Forum: Time to rewrite strata manager contracts?
The standard strata management agreement – as issued by Strata Community Australia – is a brute of a document. And while it’s not an mandatory form as, for instance, the…
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What the pandemic has taught us about ourselves
There’s a quirky UK comedy series on TV called Taskmaster, in which five comedians are set a series of bizarre physical and logical challenges, usually with hilarious results. At the…
Apartment blocks getting wired-up about EVs
Apartment buildings throughout Australia are racing to install electric vehicle-charging systems in their garages even though many still have no electric car-owners – or, at most, just one, writes Sue…
Airbnb ‘won’t name renter of trashed unit to police’
Just a few weeks since the much-vaunted short-term letting register and code of conduct became law, Riot Squad police have twice been called in to break up violent and destructive…
Strata isn’t fixed – and it’s in the wrong ministry
When Dominic Perrottet announced his new cabinet last week, it wasn’t the changes at the top that drew most attention from apartment owners and strata professionals. It was one near…
When our property market became a space race
Space: the final frontier – or, for those in the Sydney property market over the past year, the financial frontier. For the biggest trend in pandemic-plagued 2021 has turned out…
It’s party time: How to go wild but not feral
It’s safe to say that our New Year’s Eve parties will be different this year. For a start, it will be just over two weeks since social gathering restrictions in…
Time to thank the unsung heroes of strata life
Since we last met under the mistletoe, as apartment residents, we’ve found ourselves in the odd position of presenting a very specific challenge to Health authorities, whose responses lurched from…
Podcast: Tamarama drama and our new Minister
It was Monday morning and we had just finished editing the podcast when we got the word that NSW had a new Fair Trading minister. Meetings are cancelled, lunch is…
New Fair Trading Minister has scandal-plagued past
NSW appears to have a Fair Trading minister again, having ditched the cumbersome Innovation and Better Regulation title. However, it seems to also be returning the portfolio to its training…
Forum: A warning about issuing warnings
I have to admit I’m feeling unusually smug this week – but that’s what happens when you get things so precisely right it feels like there was a betting fix…
Podcast: Is this why Dave says he’s no messiah?
If there is one person in the strata sphere who’d say Building Commissioner David Chandler is not the Strata Messiah, it would be the commissioner himself. As we discuss on…