FLAT CHAT WRAP

Some big, big issues have shuffled shamelessly into the glare of the podcast spotlight his week.

Firstly we talk about the buying and selling of management rights and how that has become a huge, $8billion dollar business nationally.

Should we be worried that this is starting to creep into NSW and Victoria from Queensland, where the legalised rorting of apartment owners through pre-selling the rights to run their buildings all began?

What does it mean for owners in new buildings in the other states who will doubtless be told that selling 25-year contracts to commercial entities is “standard practice”?

And what are the implications for Queensland owners’ desperate attempts to get its pro-developer state government to put a cork in the bottle even if the genie can’t be persuaded to get back into it?

The other big issue is the appalling state of rental affordability in Sydney, especially, which includes a dire prediction from Jimmy that sounds suspiciously like a disruptive call to action.

Finally, we have big news about the podcast itself, plus our Lock up and Leave Pick of the Trips, and a tribute to our most dedicated listener 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.

The Wrap has gone all-electric this week, starting with Sue resolutely defending her e-scooter in the face of growing fears about fires from Lithium-ion batteries (and Jimmy’s column from the AFR).

So what causes ebike and escooter battery fires? How do you prevent them? What is “thermal runaway”? 

And what can apartment blocks do to keep its residents safe when there are potentially dangerous batteries being charged up inside units in the block?

Also, without the slightest sense of irony, we discuss the NSW government plans to offer $80 million in grants to more than 100 apartment blocks to help with the costs of installing EV charging points in apartment block car parks.

And Jimmy talks about the initial AGM of a new apartment block where efforts to pass embedded network contracts were up for a challenge. (Just to continue the electrical theme, there was another embedded network contract for electricity that was debated but we don’t really talk about that in the pod).

And finally, there’s this week’s Lock Up and Leave – a hike in southern France which sounds like it involved more eating than walking.

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

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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 Flat Chat Wrap we welcome freshly minted Strata Commissioner John Minns (not to be confused with NSW Premier Chris Minns) to tell us about his new role, his challenges and hopes.

For the past two years John has been NSW Property Services Commissioner, keeping an eye on real estate agents, strata managers and building managers – and lots of ancillary professions and trades.

Now he’s taking strata under his wing in an expanded role – and it’s quite an expansion.

In today’s podcast we talk about “cradle to grave” regulations for strata schemes, training and licensing, transparency and the 139 recommendations for strata law reforms currently before parliament.

We touch on Airbnb and unlicensed operators, embedded networks  and initial AGMs.  John even listens to Jimmy’s “out there“ idea for fast-track dispute resolution and how it could be turned into a TV show combining the appeal of  Judge Judy with The Block.

It’s a longer-than-usual episode of the podcast, and the Zoom audio quality is not perfect, but it makes fascinating listening, hearing what John’s priorities are and the challenges he faces.

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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 heading across the border to Victoria this week where the Greens are flexing their balance-of-power muscle by demanding changes to the state housing program, as detailed in this post on the Flat Chat website.

We ask what it is that they want, and which demands they are most likely to negotiate away to get other elements of the deal over the line.

Will it be their demand for 30 per cent of all schemes to be affordable or social housing?
Or will it be the stringent curbs on Airbnb and its ilk.  
The latters may be low-hanging fruit but nationally the Greens have a patchy track record when it comes to short-term holiday lets.

And if you’re thinking, “it’s Victoria, so what?” don’t forget that the states use each other as guinea pigs and any policy that works in one territory is likely to find its way to its neighbours before too long.

We also relate how NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler’s iCirt gold star rating system has become such a valuable asset for developers that some are saying they have it when they haven’t even applied.  Naughty, naughty!

And we introduce an escape from the stress and tension of apartment living with our new “lock up and leave” feature that highlights our personal choices from all the terrific holiday deals on our Mildrover website. 

By the way, if the sound quality isn’t quite up to our usual standard it may be because it was a Zoom call to a motel in Lismore.

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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 find ourselves victims of the kind of scams we have been warning people about for a couple of years.

We are about to go to the first AGM of our new apartment block and have discovered there is a very meaty embedded network rort afoot.

Rather than pay for a vital piece of infrastructure, our developers want us to lease it at an exorbitant rate and one which will add up to be double what they say it costs.

How can that be?  What can we do?  You’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out.

Also we go through all the nitty-gritty of the changes in NSW strata laws – it’s not all about pets and forced sales.

And we discover why strata managers think Jimmy is running a vendetta against them.  Hey, it was just one joke in which a strata manager was a homicidal maniac. 

Where’s the harm?  Judge for yourself, in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook  and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to [email protected].
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

There’s good news for those abandoned covid fur-babies and the apartment residents who’d love to offer them new homes. 

The highly dubious tactics clearly aimed at deterring people from having pets in apartments – workarounds for the ban on blanket pet bans, if you like – will be knocked over in proposed changes to NSW strata law.

Application fees, pet bonds and demands for additional insurance cover will be no more. 

These are among several tweaks to strata law on the way in NSW but you’d better believe policy wonks in all the states watch each other’s laws like hawks – and any or all of these changes could be coming your way soon.

Also on the hit list, Fair Trading will be able to recommend dysfunctional schemes have compulsory strata managers appointed to take over the running of the block, putting failed strata committees into deep freeze for a couple of years.

Opportunist developers will have to declare conflicts of interest – and face having costs awarded against them – if they try to use strata funds to combat competing plans.

And all strata schemes, regardless of size will need to get two quotes for work that’s going to cost more than $30,000.

Finally, we have a strata commissioner.  Property Services Commissioner John Minns has had strata added to his portfolio.

We examine how that could be a good or bad development, and pick the bones out of all the above on this week’s 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.

This week, we open up with a chat about our increasingly popular polls and the surprising results this week revealing what annoys you most about your neighbours.

Then we take a look at what NSW Premier Chris Minns really means when he “declares war on Nimbys”.  

If as this article suggests, he may use his power to let his minions, aka senior civil servants, rule on projects held up by recalcitrant, backsliding local authorities, what does that mean for suburbs that have steadfastly held out against medium to high rise developments in their low-rise avenues?

Then we hear about a Canadian “urbanist” who has come up with a new style of communal living, turning apartments into “friendship machines”, whereby families get together to inhabit blocks where everyone has their own living space but they share cooking facilities and child care.  

It all seems a bit commune-like and will doubtless have some citizens of Queensland reaching for their pitchforks when he presents his thoughts at the Asia Pacific Cities Summit in Brisbane next week.

And finally, we can’t avoid having another look at how Airbnb is under serious pressure, now that the mainstream media is getting the message that throwing renters out so that investors can make more money, specifically from from tourists, is necessarily good for our society as a whole.

Airbnb again? Hey, it’s all grist to the strata mill.

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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.

Busy, busy, busy in the Flat Chat bunker this week. We start with a wrap-up of what went on at the Owners Corporation Network (OCN) Strata Matters conference last week including a grab-bag of politicians talking about what’s been done and what still needs to be achieved in strata.

Then, prompted by a thought from Sydney MP Alex Greenwich that NSW might consider a tax on short-term holiday lets, like the one announced in Victoria, Jimmy rips into the “idiotic” discussion of the proposed tax on Victoria’s short-term holiday lets (aka Airbnb) on the ABC TV Q&A panel discussion.

Back to the Strata Matters conference, and we go through the card, picking up on topics as diverse as  water saving, levies debts, strata loans, remediation, repairs and adaptation of older buildings.

Finally we discuss one of the major themes of the conference collective sales – whereby 75 percent of owners can force the other 25 per cent to sell to developers and how it has all gone horribly wrong in one scheme where the owners and their prospective developers ended up paying the legal fees of an unsuccessful bidder as they fought to prevent the redevelopment going ahead.

All that and more in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

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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 we introduce you to the concept of “downvesting” – no, it’s not a singlet fashioned from duck feathers, but a growing trend whereby impending retirees buy a property that they plan to downsize into but rent it out until they are ready to make the life-changing move.

And we investigate the challenging concept of de-cluttering and how getting ready to move house could change your mind about moving at all.

We take another look at Build-To-Rent and how one superfund, the majority of whose members work in health and social services, is investing in a BTR block of which many of the residents will be exactly that slice of essential (but often underpaid)  workers.

And we have a look at how the new tax proposed for short-term holiday lets in Victoria is long overdue and could and should spread to other states.

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

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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 in the podcast, Sue reports back from a two-day seminar about property investment with the news that, yes, more apartments are going to be built in Australia and yes, some people are worried that there simply won’t be enough skilled labour or materials to get it done as quickly as we all want and need.

However, there is some innovative thinking, whether it’s about how to deal with Nimbyism – bribe the buggers with tax breaks, says Yellow Brick Road boss Mark Bouris – or allowing “mum and dad” investors to put money directly into build-to-rent projects without having the hassle of managing tenants and property.

There’s a push to promote “Fonzi Flats” to make use of the space above garages and storerooms, not to mention empty basements and other unused areas in existing homes.

And there’s the OCN's Strata Matters conference where both Jimmy and Sue will be wrangling speakers and making sure you, our listeners, have your questions answered and your concerns aired.

That’s all on this week’s Flat Chat Wrap. 

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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.