Can by-laws limit number of residents
Limit on tenants – but who’s counting? “Can bylaws be put in place to restrict the number of residents in a unit,” asks Bearforce1 on the Flat Chat forum. He…
Parking cops for strata blocks
Parking cops for strata blocks Concerns over illegal parking in strata schemes near railway stations and office developments – and the possibility of apartment and townhouse owners taking the law…
Parking thieves: some strategies
Illegal parking by outsiders in strata blocks is a perennial problem. While strata residents – owners and tenants – can be fined or, according to some lawyers, clamped or towed…
Who’s responsible for my leaky windows?
QUESTION: We own an investment property and for the past year two sets of tenants have advised the managing agent that water is penetrating through the bedroom windows in heavy…
No love lost over noisy nookie
A Sydney apartment dweller is planning to record her neighbours’ noisy lovemaking in an effort to force them to re-carpet their tiled floors. Plagued by nightly sounds of “moaning, screaming…
Sound measuring phone apps
For all you sleepless strata dwellers, kept awake by the defeaning noises of your neighbours who insist their CD player/surround sound/drumkit is only too loud because you are too sensitive,…
Fair trading – friends not foes
One upon a time – round about 10 years ago – this website and the newspaper column from which it sprung would trash the CTTT and Fair Trading on a…
Time for more discrimination?
This isan update of a column I wrote in May this year Back in May (2013) I was asked to comment on radio about the A Current Affair TV exposé…
NBN coming to your block – like it or not
In about a month we will know whether we are going to get the gee-whiz, super dooper National Broadband Network favoured by Mr Rudd, or the state-of-the-art (until it becomes…
Backyard blitz on granny flats
What if you discovered that your cheap-as-chips rented home in the backyard of someone else’s house, wasn’t just “unofficial’ but was unsafe and technically unfit for human habitation? We are…
Granny Flats – Some Background
Granny flats Dependent Person Units (DPUs) seemed like a great way to ease the rental shortage and fit more people into our bulging suburbs. But this aspect of the affordable…
NBN – a no-brainer for apartments
The National Broadband Network may be a bit of a political football right now but it is a reality for a lot of Australian residents, with more getting connected very…