FLAT CHAT WRAP

This week’s podcast may be the first of 2021 but 2020 doesn’t get away that easily. Last year will be remembered in global politics as the year of Brexit, Trump, the Covid-19 Pandemic, and the Trump-rump. Democracy in the USA is hanging by a thread but it will survive. Talking about democracy, on a much more local level, we look back at the battle over “no-pets” by-laws and how it tore apart two a...

OK, stop, relax, breathe. We’re not taking a break these holidays so much as easing our collective foot off the gasWe thought that, rather than drag someone out of their post-Christmas coma to be interviewed on the Flat Chat Wrap podcast, we’d give you a chance to reprise some of our most listened-to episodes of the past year, some of which you might have missed or want to hear again. In fact ther...

With Christmas rapidly approaching and Covid-19 closing in on us again, we thought about not doing  a full podcast this week. A quick intro and replay of Jimmy’s most recent stint on the James Valentine’s afternoons on ABC Radio 702, and that ws going to be it. But once we got chatting, all sorts of topic came up, such as, what is this obsession with toilet roll every time there’s a hint of troubl...

It’s very much a tale of two slices of strata in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast. To begin with, you can listen to two over-privileged, entitled professionals (us) whingeing about what went wrong … and right … when we decided to renovate both bathrooms in our flat at once. BOTH bathrooms? “When I was a lad we had a pothole in the road, and used gravel for toilet paper  …” says one of Monty Pyth...

In this week’s podcast we catch up with what’s happening at Mascot Towers as owners in the ill-starred building prepare for their day in court. Specifically, they will be pursuing legal action against the developers of the apartment block next door, construction of which, they claim, undermined the foundations of their block. Meanwhile they are facing tens of millions of dollars in defect rectific...

We turn back the clock – but just a little – for this week’s podcast when we look at the weirdest and wackiest questions asked and problems presented on the Flat Chat Forum in recent months. And we have a long chat with Kathlyn Loseby, President of the NSW chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects as well as COO of Crone Architects. She’ll be talking about the importance of good architectu...

With most of the worst of the pandemic behind us here in Australia – or, at least, the first and hopefully the last wave of infections – we thought we’d take a few moments in the podcast to discuss positives that have emerged from the months of lockdown and working from home. Apparently, according to a  Zoom conference that Sue sat in on (and that’s a great leap forward, right there), technology h...

There are two major strands to this week’s podcast. The first stems from a question raised in the Flat Chat Forum, about an apartment owner who wants to install a stairlift – one of those seats that trundles up a staircase – in a narrow common property stairwell. It's for his elderly mother, so you have some sympathy, as you'd have for the other owners who had to squeeze past the rail ev...

We’ve scored a century! This week sees us post the 100th episode of the Flat Chat Wrap – and that's only counting properly produced and distributed episodes. We would have held a giant dance party to celebrate but, hey, what with Covid-19 and social distancing and all, we might limit it to a chocolate croissant with our morning coffee. Now, before we go any further with the self-congratulatio...

This week we returned to a topic we raised in the last podcast, namely build-to-rent and specifically the new Liv Indigo building at Sydney Olympic Park. They held an open day last weekend and we went down to have a look and chat to … well, anyone who was interested in talking to us. You can hear the results of that in the podcast (or read the transcript at the end) but this build-to-rent block do...

We are looking at two very different kinds of rentals this week.  The first is build-to-rent apartments (which is definitely NOT affordable housing, regardless of what anyone else might tell you).The other is short-term holiday rentals which are routinely and often erroneously called Airbnb. That's the generic term but, in fact, we will be talking to Stayz, their biggest rivals in Australia....

It’s renovations all the way in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap as we chat about a Forum post asking what can be done about a disastrous and unauthorised renovation, now that the owner is planning to sell, bodgy renos included. That’s one end of the spectrum where a major and mostly illegal renovation has been allowed to continue without so much as a “by your leave” let alone a by-law. At the other end...

People who don't care about pets in apartments shouldn't switch off just yet, regardless of how bored you are with the whole issue. It has implications for everyone in apartments, whether you have pets or not, as you may discover when your upstairs neighbour starts stomping around on their new, cheap timber floor. Letting ourselves off the leash this week, we also explore why Sydney&apos...

The big strata news of this week stopped us in our tracks. The NSW Court of Appeals has overturned a decision by the strata tribunal (NCAT) which, earlier this year, ruled that strata schemes could create "no pets" by-laws. Just to be clear, NCAT last year twice ruled that no-pet by-laws were illegal, then the NCAT Appeals Board overturned those decisions, then the Court of Appeals, the...

It’s a bit of a Budget special on Flat Chat this week, if only because we are talking about money. Specifically we are discussing the personal taxes that you probably didn’t even know you are supposed to pay when your strata scheme starts making a profit.  And we'll discuss where to get dough when your strata schemes needs a lot of it in a hurry. To which end, we have a chat with Paul Morton,...

This week's podcast is all about wheel-clamping, email privacy and the amazing legacy of the Sydney Olympics athletes' village. But one of the biggest pieces of news this week is about the podcast itself or, more to the point, these show notes. As we approach our 100th edition, and following numerous requests from readers who don't listen to podcasts, we have finally discovered a pr...

It’s another big week on the podcast front with a lot of serious – and not so serious – issues to discuss. First up we look at this story about how the radical renovation of unused storage space in a Bondi block has allowed the owners to upgrade the whole 1930s building with new electrics, plumbing, roof, balconies and terraces. This, we learn, is what the other side of the “forced sale” laws allo...

We have one of our longest ever Flat Chat Wrap podcasts this week, but it’s all good so brace yourselves, pace yourselves and buckle up for some interesting material from our multitude of guests (well, three, to be exact).First there is the redoubtable Karen Stiles who is the Executive Officer at the Owners Corporation Network (OCN) and, as such, has a seat at the table for some of the most critic...

This week’s podcast takes a look at an area of strata life where strata managers could be breaking the law … because apartment-owning clients want them to. We’re talking about email addresses which, if they are part of your strata scheme’s records, should be available for inspection to all owners. But many owners – and a fair few tenants – don’t want their email addresses to be available to their...

We have a bumper edition of the Flat Chat Wrap podcast for you this week with a ton of material and some new voices too. You might want to ration your listening - for some people there are two commutes worth of pod in this episode. First off, we catch up with the amendment to the NSW strata Act that we flagged briefly last week, which would ban any apartment block from having a by-law that said pe...

It’s a case of too many Ps on the pod this week when we discuss your participation, the Hyperbole Towers podcom, pet petitions and payment for strata committee members. Let’s get to participation first.  We want to hear your voices, literally, so send us a question or a suggestion for a discussion topic as an audio file – record it on your smartphone – and we’ll try to include it in the podcast an...

Were going flat out to lift the gloom in this week in the Flat Chat Wrap. First we go behind the scenes of the much heralded and long-awaited (by JimmyT, anyway) Podcom – podcast sitcom – which we are now calling Hyperbole Towers. Why “Hyperbole?” Because every new apartment block has some sort of exaggerated name, although not always creating the image the developers might hope for. For instance,...

It’s here! The long-awaited podcom (podcast sitcom) set in a dysfunctional apartment block’s strata committee is live and ready for your ears. The premise of this audio comedy, Hyperbole Towers, is as simple as it’s believable. The strata scheme has, thanks to a stuff-up by the secretary, accidentally changed its by-laws so that they MUST hold their meetings on Zoom (rather than CAN do so).Add in...

We cover a lot of ground in this week’s podcast … and by  “a lot of ground” we mean pretty much the whole planet. First, we take a look a the recent 60 Minutes report which examined the progress being made by NSW building commissioner David Chandler in trying to make sure no one in the future suffers the same heart-breaking disasters as the residents of Mascot Tower. It’s a surprisingly well put t...

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 that a Zoom-based AGM was used to push through an excessively expensive window replacement...