JimmyT eats his words… and they taste great!
Unless you are avid listeners to our podcasts, you may not realise that a month or so ago Jimmy took himself off to Saigon, Vietnam, for a couple of weeks…
ATO targets double-dip landlords and tax fixers
As we hurtle towards the end of the financial year, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is warning rental property owners that their tax returns are in the spotlight this time…
Can developers fix their defective reputations?
We have written a lot in these pages about efforts by the NSW Building Commission to ensure defects in new apartment buildings are fixed, in part using the iCIRT star…
Why good strata owners make bad decisions
Even though strata owners may be smart and well-intentioned, they don’t always make great decisions, especially collectively. And sometimes strata buildings delay important decisions or, worse still, actually make really…
Forum: Is it okay to record committee meetings?
The vexed question of whether you are allowed to record strata committee meetings has raised its head again – with new complications for the modern age. First of all, it…
Podcast: Cheap shots and affordability under fire
A slightly shorter but more pointed podcast this week as Sue reports on plans to demolish two affordable-rent apartment blocks and replace them with one luxury block with fewer presumably…
Fake news clickbait over ‘neighbour from Hell’
It’s rare that we are inspired to quote Shakespeare, even as we strut and fret upon the strata stage. But there’s a story in Domain in the Sydney Morning Herald…
Show me the missing strata money
You’d think that strata buildings would notice if money is missing, given how frugal they are. But, in NSW there’s more than half a million dollars of uncollected strata money…
NSW tips more millions into defect detectives
Life must be pretty sweet for the former NSW Fair Trading civil servants who were tipped into the Building Commissioner’s defects taskforce. No longer do they have to deal with…
Forum: Insurance bumped up because of Airbnbs
Here’s a dilemma that I’ve been waiting to see crop up in the Forum for a couple of years now – can short-term letting hosts be charged the difference if…
Podcast: Nimby dog whistles and microflats
This week we take a swing at polarising polititicians who are hoping to fire up the Nimbys against medium-density housing.They know it’s what the state needs, they know it will…
New Chandler video exposes ‘another Mascot’
Building Commissioner David Chandler believes another Mascot Towers may have been avoided thanks to his department’s intervention in a high-rise development in Wollongong. “The nightmare at Crown View in Wollongong…