Flats more affordable as house prices soar
With apartment prices recovering slowly in Sydney – while house prices are soaring to record levels – and with unit rents tumbling in Melbourne at twice the rate of rent…
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Why apartments are more sustainable than houses
A week or so ago I wrote a piece about recycling food scraps in which I repeated the theory that apartment blocks are less sustainable than standalone houses. You can…
Forum: When strata donations are illegal
Suppose you have a committee or a chair who’s passionate about some issue related to apartments – something like Airbnb or pets or anything that’s likely to get the political…
Podcast: Would you roll the dice on a $22m flat?
If you have a hankering for the high life and have a lazy $22 million lying around, you could score an apartment in the huge Crown tower above James Packer’s…
Data detectives to hunt down dodgy developments
Dodgy developers and shonky certifiers face even tougher times ahead as NSW Fair Trading uses its massive databases to target serial miscreants and force them to fix their defects before…
Podcast: Horror of our $700 million defects hole
There’s a horror story, a happy ending and a bit of housekeeping in this week’s podcasts. The horror is the $714 million owed by Home Building Compensation for all the…
Forum: Back-scratching backsliders face big fines
There’s always likely to be a bit of mutual back-scratching on any strata committee, but when it runs to turning a blind eye to payments that should have been made…
How do you like our new look … or not?
We thought it was time to give the Flat Chat front page a bit of a tweak, mainly to bring links to your recent Forum questions and answers further up…
Food for thought as city expands scraps recycling
There’s a common misconception that apartment blocks must be more sustainable than stand-alone houses, due to the economies of shared space. They’re not. The energy consumed by indoor lighting in…
Bowling club battle ends with wins all round
There were broad smiles and few tears last week when spades cut the once-hallowed turf of Waverley Bowling Club in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs. Not only did the ceremony mark the…
Forum: Reno plan panic, possums and barking dogs
Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether owners are up to something, or they simply don’t know the correct procedures or they have left things too late and are panicking. I…
Podcast: Another U-Turn as Airbnb history repeats
Apologies for subjecting you to another short-term letting vent, but after last week’s state government schemozzle when the new holiday rental regulations were announced, then shelved, we thought we’d better…