What’s stopping your block from being greener?
Living as I do in a building that won an international architectural award for sustainability features in its design – many of which never made it off the drawing board…
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Management contracts that are 25-year shackles
Imagine you’ve interviewed for a job and the call comes: “you got the gig … we’re sending over a 25-year contract.” Twenty-five years? That’s half the length of a working…
Testing positive – areas where rents have risen
Coronavirus hasn’t quite killed Airbnb and its ilk but it’s certainly given the Australian short-term rental market a severe headache and a nasty dose of the shivers. Investors running scared…
Forum: Just another 150 bricks (not) in the wall
It’s all too familiar… a couple of people get themselves elected to the committee and soon, instead of enforcing by-laws and strata law, they start making up the rules as…
Podcast 83: Joke dad, garden secrets and pass-the-Corona party
It’s another showbag of conflict, calm and coronavirus craziness on the Flat Chat Wrap podcast this week. First, inspired by a question from our Forum, we discuss what you can…
Falconio facts and fictions – how they got it so wrong
JimmyT revisits the murky world of the TV “investigation” of the Peter Falconio murder … Those of you who’ve been transfixed by the unexplained mysteries and “new evidence” presented by…
Forum: dad and daughter double act driving us mad
Dealing with rude and bossy owners on your committee is hard enough but confronting the entitled, non-resident relatives of owners is a whole other set of soul-sapping challenges. This week,…
Podcast 82: Dogs, design and Donald Trump
If you are up to your eyes in paint, tiles and taps – or even better, just looking through the brochures as you prepare the domestic make-over you can’t put…
Strata managers warn of covid complacency
Apartment residents need to stay vigilant if they don’t want to see high-rise lockdowns of the type that recently shut down nine unit blocks in Victoria, say strata managers. “We’re…
Todd Squad unleashed on dog ban unit block
Star of stage musicals like the Boy From Oz, and former Dancing with the Stars judge Todd McKenney has weighed into a Sydney pensioner’s battle to keep his greyhound after…
Forum: Parking madness and untraceable tenants
Apologies for leading off on parking issues two weeks in a row but this one is such a doozy that it has even made it to our podcast. The problems…
Podcast 81 – Negative equity & positive plans
In this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast we encounter the best and worst in apartment living, from negative equity in off-the plan purchases, to multiple tenants causing parking chaos in…