FLAT CHAT WRAP

Is this the best time to buy an new apartment or just the worst time to sell? And what you should look out for in offers that seem to be too good to be true. Can bad by-laws be used to bully owners? And what happened to the common property lawn being churned up by illegal parkers?Sue Williams joins JimmyT for a chinwag about the latest posts on the Flat Chat website.

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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 roundup this week includes a link to the latest Flat Chat Wrap podcast, which is turning out to be a lot more fun than we thought it would be.Basically someone looks at the latest stuff on the website and chats to JimmyT about it – for the past two weeks it’s been author, journalist, travel and property writer and Owners Corporation Network founder Sue Williams.Is it as much fun for you as it is for us? You can hear the podcast on THIS LINK and judge for yourselves.Meanwhile, we have been getting record numbers of readers on the website – which means even more question to the Flat Chat Forum than ever.For instance, what do you do when you have a developer who still holds 39 per cent of the vote is taking revenge on owners for exercising their legal rights (by following strata law) and then blocks all the motions put up by the owners to improve their scheme?It’s nasty, it’s spiteful and he’s making his enemies suffer.  But there’s still a lot they can do to put him back in his box. That’s HERE. Ooops! The secretary has admitted that they have dumped a car in visitor parking … but then does nothing about getting it moved.No point in even talking to the other committee member as they regularly park in visitor parking anyway.And this all comes out when other owners are taken to Fair Trading for parking on the lawns. Welcome to another day in strata paradise, HERE.Who’s responsible when a previous owner secretly installs a skylight in the roof without permission?The new owners wants to keep it but what happens if it leaks or need repair? That’s HERE.Our fire doors are always passed in the fire safety inspection but the deadbolt locks are marked for replacement – because they could slow residents’ exit if they were locked.We tell owners to keep them on the latch when they are home but make their flats more secure when they are out.Do we really need to replace them?  That’s HERE.Usually at this point we encourage you to keep tabs on the Flat Chat Forum, but just for a change, plug the earbuds in, sit back and relax with the Flat Chat Wrap podcast.

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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're back with another Flat Chat Wrap.  Sue Williams joins Jimmy Thomson for a chat about noise, electric cars, shoestring tourism (and its affect on communities) and how to get rid of a nuisance committee member.

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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're back in the ABC studios to discuss 'no-pet' by-laws, among other things, and to take your calls.You can listen to the episode HERE.

____________________________________________________


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 joins James Valentine for a chat about Tribunal decisions to rescind by-laws that ban pets ... and take your calls

____________________________________________________


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 best of this week's Flat Chat is now available as a Podcast. Join JimmyT and journalist Sue Williams as they dissect the week's posts, questions, advice and answers. is a serious - if light-hearted look at the latest posts, questions, answers , advice and comments on Flat Chat.Forget the crazy tales from Dardanelle Towers, the funny voices (please!) and the jolly music.  This is the start of something big.Please have a listen and let us know what you think - Flat Chat and The Wrap are for you, so tell us how we can make it better.  Just log in and add a comment below. And if you like it - or know someone you think would - please share.You don't even have to log in to listen - just click here.

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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 chat about all the most interesting, strangest and most controversial items on on Flat Chat this week.  In Episode 1, Jimmy discusses pet bans, undoing bad by-laws, crazy neighbours and Airbnb laws with author and journalist 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.

The global trade war hits Dardanelle Towers, and the committee members are looking for somewhere to hide.

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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 recently discovered what seem to be reports from an apartment block with more than its fair share of idiosyncratic characters. Is this place real, or a figment of someone's imagination? Perhaps you know these people. Maybe it's your building.  Maybe it’s you …Part 1:  The Naked TruthPublic nudity was on the agenda at the Dardanelle Towers Executive Committee meeting last week.It started with a note from Mrs Alexander – somewhat unkindly known around the building as “the all-seeing eye” – who claimed to the new female tenants in 304 had been sunbathing naked by the swimming pool.Dr Macdonald whose apartment overlooks the pool confirmed as much, to tuts and mutters from the other members of the committee, but he wasn’t complaining.“What’s the fuss?” he asked, winding up for one of his verbose observations. “We’re in greater danger of being hit by Mrs Alexander falling off her balcony as she leans over trying to get another offending glimpse than we are of any moral turpitude from catching sight of liberated female flesh.”“No need to minute that,” Bernard, the chairman, whispered to Ms Tran, the secretary, as he looked at his watch.“Turpentine?” said Lady Luckby, rousing from a slumber, slapping the table with the flat of her hand and shouting “Order!” for good measure. Lady Luckby, a tiny sun-dried former socialite, had lived in the building since it went up in the 1940s.  She took her late father’s place on the committee, was chair for many years and thought she was still in charge.  Everyone else had given up trying to prevent her from running meetings as, in any case, she invariably fell asleep shortly after “minutes of the previous meeting”.“Moral turpitude is the least of it,” said Jonathan from 708, ignoring Mrs O.  “This is a serious breach of our rules, to wit, By-law 3, section 2 – and I quote – ‘residents and their guests must be dressed appropriately at all times when on common property’.”The worrying thing about Jonathan was that while he was quoting this rule accurately, he was doing it from memory. Jonathan was a junior paralegal with a large city law firm and, as his 35th birthday approached and his dreams of a partnership, a trophy wife and 2.5 trophy children all evaporated simultaneously, he increasingly took refuge and comfort in a detailed knowledge of our by-laws in particular and strata law in general.“Let’s take this step by step. What exactly did you see?”  he asked Dr Macdonald pompously, in an unintentional parody of cross-examination.“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Dr Mac winked, obviously enjoying the memory a little more than was entirely appropriate.  “I can tell you one of them had had a Brazilian,” he chortled.“What do you mean ‘had had’?”  Jonathan asked, revealing instantly why his career had stalled before he was out of the mail room. “Is that ‘had had’ as in ‘had sex’?  And how do you know they were Brazilian?”“We’ve got Brazilians in the building?” Lady Luckby erupted.  “We just got rid of the Colombians.”We winced in unison at the memory. Lady Luckby had “Tasered” our Filipino cleaner, James, when he came in to empty her bin – as he did three times a week as a favour to her and (especially) her neighbours.  Apparently she’d fallen asleep on her sofa watching a DVD of Scarface, woke suddenly and, as she later told police, thought he was a Colombian drug dealer who’d broken into her flat to steal her clothes.Lady Luckby’s son had found a job for James in his office block, at higher wages for less work.  He also settled a substantial sum of money on him and managed to persuade the Police not to take any further action beyond impounding his mother’s Taser (which she had bought on the Internet). Lady Luckby thought James had been deported and no one saw much point in telling her otherwise.“The by-laws have clearly been breached,” said Bernard with a sigh as he turned to Ms Tran. “Better send them a note,

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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 goes on Channel 10's morning show to talk strata noise, parking, by-laws and Airbnb.

____________________________________________________


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.