Bush builder is a strata outlaw
Living in our ivory (OK, concrete and glass) towers in the city, we tend to forget there are tens of thousands of apartment residents out there in the bush. Some…
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Short-stay report expects us to share the pain – and pay the price
The report by the NSW parliamentary inquiry into holiday letting represents a huge win for the misnamed “sharing economy” but a devastating blow to long-term apartment residents. Duchessed by the…
Double trouble for by-law breachers
If you are one of the many people who think that strata by-laws are just a bunch of blah and the new laws don’t really affect you (mainly because you…
Forum Roundup: sorting out the strataphobes
Sometimes you have an idea that is so brilliantly simple you know it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of ever seeing the light of day. I was thinking the other…
‘Name and shame’ file draws rental agent anger
Did you know that NSW Fair Trading has started naming and shaming bad operators? For two months now there has been a list on its website of businesses that have…
Forum Roundup – 80 percent fail quiz pet poser
By the time you read this, the quiz I set on the new strata laws (below) will have been attempted by 4,500 readers. And it has thrown up some surprising…
New strata laws hammer DIY renos
As new strata laws free up the regulations on renovations, can we expect a fresh wave of ‘DIY-itis’ in our apartment blocks? Maybe the opposite is true. New definitions of…
QUIZ: 20 questions on the new strata laws
The new strata laws for NSW are are only two months away. So what’s changed? If you think “not much” you could be in for a rude shock. Have a go…
Roundup: Law and order – strata style
You’ve probably heard that the new strata laws will do away with the silly rule that meant, strictly speaking, you had to get a special resolution by-law to hammer a nail…
Fast-tracked strata disputes first go in-house
Dispute resolution in NSW strata schemes is about to get a lot easier. Whether it will be better remains to be seen. Under the new strata laws, due to…
Time we banned strata management cowboys
I was at the launch of a new strata management venture recently and one of the senior executives said to me: “You’re not as angry as you used to…
Roundup: Short-stay concerns for stars in flats
I was wondering this week about how some of the more famous residents of apartment buildings in touristy spots might feel if the parliamentary committee looking into the holiday letting…