Guess what! The thing that annoys us most about each other, is noise. Who knew?
Far and away the most popular choice in our fun quiz about what irritates us most about our neighbours (if the words “popular” and “fun” are appropriate here).
All that aside, noise is a serious issue and it has three causes in apartment living – building standards, building design and our behaviour.
If the government would just impose building standards to prevent developers from building apartments with walls so thin you can hear the next-door neighbour changing their socks, a big chunk of the noise problem would go away.
If councils would stop approving apartment blocks where one apartment’s lounge or bathroom is next to, below or above another unit’s bedroom, life would be easier … and quieter.
And finally, if we could just get our heads around the idea that forcing people to listen to our crap choices in music – or the soundtrack of our dubious preferences inf action movies – has nothing to do with personal freedom and everything to do with being a bit of a tool, we’d all get along better.
By the way, rogue parking was second, just ahead of balcony smokers in the pet hate poll. You can still vote on what irritates you most about strata living HERE.
These are among the points I will be making on Monday morning (Sep 10) on Studio10 … on … um Channel 10. All those 10s must be an omen of something.
Meanwhile, as I plunder the rich mine of misconception, misunderstanding and misanthrope that is strata living, you have provided me with more nuggets of knowledge than I can ever use.
For instance, if your parking space is in the bowels of the building and there’s a nice space allocated to visitors, and it doesn’t mean you run the risk of scraping your doors on too-tight corners, how easy is it to just swap spaces? That’s HERE.
How about if you’ve just discovered concrete cancer in the roof of your garage and the owners corp has just done its dosh fixing other problems in the scheme; can you just pay for the repairs yourself and ask for the money back? That’s HERE.
If you live in Queensland – where caretakers are a protected species – and yours is a nasty, vengeful, psychotic bully, what can you do (apart from leaving the state)? That’s HERE.
When an original owner tries to manage the scheme but fails, then they employ as a strata manager the same person who handles all their property transactions, is there a conflict of interest? That’s HERE.
When individual members of the committee are being sued over decisions they made, can the other owners prevent them from using strata funds to defend themselves? That’s HERE?
Readership of this website has gone up a remarkable 20 per cent since the recent redesign and that means that by the time you get round to reading this there will be even more toe-curling questions for us to kick around.
Log in and you won’t miss out.
