FLAT CHAT WRAP

A while ago I received a complaint from a reader that I had used the phrase “the very best in apartment living”.‘Very best”, she argued, implied that there was something good about living in a flat, and since this was clearly a stupid and perverse idea, I was being dishonest. Now, I have to admit that, running a website that sets out to solve people’s problem does have a fairly negative beginning:...

Jimmy Thomson and Sue Williams discuss what the various parties are offering strata residents and owners  in the run-up to the NSW state election. ____________________________________________________ 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 mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and...

It's hard to believe that we'll be voting on Saturday (March 23) for, possibly, the first new government in NSW in eight years. It's also hard to believe that we have a fixed term of four years here in NSW while the Federal Parliament has a maximum of only three years ... if they get that far. Three years is too short.  New Federal governments tend to spend the first year undoing th...

Labor spokesperson for Better Regulations and Innovation (and Fair Trading) Yasmin Catley calls in on the Flat Chat podcast ... and part two of the chat with OCN chair Phil Gall. ____________________________________________________ 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 mail@flatc...

We were very lucky last weekend to catch up with Labor spokesperson for Better Regulation and Innovation Yasmin Catley who, current polls suggest, is a very real prospect of being NSW’s next Minister for Consumer Affairs (she will ditch the Ministry of Long Names title).Yasmin has been getting a lot of coverage in Flat Chat recently for one simple reason – she has been talking about strata and thi...

JimmyT talks to OCN chair Phil Gall about how the Owners Corporation Network gets stuff done despite bring underfunded ... and what their cladding seminar offers apartment owners ____________________________________________________ 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 mail@flatc...

It used to be that when anyone talked about problems in strata, the perennial topics were the four Ps – pets, parking, parties (the noisy kind) and puffing (the smoke wafting from your neighbour’s balcony into your home).These days you are more likely to find yourself talking about Airbnb, inflammable cladding and building defects. Why?  For the simple reason that there’s a lot of them about. It s...

JimmyT rants about Airbnb, defects (and the Opal Tower report) and cladding ... and explains why we'll never get a Royal Commission into the apartment building industry. ____________________________________________________ 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 mail@flatchat....

I was intrigued this week by the announcement by the Federal Labor leadership that they plan to pour some of the money from their proposed “honesty tax” on banks into lawyers to help ordinary people get back what they’ve had chiselled out of them by unscrupulous money people. What a great idea. Make the baddies pay for people to help their victims. Now, how about a defects tax on developers to do...

The fire earlier this month (February 2019) on the outside of the Neo200 building in Melbourne conveniently coincided with a meeting of state and federal government ministers at which it was announced that the highly dangerous product would be banned from our shores. Of course, this is way too late for the people who have bought apartments in buildings that are covered in the potentially deadly ma...

Talking off-the-plan purchases and defects - plus your calls - with James Valentine.  And why Sydney MP Alex Greenwich thinks Airbnb is bad for Sydney renters, and Mark Latham will be bad for the NSW parliament. ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook   and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send com...

Chatting with James Valentine on air the other day, I was suddenly aware of how immune (or is it inured?) one can become to the idiocies of strata living. James posed the perfectly reasonable question; if you can take a kettle or a car back to the seller if it proves to be faulty, how come you can't just hand back the keys to an off-the-plan apartment when it turns out not to be up to scratch...

Talking apartments, Airbnb, pets, the Opal, defects, cladding and all things apartment related with Sydney MP Alex Greenwich ____________________________________________________ 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 mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and answer questions about...

This week our podcast is given over to an extended chat with NSW Independent MP for Sydney, Alex Greenwich. I've come across many politicians in this game. Most have been honest and decent (to a point) and a few have been self-interested and not so much corrupt as corrupted - mainly by party allegiance and personal ambition. But it's very rare to come across someone who is as clear-sight...

JimmyT gets up at 4am to talk to ABC Radio presenter Rod Quinn (and other insomniacs) about strata living in Australia. ____________________________________________________ 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 mail@flatchat.com.au. Register to ask and answer questions about apar...

In this week's podcast we have kind of hijacked the Rod Quinn "Talking Points" segment for his ABC Overnight show on radio last week - featuring Flat Chat's very own JimmyT talking strata with people from all over Australia,In may ways, this is a podcast within a podcast, in that we have grabbed the segment with Jimmy in it and slotted it into our format, but you will still hea...

Every so often, I get invited on to a radio or TV show to talk about apartments.  This week I've been on Breakfast on ABC 702 with Josh Zepps, (usually hosted by Robbie Buck and Wendy Harmer) and then on Friday I got up at 4am to go on ABC's early morning show with Rod Quinn (which will be featured in next week's podcast).That was a challenge (apart from being two cups of coffee und...

I am occasionally asked how come I ever got into writing about apartment living.  After all, I'm a published author,  have been a reasonabIy successful TV scriptwriter and occasionally still turn my hand to travel writing.  Against any and all of those pursuits, writing about flats and by-laws, committees and Airbnb breaches might seem a little ... um ... prosaic. It's not, by the way -...

If you think you've heard everything there is to know about the cracks crisis at the Opal Tower in Sydney, and the whole defects disaster in NSW and Australia as a whole, think again. So far, media coverage has barely scratched the surface. Meanwhile, politicians - in full election mode - are playing the blame game: it's the certifiers, it's the Labor party, all those years ago, it&...

JimmyT and Sue Williams ask the questions everyone else is avoiding, and provide the answers people need to hear, about the Opal Tower in Sydney and the whole defects disaster in high-rise apartment blocks in Australia. ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook   and Twitter and the Flat Chat website....

Despite having a great head for radio, I was enticed on to TV last Saturday (Dec 29) to talk building cracks with Professor Mark Hoffman (one of the engineers called in to examine the Opal) and host Basil Zempilas. It's only  five minutes long but we managed to be reassuring and alarming at the same time. You can watch it here:https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Opal-crisis.wmv __________...

Despite having a great head for radio, I was enticed on to TV last Saturday (Dec 29) to talk building cracks with Professor Mark Hoffman (one of the engineers called in to examine the Opal) and host Basil Zempilas. It's only  five minutes long but we managed to be reassuring and alarming at the same time. You can watch it here:https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Opal-crisis.wmv  _________...

Wrestling with laptops and hotel wi-fi, we finally bring you the second-last Flat Chat wrap podcast of the year. Was it worth the effort?  Only you can be the judge as we discuss levies, a lawyer's grab for disabled parking and Airbnb's backlash against politicians who support a register of holiday lets.https://episodes.castos.com/flatchatpod/Flat-Chat-Wrap-7.mp3  _______________________...

How to work out if your levies are too high, the sensible controls that have led Airbnb to threaten politicians' votes and nominations for our Heroes and Villains of Strata. ____________________________________________________ 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 mail@flatc...

Permissions for minor renovations, one owner in four blocking changes and ... of course ... Airbnb come to the fore as Jimmy joins James Valentine on his afternoon show on ABC Radio  ____________________________________________________ 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 mail@f...