As the covid-19 pandemic has driven us all back into our homes, the Internet has become a vital tool both in working from home and managing our strata schemes. In most if not all territories, owners can now meet virtually and vote electronically.  Needless to say, there are some smooth operators in strata who have […]

Legendary movie director Alfred Hitchcock is reputed to have said: “I never said actors were cattle, I said they should be treated like cattle.’ Sometimes you get the feeling that our various state governments and a not insubstantial number of service providers feel the same way It seems that we are expected to pay hundreds […]

Even with interstate travel restrictions tightening, rather than easing, we can be pretty sure that travel within Australia will be possible before international destinations come back on line. With that in mind, the idea of buying a flat in Noosa, Brisbane or the Gold Coast, and letting it to holidaymakers for most of the year […]

The heat has been turned up on balcony barbecues as a cause of fires in apartments … but in a part of the world where you might least expect it. Last month, Zurich Insurance in the UK said there had been 550 balcony fires in London alone in the past three years and said that […]

This week we get tangled up in the wiring as we examine the effect of Zoom meetings and electronic voting on the democratic processes of strata committees … and the House of Lords. The chat was sparked by this forum post which alleges all sorts of skullduggery – okay, maybe not skullduggery but it suggests […]

Just after we locked off the Forum Roundup last week, we received a post listing a litany of unfair restrictions the poster claimed had been snuck in under cover of covid. On the face of it, it seems like a clumsy attempt to create a no short-term lets by-law, by restricting the access of guests […]

We’re taking a deep dive into the too-hard basket of strata committees this week, starting with one that says there’s nothing they can do about an infestation of rats, partly caused by a restaurant that’s part of the strata scheme. It’s so bad that they regularly – about once a month – crawl under the […]

This week’s podcast is inspired by a question on our Forum asking what to do about two office-bearers who have taken bricks out of common property walls so as to install integrated bookshelves … with the predictable effect that has on noise insulation, not to mention fire safety.  You can read the original post and […]

Imagine you’ve interviewed for a job and the call comes:  “you got the gig … we’re sending over a 25-year contract.” Twenty-five years? That’s half the length of a working life.  However, believe it or not, there are strata contracts for that long in Australia today. First, let’s backtrack a little.  Until the new NSW […]

Living as I do in a building that won an international architectural award for sustainability features in its design – many of which never made it off the drawing board – I may be a bit sensitive to environmental plans that never see the light of day. There’s many a slip between what’s promised and […]

Coronavirus hasn’t quite killed Airbnb and its ilk but it’s certainly given the Australian short-term rental market a severe headache and a nasty dose of the shivers. Investors running scared from volatile shares might be better advised to put money into furniture recycling and removals than short-term holiday lets, as furnished flats are cleared out […]

JimmyT explores the murky world of the TV “investigation” of the Peter Falconio murder … Those of you who’ve been transfixed by the unexplained mysteries and “new evidence” presented by the Channel Seven documentary series about the disappearance of Peter Falconio and the subsequent hounding of Joanne Lees, may be interested in the definitive book […]

It’s another showbag of conflict, calm and coronavirus on the Flat Chat Wrap this week. First, inspired by a question from our Forum, we discuss what you can do when someone who shouldn’t even be at a strata committee meeting – his daughter is the lot owner – bullies the other members. Our suggested remedies […]

It’s all too familiar… a couple of people get themselves elected to the committee and soon, instead of enforcing by-laws and strata law, they start making up the rules as they go. In this case, the chair and secretary couldn’t see the need for double brick walls between their flats and the units next door […]

If you are up to your eyes in paint, tiles and taps – or even better, just looking through the brochures as you prepare the domestic make-over you can’t put off any longer – you could do worse than listen to this week’s podcast. We’ve Zoomed in on interior designer Stephanie Bungard to discover the […]

Dealing with rude and bossy owners on your committee is hard enough but confronting the entitled, non-resident relatives of owners is a whole other set of soul-sapping challenges. This week, a long-time Flatchatter reports that a middle-aged owner is accompanied to strata meetings – general and committee – by her irascible father. The owner is […]

Apartment residents need to stay vigilant if they don’t want to see high-rise lockdowns of the type that recently  shut down nine unit blocks in Victoria, say strata managers. “We’re in a ‘perfect-storm’ of risk which has the potential to impact the lives of tens of thousands of people in NSW,” warns Chris Duggan, the […]

Star of stage musicals like the Boy From Oz, and former Dancing with the Stars judge Todd McKenney has weighed into a Sydney pensioner’s battle to keep his greyhound after his strata scheme changed its by-laws to ban pets. According to a story in the Daily Telegraph this week (July 7), 83-year-old Colin Marshall bought […]

In this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast we encounter the best and worst in apartment living, from negative equity in off-the plan purchases, to multiple tenants causing parking chaos in a block that simply doesn’t know how to enforce their own by-laws. In between, as some positive relief, we chat to an architect who won […]

Apologies for leading off on parking issues two weeks in a row but this one is such a doozy that it has even made it to our podcast. The problems – and there are many – are caused by a number of unidentified tenants who park their cars on common property driveways blocking access and […]