I was in at the ABC doing my strata spot with James Valentine the other day and the question of monster trucks and the increasing squeeze in apartment block car parks came up.
We wrote about that here a few weeks ago but it makes you think that Australia’s love affair with large 4WDs and the fact that half of us will be living in apartments in the next 10 years will reach some sort of crisis point soon.
A friend of mine lives in a town house complex where two tradies use their garages as workshops and for storage and use visitor parking permanently for their utes.
Recently her mother visited, parked in visitor parking and came back to her vehicle to find an obscene note plastered on her windscreen telling her that if she parked on “my” space again, her car would be trashed.
Do these people not get it or do they know exactly what they’re doing but have decided the by-laws are stupid and they obviously shouldn’t apply to them.
It’s times like this you wish there really was such a thing as StrataKops.
You can listen to the James valentine session HERE. And when you’ve done that, dive into the problems and solutions parked in the Flat Chat Forum.
- What do you do when your upstairs neighbours have complied with the by-law for timber floors … but you can hear every footstep? That’s HERE.
- Should the owners be expected to pay when the strata committee meetings have food and drink supplied? That’s HERE.
- The woman next door get her dog to poo and pee every day on the lawn outside my window. What can I do? That’s HERE.
- A power-crazed, rusted-on chairman is calling illegal meetings, not informing concerned owners and charging private renovations to the strata funds. What can you do? That’s HERE.
- An Airbnb host explains why he thinks Airbnb is being less than honest with the people from whom it makes its money. That’s HERE (scroll to the end).
- PICA Group strata managers explain why they charge for updating their systems in line with new laws (but other managers don’t). That’s HERE.
- Can the strata committee use strata insurance to pay for legal advice regarding a case against us at the Tribunal? That’s HERE.
All these and a lot more in the Forum and every Saturday in the Sydney Morning Herald.