When I wrote last week that there should be a ratings system for builders and developers, there was another brilliant idea  bouncing around my brain, and one that has just as much chance of being adopted: a licence to live in strata. It comes down to this: there is a whole bunch of people who […]

How would you feel if you suddenly had 50 to 100 strangers walking through your lobby every day, clogging up the lifts just when you are trying to get to work or when you come home? These are the fears raised by residents of two neighbouring buildings on Sydney’s North Shore (and discussed in our […]

Remember the story we ran a few weeks ago on the Forum about the Sydney Park Village apartment complex (pictured) that had decided to ban children from their swimming pool AND backed that up with biometric access to common areas in the form of fingerprint readers? Sounds a bit over the top, doesn’t it?  A […]

I was listening to the ABC News Radio last Friday and an item came on about strata defects, flammable cladding and the state ministers meeting in Sydney. The news reader introduced a spokesman for strata owners … Chris Duggan, president of Strata Community Australia. What?  Wait! The SCA isn’t strata owners … it’s strata managers! […]

With defects on the minds of everyone in the apartment world, there’s a whole lot of finger pointing going on. Developers are saying engineers should be certified, strata owners say developers should be certified, and some people say anyone thinking of buying an apartment should be certified (but not in the same way). But it […]

There’s a growing trend in legal actions in Australia that has recently intruded into the strata area – litigants being asked to provide security for costs before legal action can commence. The idea behind it, generally speaking, isto protect the defendants in legal actions where they have won but the plaitiff can’t or won’t pay […]

We have a friend called Royce who wouldn’t buy so much as a toothbrush without checking online to see if it was the best design (at the best price) for his specific dental needs. He is so notorious for his exhaustive product checking that our group of friends refers to the process as “Roycing”. For […]

I’m getting slightly ahead of the news here, but by the time you read this there will probably be a piece online in the Sydney Morning Herald about the massive loophole in the current strata laws that allows NCAT, the Tribunal, to issue orders, but doesn’t give them the power or penalties to enforce them. […]

With state planning ministers meeting this month, informed in part by a behind-closed-doors meeting of development “stakeholders” in NSW last week, you can be sure that building defects in their myriad forms will be on their agenda. From the crumbling Opal and Mascot towers , and the abandoned Zetland block, all in Sydney, to the […]

In this week’s episode of the Flat Chat Wrap we look at the claims that the Opal and Mascot towers “disasters” are just the tip of a very large apartment block defects  iceberg. JimmyT and Sue Williams have been writing about apartment block defects – and other, happier apartment-related issues – for almost two decades, […]

There’s an interesting statistic that I never tire of quoting: no strata manager in NSW has ever been struck off for being really bad at his or her job. And by really bad, I mean ignoring or not even being aware of the law, to the point that it costs their clients time and money. […]

This weekend, the Flat Chat column in the Financial Review is about how to avoid buying an apartment in a dodgy building. In it, I discuss the importance of forensic checks of strata records.  But what if the records themselves are unreliable and inaccurate?  Just by some serendipity,  the following press release from Eyeon Property […]

Rental laws are a big issue in strata, with more than half of apartments being occupied by tenants, meaning half of apartments are owned by investors. That’s a lot of people directly affected by these regulations. And it seems every time NSW and Victoria renew their residential rental laws, they are trying to outdo each […]

One of the big questions around the recent Mascot Tower problems was why didn’t the building insurance kick in, rather than the state government having to bail the owners corporation out with emergency funding. The simple answer is that it looked very much like a building defect and that’s not covered by ordinary strata insurance. […]

Finances and, specifically, who’s behind in their levies are, always sensitive topics at AGMs. You don’t want to embarrass your neighbours if they are doing it tough or maybe just having a temporary cash flow problem. But then, they shouldn’t really be putting their hands up to be elected on to the committee if they […]

It seems Airbnb (and other short-term holiday rental) stories are like buses – you don’t see any for a while then three come along at the same time. In their monthly roundup of short-term holiday rental horror stories, our friends at Bnbguard have highlighted the worst and the very worst in the world of short-term […]

The news that the NSW government is offering an open-ended, low-interest loan to the Mascot Towers owners corporation (body corporate), to allow them to pay for evacuated residents’ emergency accommodation, is much more of a game changer than the casual observer might think. Forget the rights and wrongs of the situation, the precedent that it […]

The arrival of online short-term rental sites such as Airbnb and others, created a whole new landlord-tenant relationship: one where owners, or ‘hosts’, are encouraged to provide all sorts of extras. But when things go wrong some hosts discover, all too late, that their insurance cover isn’t as hospitable as they are, as our sponsors, […]

NSW Fair Trading have released the details of their emergency accommodation package for residents evacuated from Mascot Tower and it includes a few interesting exclusions. For instance, people staying with relatives or friends will get nothing – you have to have proper tax receipts showing you have paid for the emergency accommodation – and neither […]

This week in the Podcast we look at the Mascot Tower story and the apparently generous offer by Fair Trading to bankroll emergency accommodation for residents. They are saying it’s a one-off, as they must.  If NSW Fair Trading let it be known that they were in the market for payouts to help people with […]