Podcast: Builder fails despite home shortage
They say strata is a world of contradictions and never has that been so obvious as this week when one report reveals a shortage of housing, most of which will…
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Podcast: Strata’s next big challenge – ageing blocks
This week’s podcast is given over to one topic – but it’s a fascinating one: What are we going to do about Australia’s older apartment blocks? Sure, there’s been a…
Forum: Are two-lot strata schemes too much hassle?
We tend not to hear too much about the mysteries two-lot strata schemes like duplexes and villas. Is “mysteries” over-stating it? For a long time Randwick Council in Sydney’s East…
Concern as 50,000 unit blocks reach use-by dates
Between Mascot Towers and the Opal building, and more recently Vicinity in inner-West Sydney, the high-profile problems at various Sydney apartment blocks has drawn our attention to the quality of…
Forum: Something fishy going on down by the pool
One of the reasons I love this job is that, even though we are often asking and answering variations on the same questions, almost every week I get a query…
Podcast: Holiday let free-for-all (except investors)
It’s Airbnb (and Stays etc etc) all the way in this week’s podcast (sorry!) as we discuss the implications of Jimmy’s belated discovery that the Sydney-only by-laws banning holiday lets…
When the shine wears off golden oldie apartments
There are innumerable good reasons for wanting to buy an apartment – it could be empty nesters downsizing from a McMansion, renters upgrading to a place of their own, or…
Podcast: Another blow to ‘no-pets’ buildings
There’s another very mixed bag this week but it’s mostly good news in these trying times. Up in Queensland, the tribunal there is chipping away at restrictive pet by-laws in…
Live where you love, buy where you can afford
First-time buyers and investors can have the best of both worlds – live where they want and buy an affordable property, rent it out but have a toehold in a…
Trafalgar loses another battle in dog fight
A controversial mixed-use holiday rental and residential building has lost another battle in its continuing, long-running war against pets in the building. Thanks to a Queensland Body Corporate Commission tribunal…
Podcast: No pets, smoke, airbnb hosts or excuses
This week the pod is lighting up (but not inhaling) the smoking ban placed on a Queensland apartment resident who’s been ordered to take her habit inside and off her…
Too-hard basket smoked out by duty-of-care ruling
There’s an interesting side issue to the Queensland smoke-drift case resolved at a tribunal in December last year. And it could spell the beginning of the end for the “too-hard…