Podcast and AI test negative gearing claims
Negative gearing is in the news again with the Federal Government being urged to abandon or modify it to help ease the housing crisis. Now, here at Flat Chat we…
buying and selling
City apartment rents catching up with houses
Apartment rents are rising so fast in our biggest cities that they are catching up with house rents, according to a new report. New data reveals a consistent rise in…
Pitfalls and profits from buying into sand and sea
With reports that property prices in some coastal towns bounced back faster than in Sydney last Spring, but have started to plateau, savvy investors may be looking at making that…
Seller beware! Building Commission supersized
Dodgy developers watch out – the NSW Building Commission has just been boosted from 40 officers to 400. This much needed confidence boost for building quality has arrived for NSW…
Gold star claims – hearing is believing
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but then they also say that flattery will get you nowhere. It seems Building Commissioner David Chandlers ICIRT star ratings are…
Heading for a showdown with strata shonks
At the first AGM of a new apartment block, owners are expected to approve all sorts of contracts – but what if they are being misinformed, misled and ripped off?…
Bank’s title blunder almost screwed our unit purchase
There is a word I hate a little bit more the more I hear it. It’s a favourite of call centre help desks and online instruction manuals. The word is…
Property investment gain with a lot less pain
Can you imagine investing in a property that you can’t enter, occupied by tenants whose names you’ll never know and whom you will probably never meet? You’ll never get demands…
Govt help makes home ownership harder – report
Governments efforts to help more people get into home ownership have made it harder, rather than easier, for first-time buyers to get into the market, according to a new report.…
Forum: Kickbacks and con jobs in conveyancing
You have to think that if some of the service providers in strata-land spent as much time and energy just doing their jobs as they do trying to diddle us…
Unit starts soar while house building slumps
Apartment building is booming with higher-density building starts up by almost 45 per cent in the first quarter of this year, at the same time as free-standing home builds are…
Affordable or sustainable – can’t we have both?
Climate change deniers aside, most people agree that taking steps towards sustainability in an effort to curb global heating is a desirable aim. Meanwhile, opportunist property investors excluded, there is…