Owners win battle over Biowood cladding
Apartment owners battling to have combustible cladding replaced on their buildings have won a landmark legal victory – giving hope to the thousands more facing similar dangers, writes Sue Williams.…
cladding
Upper House report slams Government on cladding, defects and reforms
A NSW Upper House committee has slammed the NSW State government over alleged failures in three key areas all of which are directly related to apartment living. The government is…
Burning issue – OCN seminar on new fire regs
There are few phrases that send more of a chill thorough the hearts of strata owners than the words “fire safety”. Whether you’re in an old building badly in need…
PODCAST 52 – Our strata year of living dangerously
It’s getting to the end of the year so we thought we’d look back at the last 12 months of apartment living in Australia. Unfortunately, there seem to be a…
Building expert: defects plan is deeply flawed
The NSW government’s plans to construct our apartment buildings better in the future, released last week, were met with a universal outpouring of … well … whatever the opposite of…
Flammable cladding crisis solved – phoenix it!
The fire engineer who approved the Neo 200 building in Melbourne – the most recent high-rise cladding fire in Australia – has gone to court to try to have his…
Flat Chat Wrap #29 – the great Mascot Tower giveaway … and what it means about cladding
Confronted by images of residents of Mascot Tower evacuating the building, the NSW government has moved relatively swiftlly to plug the accommodation gap with a loan to the Owners Corporation…
Flat Chat Wrap #27 – Ghost towers, cladding costs and power games
This week, JimmyT and Sue Williams discuss the brand new empty flats that investors are “warehousing” – keeping them locked up and unlived in – until the property market improves.…
Cladding bills could cost owners a quarter of units’ values – report
Australian apartment owners in buildings fitted with flammable cladding face bills of up to one quarter of the value of their homes, according to a new report. And state governments…
Lannock offer to cladding blocks as lender backs off
The announcement that one of the country’s biggest non-bank mortgage lenders will refuse to finance the purchase of apartments known or suspected of having flammable cladding on or in their…
Roundup: When ‘privacy’ is more important than unit block fire safety
I was gobsmacked this week to discover that Fair Trading have refused to even tell owners in the 400-plus buildings seriously affected by flammable cladding that there’s a seminar this…
Flat Chat Wrap #16 – Election fever mounts as the shadow minister speaks
Labor spokesperson for Better Regulations and Innovation (and Fair Trading) Yasmin Catley calls in on the Flat Chat podcast … and part two of the chat with OCN chair Phil…