Fancy a 400 sqm penthouse with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, two parking spaces plus uninterrupted city and parkland views … for only $1.19 million?
Interested? Why wouldn’t you be? This place also as a huge gourmet kitchen, timber floorboards, a massive tiled terrace and a fully fitted home office.
What’s the catch, you ask. Well, this particular penthouse is atop a boutique hotel … in Tamworth.
Now, your next question might well be, why are we looking at bargain basement penthouses in the country music capital of Australia?
And the answer is, Tamworth is where our new strata minister, Kevin Anderson, scoots his boots.
In this week’s podcast, Sue Williams and I ask what the member for this fine country town – and we mean ‘country’ in every sense – is doing looking after the serious needs of the two million people who live in strata in NSW.
Tamworth would only have apartment blocks three storeys high, if at all, we speculated. Turns out we were wrong: they are mostly two storeys high.
Apart, that is, from this absolute snip at 3/52-58 Brisbane St, in the heart of the home of the golden guitar (thank you, realestate.com.au).
We found the Tamworth penthouse when we were looking for the tallest residential building in the city that sings with a cry in its voice.
And it occurs to us that, apart from this one (and most unit blocks in Sydney), being lower than three floors means every apartment block in Tamworth could conceivably qualify for Home Warranty Building Insurance.
Flammable cladding? Tell the builder to rip and replace, pronto! Opal-style crumbling walls? Well you better git yo’ sorry ass in gear and uncrumble them, toot sweet.*
Does this disqualify Minister Kevin Anderson from running the Ministry of Innovation and Better Regulation, which runs Fair Trading, which runs strata?
Now, the new Minister for Bells and Whistles will have a lot on his plate, from dodgy mechanics and dangerous kettles and toys, to tattoo parlours, real estate agents, liquor licenses and yoga salons, so he can’t be expected to get up to speed on a mere bagatelle like, say, how half the population of Sydney will be living in 10 years.
Which means the Mandarins of Fair Trading will be running the strata show for the next four years. And that’s another good reason for buying that pad in Tamworth.
NB: Just because we couldn’t find a high-rise in Tamworth via the internet doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. All we are saying is, Pyrmont, Potts Point, Wolli Creek, Botany and North Sydney, this ain’t.
You can listen to the Flat Chat podcast here:
*I know! Ca ne fait rien.
