Podcast: Five years on, pets are here to stay

This week we look back at what has been described by some lawyers as one of the most significant legal decisions of the 21st Century – right up there with Donald Trump’s court losses.

We are talking about the “Jo Cooper” decision five years ago which said strata schemes couldn’t impose blanket bans on pets. 

So many strata schemes have pets these days that it feels like dog and cat ownership is almost compulsory – and no, the sky hasn’t fallen in and so far, no frail or elderly person has been savaged to death by marauding chihuahuas.

We will also be looking at how the state government is claiming that its moves to ban rent bidding have meant rents have gone down.  And hearing why they are likely to start rising even faster.

And we will be answering a question that was asked on radio on James Valentines Afternoons on Tuesday (click here and whizz forward to 1h 35mins) – do you need to have a second, separate laundry sink when you move your washing machine and drier into your renovated kitchen?

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

Transcript in Full

Jimmy

I was in Parramatta yesterday.

Sue

Well, that’s a long way to go for you, do you mean?

Jimmy

It is, yeah. Anything more than half a kilometre outside the immediate vicinity of our apartment feels like a bit of a trek. But I went to be on the James Valentine show on ABC Radio.

Sue

Oh yeah?

Jimmy

And that studio they’ve got, which is quite small, is in Parramatta Square. Have you ever been there?

Sue

I have, but I’ve only ever been there when they were actually kind of constructing it. So there’s lots of scaffolding around.

Jimmy

It’s amazing. It’s absolutely amazing. You’ve got offices, you’ve got restaurants, cafes, you’ve got the University of Western Sydney, I think, has a campus there.

You come out of the station and you just walk through this underground passageway with all these coffee shops and cafes and food outlets and whatnot. And suddenly you’re out in the square and it’s… I was astonished actually.

Sue

Well, I’ll have to come with you one time when you’re doing James.

Jimmy

Yeah, we’ll go and have lunch.

Sue

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Jimmy

Yeah, but then he’ll just want to talk to you and he won’t want to talk to me.

Sue

No, rubbish, you’re much more interesting than me. But it’s sad because Lang Walker, the developer who has built most of that square, sadly he died last year.

Jimmy

Right.

Sue

And I talked to him about that square when I went and stayed at his… Fabulous resort. Yes, he’s got an island resort in Fiji.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

Kokoda Island, which is really…

Jimmy

No, is it Kokomo?

Sue

You’re right.

Jimmy

Kokoda is the Second World War trail thing. Kokomo Island. Kokomo.

It’s like the Beach Boys song. Yeah, I’m not gonna sing it.

Sue

All right, okay. Anyway, I went on to the island and he was very proud of it and talking all about it and stuff. I interviewed him about many of his commercial projects.

And, you know, next time I went to Parramatta Square, I looked around, but of course most of it was cut off because they were still building it. So I’d love to see it.

Jimmy

Oh, it’s fabulous. Anyway, so getting back to why we’re actually here today, we’re going to talk about rents and what’s happening and what’s going to happen with them. We’re going to talk about pets.

It’s five years since the famous Joe Cooper case. And we might get to talk about a couple of things that have come up on Flatchat in the forum and on the radio yesterday. I’m Jimmy Thomson.

I edit the Flatchat.com.au website.

Sue

And I’m Sue Williams and I write about property for the Sydney Morning Herald, the AFR, the Age and Domain.

Jimmy

And this is the Flatchat Wrap.

Sue

So what’s happening with rents at the moment?

Jimmy

Well, according to the government, they’ve had a huge success in defeating rent bidding.

Sue

That’s fantastic. And rent bidding is where people go, they want to rent an apartment. There’s a huge long queue of people outside, which we see all the time.

And somebody goes in and the rent’s maybe $700 and they say, okay, I’ll pay you $750.

Jimmy

It’s more, well, I don’t think they can stop anyone doing that.

Sue

Okay.

Jimmy

But what they are stopping is real estate agents saying, look, if you can come up with another 25 bucks a week, you’ll get… So they’re in that real estate auction frame of mind, where anything can go to the highest bidder. But it should really be a case of the apartment going to the most appropriate tenant.

And if somebody’s been told on an advertisement online or in a newspaper that the rent is going to be X amount, then they should not then turn up and find out that it’s going to be 10 or 20% more.

Sue

Like an auction, when you’re buying a house and you think it’s going to be a million and it turns out to be a lot more.

Jimmy

Yeah. But even then, they get quite nervy at real estate auctions these days, because if they are found to have underquoted to get the punters in, of course, the more people interested, the more people bidding, then the higher the price is likely to go.

Sue

Yeah. But they’re not really meant to give a price guide that’s less than 10% what the final result is.

Jimmy

Yes. But then, do they enforce that? I know that we know people in real estate who say, oh, we’ve got to be careful here.

But how would it be if they actually said, here’s the price guide, and when it gets to 10%, the first person to make that bid wins.

Sue

You’ll never see that happening.

Jimmy

No.

Sue

But I think they do get their knuckles wrapped if they’re a long way over. And if it’s a consistent thing, then I imagine that fair trading would have a word with them, really. Because obviously, there’s something wrong with their quoting, if they’re really underquoting.

I mean, everybody can put up a price guide, and suddenly, by circumstances, and lots of people are interested in a property, it goes way over.

Jimmy

I am hearing a couple of phrases in there that bother me. One of them is, they get their knuckles wrapped. And the other one is, fair trading will have a word with them.

Sue

Well, yes, you’re right. Now, you can be fined for underquoting.

Jimmy

Yeah, I think this has to be tougher than that. I really do. I think…

You have to be jailed. Ultimately, perhaps, if they don’t pay their fines, they would be. But I think they have to say to you, look, if you do this again, we’re going to suspend you.

You will not be able to conduct any auctions for the month of March.

Sue

Oh, so yellow card or red card.

Jimmy

Yeah, yellow card, red card. Works in football.

Sue

Okay.

Jimmy

And those guys get paid millions.

Sue

Mmm.

Jimmy

I think auctions of any kind are, by definition, inflationary. You’re encouraging people to pay more than, A, they want to be, and B, what the property is possibly worth. So, it’s all about emotion and…

Sue

Fear of missing out.

Jimmy

Fear of missing out, and the fact that some people just have more money to slosh around than others. Yeah. So, I think they’ve got to really think about this, because we are seeing prices going up.

For the past 10, 15 years, of course, that’s all going to change when Mr. Trump gets the world economy into the basket, the handcart that it’s going to go to hell in. But, in the meantime, you know, this is… And you never know with these things.

People might… If people are panicking about the economy, then they might start thinking, I’m going to take my money out of shares and put it into property, because then at least you’ve got bricks and mortar.

Sue

Sure.

Jimmy

You’ve got something.

Sue

But then they might be taking out bricks and mortar and putting it into gold.

Jimmy

Yep. Well, that seems to be what’s happening already.

Sue

Mmm. So, anyway, rent bidding. We’ve gone a long way away from rent bidding.

Jimmy

Yeah. So, the government says it has been responsible, or partly responsible, for a reduction in rents. Is this true?

Are rents going down?

Sue

Certainly, the rental growth. It’s very different.

Jimmy

Rental growth is going down.

Sue

Well, it’s very different for different areas of Australia. But rental growth generally is slowing.

Jimmy

Right.

Sue

And in some places, rents have actually fallen minutely.

Jimmy

Right.

Sue

And that’s kind of pretty good news for tenants. But I was talking to a senior market researcher the other day, who was saying that most of the market confidently expects that in 12 months’ time, rents are going to start going up again. Because at the moment, people have really adjusted to high rents.

So, lots of younger people have moved back in with their parents, or they’re doing shared housing, that kind of thing. And now, because there just aren’t enough new places being built, and there aren’t enough development proposals being put up and being, you know, fast-tracked, then in 12 months’ time, it’s going to really hit again, that there’s going to be a real shortage of supply. And it just won’t be enough to satisfy demand.

So, rent prices are going to start rising again. And this guy, who’s actually very conservative, normally, said that it may…

Jimmy

What do you mean, conservative? I mean, careful or right-wing?

Sue

No, no, no. Sorry. I mean, you know, very careful and moderate in his predictions.

He was saying it may well… rents may well start rising more quickly than they did in 22 and 23.

Jimmy

Right.

Sue

Which is a bit of a frightening prospect. But when you think, well, housing supply hasn’t really gone up very much, and it’s not going to go up probably until 2030. So, yeah, the shortage of demand, supply and demand…

Sorry, the shortage of supply and an excess of demand just means prices will rise.

Jimmy

So, if you are a tenant and you’re listening to this, and your lease is about to be renewed, our advice to you is lock in for two years.

Sue

Good idea. Absolutely. Yeah.

And there are some more investors moving back into the market now because they’re hearing these predictions of rents rising more quickly. So, they’re expecting bigger yields in future. So, there are a lot more investors now in the market.

They’ve started to come back for the first time in a long time.

Jimmy

All right.

Sue

So, yes, that might… You know, in some ways, you think, well, that might be a good idea because they may be buying more homes and letting them out for people. And there’s obviously a lot more build-to-rent product around in the market, too.

Lots more companies doing that.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

So, I mean, there are some pluses in the industry as well as the negatives.

Jimmy

And more apartments are being built.

Sue

Not many more apartments, but not enough new apartments being built. Yeah.

Jimmy

Okay. So, all this stuff, we know what needs to happen. We need more apartments to be built.

We need people to be encouraged to get out of Airbnb and put those short-term rentals back in the residential market. And I’m told that a tax, an Airbnb tax or a short-term letting tax is being considered by the government here in New South Wales. But things need to change.

Decisions need to be made. And I’m sure that a tightening up of rent bidding is helping.

Sue

Yeah. Absolutely. But it’s not the answer.

It’s never a bad thing. Yeah.

Jimmy

It’s not the answer. Okay, when we come back, we’re going to talk about what’s happened to pets in apartments in the five years since the famous Joe Cooper case. That’s after this.

So, you covered the Joe Cooper case in detail and you’ve written a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, is it?

Sue

Domain.

Jimmy

For Domain. What’s happened? I mean, is there anything happened or is it all just quieting down?

Sue

Well, it’s all really, really quieting down and you kind of have to be forgiven for thinking it was just a storm in a teacup, the whole thing really. But as just to jog your memory, Joe Cooper was a woman who was living in the Horizon building in Darlinghurst, Sydney.

Jimmy

Yep.

Sue

And that building has always had a blanket ban on pets.

Jimmy

Yes.

Sue

And she had a little dog, Angus.

Jimmy

Yes.

Sue

And she was determined that Angus be allowed to live with her in Horizon. So, she took on the executive committee there and she took them to NCAT and then it went to court and then it went to higher court and higher court. And finally, the Court of Appeal judged that a blanket ban on pets was unconscionable.

Jimmy

Right.

Sue

And so, all over New South Wales, well, the government reacted to that. There were people who wanted to appeal that decision further and it was a possible process to go through. But nobody really had much appetite because it involved so many people, so much money, that in the end, the state government legislated to allow pets into apartments for all buildings.

Jimmy

I mean, let’s track back on that because Joe Cooper took the Horizon people to, or they took her to the tribunal, NCAT. And the initial tribunal said that the bylaw was invalid because it was oppressive.

Sue

That’s right.

Jimmy

And then they appealed and the Tribunal Appeals Board said, no, no, no, no, it’s a fair and reasonable bylaw. And then, so dogs were out again. And then Joe Cooper appealed and it went straight to the Court of Appeal, which is the highest court in the state and is capable of setting precedents, not only for every other jurisdiction in the state, but every other jurisdiction in Australia can use Court of Appeal judgments as precedent.

And the Court of Appeal said, no, the original tribunal decision was correct, that the bylaw was oppressive.

Sue

That’s right. But one further appeal was possible and I don’t know if that would have gone to the Federal Court of Appeal.

Jimmy

It would have gone to the High Court. Yeah, gone to the High Court of Australia.

Sue

And there were people who really wanted to appeal.

Jimmy

And that wouldn’t have been cheap.

Sue

Oh, that’s right. And so much money had been spent. So I think in the end, the people who really didn’t want animals in apartments just kind of threw up their hands and said, this is going to be a disaster.

Our buildings are going to be overrun with peeing animals everywhere and barking animals. It’s going to be awful.

Jimmy

It’s been a nightmare ever since. Except it hasn’t.

Sue

No, it hasn’t. So I kind of thought it would be great to do a story about what’s happened five years after that Court of Appeal decision. And so I went back to the Elan, which was another building that joined the same kind of battle to stop animals in apartments.

And I went to the Horizon, the original apartment building, and they both allow pets now. They both have, you know, bylaws, which every building has bylaws about whether you can carry pets across common property or you have to have them on a lead. And the Horizon also has bylaws where the pets can’t loiter in common property areas.

Things like that.

Jimmy

He’s loitering pets.

Sue

Oh no, I think it’s, sorry, I think that’s the Elan. You can’t loiter in common property areas. Which is a shame because they’ve got really nice gardens and you kind of think it would be nice to be sitting there working and having a dog gambling at your feet.

Jimmy

Well, I’m thinking of those paintings of dogs actually gambling, playing clubs and smoking cigars and they’d be loitering.

Sue

That would be fun too. Yeah, exactly. So they all have quite strict bylaws.

But really they’ve all said, well, no, it’s all working OK. And people at the Elan have said that it’s actually a really nice atmosphere now because people chat to people about their dogs and talk to, breaks the ice and lifts. You know, people start, neighbours start talking and things.

And in the Horizon people say, oh, well, it hasn’t really made much of a difference really. And so it’s interesting that after all that, you know, we’ve got pets there. There’s an enormous number of pets at Horizon now because of, particularly after COVID, because lots of people got pets too.

And I think there’s a suggestion that prices have gone up as a result from some people, mostly the pro-pet people.

Jimmy

Yeah, I would imagine.

Sue

But because, you know, a lot more people, I mean, so many of us have pets now. A lot more people can actually go into the Horizon and bid for their apartments if they’ve got the money.

Jimmy

As we used to say, you know, 30% of Australians had pets. And if you said you cannot have pets in our apartment block, then you’d ruled out 30% of the potential purchasers.

Sue

Absolutely. And there are now more pets in Australia than there are people. Really?

Yes, there’s about 28,000 pets and 27,000 people. 26 to 27,000 people.

Jimmy

I think that would be a million, wouldn’t it?

Sue

Oh, gosh, yes. Millions. Sorry.

Jimmy

I hate to correct you.

Sue

Sorry. No, absolutely. Millions.

Sorry.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

So, yeah, but I had a chat to Joe Cooper as well. Sadly, Angus passed away.

Jimmy

Because he was on his last legs.

Sue

Yeah, he was quite old.

Jimmy

And that’s why she wanted him to be around.

Sue

Yeah, that’s right. And so she’s thinking of getting a new pet maybe at the end of the year. But she was talking about what an incredible toll the whole battle took on her.

Yeah, it would have done. She faced a lot of opposition and she faced a lot of abuse in lots of ways.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

There were kind of highlights as well. I mean, after the court case, she was invited over to Necker Island. You know Richard Branson’s island in the Caribbean?

She was invited over there because he likes to sort of mentor audacious people, as he terms them, really. And he took a liking to her. She ended up going back again and speaking and making a presentation there as well.

So, I mean, it’s nice for her to have got that recognition.

Jimmy

A bit white lotus-y by the sound of it.

Sue

Maybe it is. And also that court decision was called one of the top 10 court rulings of the 21st century by the College of Lawyers in Australia. Yeah, and number one was the decision against Trump.

So, I mean, she’s kind of in interesting company.

Jimmy

Interesting company, indeed, indeed.

Sue

So, she’s also writing a book. Yes, and that’s going to be published this year, she hopes, about what happened with that verdict and what happened behind the scenes, what she went through, how the building shaped up, what people said, you know. So, I mean, that will be a real drama.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

Hopefully she has a good defamation lawyer so she doesn’t face any problems.

Jimmy

My God, you’d want one, wouldn’t you?

Sue

Yeah, you would. I mean, I think Horizon has more lawyers per square meter than any other book in the land.

Jimmy

Than even Pence. That’s right. Would it be unreasonable to have a bylaw that said you can’t have lawyers?

Actually, it reminds me of one of my favourite Strada stories. It was somebody in California building a gated community. And they said, you know, this is open to everybody except lawyers.

And somebody said, why don’t you want lawyers? And he said, because they just cause trouble. They’re just always demanding that their rights by the letter of the law and they don’t try and get on with people.

And a lawyer sued him. A lawyer who didn’t even want to buy into the gated community sued him for discriminating against lawyers. And the guy went to court and said, see what I mean?

Sue

But presumably he lost. The lawyer would have won.

Jimmy

Yeah. When we come back, we are going to talk about a couple of things that have come up on the forum. Not least, do you need to have a separate laundry sink in your renovated kitchen?

That’s after this. So we had some interesting calls, James Valentine and I, and you’ll be able to listen to them. I’ll put a link to the recording on the ABC.

But one of them was somebody said, look, I’m getting a kitchen renovation done in their apartment. And the kitchen people have said, if you’re going to put your tumble dryer and washing machine in the kitchen, you’ve got to have a separate tub. You’ve got to have a separate sink for them.

And he thought, yeah, this sounds like, you know, they’re just sort of inflating their contract by having to put something else in. And somebody was listening. Well, I hope a few people were listening.

Somebody was listening and wrote to me and said, here’s the part of the National Construction Code. And it says quite specifically, if you have your laundry facilities in your kitchen, you must have a separate sink.

Sue

Wow. I had no idea.

Jimmy

Neither did I. I was completely caught on the wrong foot with that.

Sue

Because as well, I mean, apartments, you know, the kitchens aren’t terribly big sometimes. So an extra sink takes up a lot of room.

Jimmy

But, you know, we were talking, walking down the street the other day and we were talking about how laundrettes, as we know them, have kind of disappeared. But now they’ve been replaced by really shiny, especially near us, near the backpacker area where, you know, people need to do a big wash once every two months. And, you know, they’re shiny and clean and there’s no coins because you use your phone or your credit card or whatever.

Sue

And I always remember a laundry in Tasmania in Hobart. And it’s fantastic. It’s called The Laundry, but it’s also a cafe.

Jimmy

It’s a good cafe.

Sue

Great cafe, great coffee, fantastic food. And you can do your laundry at the same time. There should be more of those here.

Maybe there are.

Jimmy

Maybe there are. Although I don’t think there’s any shortage of cafes within 100 metres of the laundry we passed the other day. But it made me think, we were having this conversation about old laundry buildings in old apartment blocks.

And a lot of them have become almost redundant because people have moved their laundry facilities into their apartments when they’ve had a renovation.

Sue

So you mean like in Art Deco buildings where they have separate laundry and communal laundry?

Jimmy

Not necessarily.

Sue

And they have communal lines and things and a warm room to dry their clothes?

Jimmy

Well, that’s the posh version, yes. But you remember the apartment we used to have down in Bondi? It had wash houses and it also had a bomb shelter.

And people are moving away and they’re turning them into storerooms and things. But now I think there must soon be a move back to people saying, you know what, we use our washing machine and our tumble dryer. Well, hopefully they line dry where they have the option, you know, once a week.

We don’t need it to be taking up room in our apartment for the other six days a week.

Sue

Makes much better sense, doesn’t it, to have a separate laundry?

Jimmy

And now you have the technology where you can say to people, look, you put your code in when you start the thing. And you get billed every month? You’ll get billed for the electricity and the water, everybody’s sharing it.

And, you know, you could even have an online calendar where you say, look, book the laundry for these times and nobody else can use it. And again, electronically, you could code it so that even if somebody tries to sneak in, they can’t do it. All it would need is to complete the picture.

You remember the old days, you’d have a list up. I remember one building we went into, there was a list up in the hallway and it said people on the first floor can do their laundries on a Wednesday. And if somebody had left their clothes on the line on the day they weren’t supposed to, they’d come out and find them lying on the floor.

Sue

Oh, horrible.

Jimmy

Or lying on the ground, on the grass. So what you’d need is a machine that as soon as those people, as their time was up, the doors open and the clothes come flying out. Maybe that’s overdoing it just a bit.

Sue

It sounds like a good idea, though, because, you know, lots of houses, they don’t have double sinks, surely, in their kitchens. I mean, I grew up in a house.

Jimmy

In our apartment here, our little laundry in the hallway has a separate sink.

Sue

Yes.

Jimmy

And I think the reason they do that is because they don’t, there’s health issues. You do not want to be washing your vegetables in the same sink that you’ve recently been soaking your socks.

Sue

No, because I went to visit a friend in Scotland once and I realised when I went into her kitchen and there was loads of dirty washing in the sink. There’s only one sink in the kitchen. And I started thinking, she’s in trouble.

And she was. She was very depressed. And it was kind of like a really awful image.

Loads of washing in the sink, kind of all over everywhere. And often trying to dry over dishes in a rag, left out to dry as well.

Jimmy

They got the laundry on a dishrag.

Sue

Yes. It was kind of like an old John Osborne story.

Jimmy

Right, I hope you’re going to write this into one of your novels.

Sue

It’s a great image. It is really. It’s a very depressing image.

Jimmy

Presumably, you’re trying to tell people that somebody’s depressed.

Sue

Yes, absolutely. Okay.

Jimmy

All right.

Sue

It doesn’t, yes, it’s not good to use friends in that way.

Jimmy

That’s what they’re for.

Sue

Oh, no.

Jimmy

And your novel, you’ve sent it off this week.

Sue

Yes, my new novel, yes. Not to be confused with the novel that’s just out. And it’s doing incredibly well.

Jimmy

So I hear.

Sue

So it’s great. But yeah, I’ve just finished my new book. So that’s a huge relief.

But I haven’t heard back from the publishers yet. So they might come back and say, please rewrite the whole thing, which will be awful.

Jimmy

I can tell you it is. That’s what I had to do with my last book. But they like the new versions.

Sue

That’s great. Oh, my God. Why do we do this?

Jimmy

Oh, it’s easier than working. All right. And on that note, thank you for coming down the corridor and talking to the people.

Sue

Pleasure.

Jimmy

And thank you all for listening. We’ll talk to you again soon.

Sue

Bye.

Jimmy

Bye. Thanks for listening to the Flat Chat Wrap podcast. You’ll find links to the stories and other references on our website, flatchat.com.au. And if you haven’t already done so, you can subscribe to this podcast completely free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher. Just search for Flat Chat Wrap with a W. Click on subscribe and you’ll get this podcast every week without even trying. Thanks again.

Talk to you again next week.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.