Insurance failures add $16k to cost of NSW flats
It has not been widely reported, but Building Commissioner David Chandler has a big dream for apartments in the state – that one day commercial insurers will return to the…
Forum: Pet misinformation and myths still rule roost
After all the flying fur over the NSW Court of Appeal overturning a blanket pet ban in a Sydney high rise, there has been a fog of misinformation, disinformation and…
With $1.7m one-bedders – you cannot be Sirius
The boxy, brutalist Sirius building is about to be transformed from a pragmatic, utilitarian ugly duckling to a swan worthy of a ballet at the Sydney Opera House, over which…
Sun sets on developer, leaving buyers in the lurch
The Sydney property developer that was the first to fall foul of NSW’s ‘sunset clawbacks’ laws has gone bust – leaving the buyers of its latest apartments, already three years’…
Podcast: Sirius, sunset clawbacks and feral cats
There is no building in Sydney that has polarised opinions more than the Sirius apartments on Circular Quay – unless you include the Opera House, its architectural antithesis across the…
New sustainability strata laws explained in video
A couple of months ago the NSW Government passed a law that made it easier for owners corporations to approve the installation of sustainable infrastructure. The law and its intentions…
Forum: Is it easy to split our strata scheme?
Back in the bad old days of strata, developers would stack unit entitlements on to average-sized apartments, and steer them away from commercial units, like shops, and penthouses. Unit entitlements…
Podcast: Property price panic and dodgy donations
With property prices soaring but houses outstripping apartments, as detailed in this story, we try to make sense of it all. Why is the gap between the cost of houses…
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…
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…