Flat Chat was on a panel at a conference of barristers in Sydney last week, talking about the “sharing” economy and how new technologies are changing or lives.

One of my fellow panellists, a property lawyer from Brazil, said one of the problems in her country was that people were turning up to find that the Airbnb property listed was nothing like what had been advertised.

This was becoming such an issue there that the government is planning legislation to curb false advertising.  But nothing is likely to change – the whole nature of the beast is based on fake accountability.

Closer to home, this summer in Sydney and Melbourne is likely to get very ugly in our apartment blocks, with neither the Victorian nor NSW governments having been able to come up with any sensible measures to tide us over until new short-term letting laws come in.

Holidaymakers are going to turn up to discover their pass keys don’t give them access to the swimming pool and gym for which they paid extra, the parking is off limits and maybe even the lifts won’t work.

Why?  Because some unit blocks are already planning to disrupt the so-called disruptors.

You want to ignore the “residential only” zoning that specifically says no lets for less than three months?  And your lily-livered local council refuses to enforce its planning regulations?

OK, then we will invoke a rule that only registered residents have access to common property?

And, as the temperature soars, so will the tempers. As much as I abhor the idea, I predict violence, especially when Barmy Army cricket fans can’t even get into the flat they have rented or a resident has had a gutful of partying interlopers.

Remember where you read it first.

Meanwhile, back in the civilised, law-abiding world in which we try to live, our problems are much more manageable.

• What can you do about smoke drift from smokers when there’s no specific by-law? That’s HERE.
• The strata manager is a slacker, the investor owners don’t know, the rest don’t care – what can one resident couple do? That’s HERE.
• The old electrical fuse board needs replacing but some owners have gone ahead and installed their own alternatives. Do they need to pay their share of the new one?  That’s
• An owner has grown a hedge for privacy – blocking out views of the common property garden. What can you do?  That’s HERE.