Long-term pain in short-term shame
An odd little coincidence occurred in the past few days. In the same week that we discovered, almost tragically, that students and young tourists were being housed in shipping containers…
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Shipping containers of shame
Shipping containers of strata shame The other day I put a dark thought into the mind of a contact in the NSW government. Fair Trading has been running a campaign…
Strata law reform gunned down
The NSW Government has put on hold strata law changes that were due to come in this month – including allowing a majority of owners to sell units from under…
How short-term lets distort the rental market
Forget the buck’s night strippers’ glitter clogging up the lifts, the weekend footy fans vomiting in the stairwells and the country kids doing cannonballs in the communal spa, there is…
Curious case of a cat and an iPhone photo
The fur is flying in a strata battle over an illegal cat and a sneaky iPhone photo. It starts with a Flat Chat reader who tells us she inherited an…
How to beat brat dumping
Brat dumping – when parents buy an apartment for their teenage or young adult offspring so they can offload the results of their lack of child rearing skills on to…
Dementia sufferer wants to be elected
Ageing is not an issue that we immediately associate with apartment living … but it should be. Retirees and empty nesters are among the largest social groups moving into apartments.…
Landlords caught in repairs trap
Which law do I break? That’s the dilemma facing landlords whose tenants are suffering because of a failure of owners corporations to repair and maintain common property. “I keep having…
Brake on forced unit sales
The whole question of whether a majority of owners can vote to sell their entire building, bulldozing the objections of those who would rather stay, is the hottest topic in…
Passions high when strata owners start shooting
As more details emerge (here) of the strata dispute that led to the shooting at an executive committee meeting in Lakemba, the arrest of an elderly owner and the fracturing…
How to bounce a brothel from your block
How do you get rid of a brothel from your block? That’s the question facing owners in at least one residential apartment block in Sydney according to THIS STORY in…
Nude not naughty, just potty
This tale of neighbour annoyance comes directly from the Department of Be Careful What You Wish For. Take a happy little row of modern townhouses where most of the neighbours…