By-law change leads to heavy petting
QUESTION: My building has voted in a whole new set of by-laws, one of which says pets are OK so long as permission is sought and granted in writing. This…
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Hot and bothered over kit-off Christmases
Summer is a-coming in, so it’s ‘kit-off’ time in Strataland, leading to potential source of Christmas holiday conflict … the standard by-law requiring residents to be ‘appropriately dressed’ on common…
Mystery of the missing car
A wedding dress, a missing car and a paper trail leading back to an overzealous strata manager feature in this week’s saga. It all started when Dallan gave his daughter…
Ignorance not bliss
One of the recurring themes in both this column and the Flat Chat Forum is that tenants often don’t know that there are by-laws they’re supposed to observe, mainly because…
Rental Agents: Bridges or barriers?
In the past this column has been accused of being too hard on landlords and, to be fair, when things go wrong in rental units it’s often the man or…
A pox on your proxies
QUESTION: I am not quite sure what “Proxy Farming” is. I think that I am experiencing the effects – Dudley, via the Flat Chat Forum. ANSWER: We’ve addressed this in…
Golden oldies get a going over
All the talk recently has been about strata newbies rushing into the off-the-plan market with their first-time buyers grant in one hand and their stamp duty exemption in the other.…
Sinking under water bills
QUESTION: My rental agent has just closed, leaving the water bill unpaid for six months – having pocketed my share along the way. He sold his rental roll to another…
Breaking the mould
QUESTION: Our apartment has a mould problem that was not disclosed to us before signing the lease. We have complained about this several times since moving in 12 months ago…
Last gasp for state’s smokers
We know smoking is a filthy habit – as many tobacco addicts will concede – and most of us are enjoying having pubs and restaurants that exile smokers to the…
Party boy pays – but Dad’s on a warning
QUESTION: While we were away recently my son held a party in our unit. One of the guests was beyond stupid and did some damage to the common property. My…
Should you fight for the right to be untidy?
QUESTION: We recently had our routine landlord’s inspection and a letter was left saying that the premises were in an “unsatisfactory condition” and would need to be re-inspected. This was…