Letters to Peter Berry
These are the emails passed on to Peter Berry, Head of Policy Development at Fair Trading and to which he replied. There’s a link to his letter on the Flatchat…
Clean slate
Many older apartment buildings in Sydney were never intended to last as long as they have. So what do you do when your block has passed it’s use-by date? Q:…
Flood of complaint
It’s complicated enough to know who’s responsible when owners have problems but when it’s tenants, there’s a whole other level of confusion. Q: My friend Tim rents a ground-floor flat…
Sinking your teeth into the funds.
Now that all new and/or large apartment buildings have to have a sinking fund, the great unanswered (and largely unasked) question is, what happens to all the money while you’re…
Going up
When many of our older, smaller beach-side apartment blocks were built, their full potential was rarely realised. But styles and priorities change and opportunities arise. Q: I own both top…
Parking Mad
Flatchat has been in touch with the Office of fair Trading this week, following up some of the suggestions made and questions asked by readers late last year in our…
New Laws
Having only this past week been involved in an arm-wrestle with the Office of Fair Trading’s Education and Information department over the content of a new book I’m writing (out…
A Digital Message for Foxtel
As an avid TV watcher and recent convert to digital free-to-air, I can understand the frustrations of a number of big apartment buildings who’ve contacted me about their eagerness to…
Petulance avoided
Pets are becoming a much more acceptable part of apartment life but how can you let them in without turning the building into a menagerie? Q: We live in a…
Outvoted but not outsmarted
I think it was Winston Churchill who said democracy was the worst system of government … apart from all the others. In strata land, democracy has an anachronistic twist –…
Model by-law for pets
Apartment buildings are becoming more pet-friendly but some owners are concerned that it’s getting out of hand with no controls over pets. The Office of Fair Trading’s model by-laws say…
Land Grab
Just when you think you’ve read or heard everything, along comes another new twist on neighbours behaving badly. This time it’s the strata equivalent of a land grab and our…