which the Opal Tower report illustrated how a systemic failure of quality control – from inadequate design to poor construction – can lead to a building crumbling literally before your eyes, you realise that NSW’s defects bond is a droplet in a bucket when serious problems are discovered in a building.Now, as I argue in my Flat Chat column out later this week, the Opal apartment owners’ experience may be very different from the usual one.Given government support, developer concern for their public image and the whole of the state waiting to see how this pans out, you’d put your money on the defects being dealt with expediently and with minimal fuss.But for too many apartment buyers in NSW, the experience is more akin to the Elara Apartments scandal in Canberra, where where unit owners have been left with a $19 million defects bill, after they had tried to sue over defects but the builder went into voluntary administration.And just the other week, the Federal Court ruled that subsequent claims to the Master Builders Fidelity Fund, set up for situations just like that, were invalid as they had been lodged after the five-year deadline.A more typical experience here is that the unit owners belatedly discover there are defects (allegedly in 85 percent of buildings, according to a UNSW report), they rush to get a survey done, the defects cost way more than the two per cent defects bond, the developer and the builder argue over who’s to blame, then whoever loses goes into liquidation and the other one hires lawyers to prove that they aren’t responsible.  Or they go into liquidation too.So our new owners are left with a bill for the survey, for the lawyers and what’s left after the defects bond has been used up.Now, I admit that's a very cynical view and there are good developers who value their reputations and want to do the right thing by their customers.  They may even be in the majority - but there's enough of the other kind to cause a lot of heartache.By the way, there’s a theory that the less honest developers in NSW are factoring the defects bond into their budgets and cutting more corners than ever. The quality of the final product could be worse, rather than better, because they’re never going to get that money back anyway.Now, if that sounds like a rant, that’s because I’m in a ranting mood.  This week’s Flat Chat Wrap Podcast takes no prisoners as the defects disaster, flammable cladding and, of course, Airbnb come on to my radar.Enjoy.https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-14-rants-.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.