As this is the last Flat Chat of the year, I have a Christmas gift for you. It’s a book full of fun and games and recipes and comes with a free Easter egg.
OK, I say ‘fun and games’ ironically, the recipes may be for disaster and the Easter egg is what the young folks call a hidden surprise (don’t worry, the real chocolate ones will be in the shops in about three weeks).
And, I must confess, I am re-gifting. The book is NSW Fair Trading’s brand-new Strata Living handbook brought out last month to match the new laws.
Download the Strata Living handbook from the Fair Trading website.
Seriously, though, this is a much-improved publication. OK the first 20 pages are a lot of blah about laws, budgets, elections and stuff like that – like the electrical safety warnings that no one reads in the instructions for a new gadget.
But after that you get the material that everyone really wants, which should come under the heading “How to stop your neighbour annoying you but force them to put up with your crap.”
There’s something for everyone. Pets, parking, parties, smoking, renovations – all your family favourites are here.
What’s this hidden surprise? On page 28 there’s a long passage about short-stay holiday letting (something that isn’t even mentioned in the Act or regulations).
It reveals the grounds on which you can complain about noise and disruption. It advises owners corps to adopt a by-law requiring landlords who list their properties on websites like Airbnb and Stayz that they have to notify a change of use.
And it reminds us that, if our building’s insurance premiums go up because of holiday letting, we can pass the entire additional cost on to the ‘hosts’. Nice.
When it comes to the new strata laws, forced sales of apartments may have grabbed all the headlines but short-stay letting is going to be the big fight next year.
International multi-billion-dollar online entities are sucking up to your MPs right now, hoping to compensate for being shut out of other major cities all around the world. If our politicians change the laws to suit them, it’s going to get very ugly, very quickly.
But assisted by Strata Living, you and your neighbours can still decide whether or not you allow holiday lets in your building. Merry Christmas.