Roundup: After you’ve voted on same-sex marriage …
Cast your vote in the Flat Chat poll on whether or not our strata committees should speak on our behalf. It’s interesting watching the discussions over same sex marriage and…
Past Posts
These posts go all the way back to the raw versions of my Flat Chat columns for the Sydney Morning Herald’s Domain section over th e past 15 years. Some of the issues are specific to New South Wales, some are universal. There will almost certainly be differences in strata law between NSW and other states and countries and the laws have changed over that timespan too.
If you have a serious problem, contact the agencies (in Australia) listed in our contacts sections. Or contact a properly qualified and experienced strata lawyer. These columns should not be regarded as a substitute for professional legal advice.
Too late for medium-rise blocks with danger cladding
Last week the senate committee featured on the ABC TV Four Corners report on the spread of flammable cladding recommended that the potentially lethal aluminium composite panels, widely used on…
Flammable cladding report makes chilling viewing
Did you see Four Corners on the ABC this week? It was all about the dangers of inflammable cladding and how they’ve been around for two decades. You will be…
Five classic errors of unit block newbies
New to apartments or teetering on the brink of buying your first unit? Trusting that someone somewhere will make the right decisions for everyone? If only. You need to have…
Roundup: Lazy agent won’t hassle strata manager
Something too many landlords, rental agents, strata managers and strata committees don’t get is that something that seems too minor for them to bother with can be a huge deal…
Roundup: How to get rid of rusted-on office-bearers
One of the perennial problems discussed in the Flat Chat Forum is the issue of rusted-on office-bearers who aren’t performing all that well but won’t let anyone else’s hands anywhere…
Rental data reveals … not a lot, really
Here at Flat Chat we are all in favour of transparency and freely available information. But we’ re scratching our heads at the latest step in that direction by the…
Holiday lets – the sound and the fury
With a Sydney University report out last week claiming that holiday rentals are having a significant and negative impact on the residential housing market, whether you are a resident owner…
Roundup: Neighbour dug a secret cellar under her flat – then sold it
Just when you think it’s safe to dig through the latest posts to the Flat Chat forum, somebody comes up with a question that makes you go WHAT!?! But then,…
New options put renters first in housing affordability
There are two new buzz-phrases in the housing affordability lexicon – ‘build-to-rent’ and ‘rent-to-own’. Build-to-rent and rent-to-own are at opposite ends of the housing culture spectrum but both are being…
Roundup: Mystery tapping had a criminal cause
Tap, tap, tap. The sound had been driving neighbours mad. Every night from midnight for several hours, the people in one of the top floor flats would come home and…
Is flammable cladding such a big deal after all?
The NSW state government has sent out the first 800 letters to apartment buildings to find out which of them has dangerous inflammable cladding. What happens if you say yes?…