I just took a very dusty copy of a book down from my shelf today and realised that it has been 22 years since my partner Sue Williams and I persuaded ABC books to publish a little tome called Apartment Living.

Actually, the book was Sue’s idea but she found herself overwhelmed with work so I pitched in to co-write it with her. When it came out – to zero fanfare – Stephen Nicholls, then editor at the Domain section of the Sydney Morning Herald, called Sue up and asked her if she’d be interested in writing a weekly column.

She was exclusively contracted to another publisher at the time, but she said “my idiot co-writer could use the work” (or something like that) and so I got the gig.

The Apartment Living book is all about what to do when you buy into a unit and find the developers are dodgy, the strata managers are incompetent and your key committee members are corrupt. 

In other words, it was not a paean of praise for the industry – coming as it did from our experiences of exactly that scenario.

I had a look at revising it last year to reflect the many changes in strata law in two decades, but it was just too angry. In any case, the internet is where we go to get advice and information these days, especially in this constantly changing landscape..

I thought when I started the Flat Chat column that I would maybe get four weeks of vitriol out of my system before the advertisers, amidst whom my column sat, said: ‘Wait a minute – he’s writing about us.’

One developer even secretly bankrolled an alternative which advertised itself on the front page of Domain as the only place to get the true facts about apartment living. Yeah, right! I told the editors either the ad goes or I do.  That was the only time in my career where I have managed to overcome the golden rule of journalism – the people with the gold make the rules.

Times change and I moved on from Domain to the Financial Review, along the way building this Flat Chat website, which is where a much calmer view of apartment living now resides.

Things have changed in strata too. There is a lot more protection (but still not enough) for apartment owners and renters.

Dodgy developers found former Building Commissioner David Chandler a formidable foe and, gratifyingly, more journalists started writing about strata. It’s a big change from the days when editors would reject pitches with the words “nobody cares”.

The political parties stopped putting their least able ministers in the portfolio – at least, in NSW – so we had luminaries like Victor Dominello and Matthew Kean fighting the good fight. We acquired a strata commissioner at long last and developers found a way to persuade insurers to guarantee their building work (by the radical expedient of not constructing crap high-rises).

Meanwhile strata managers weathered the worst of public scandals to emerge bruised but not beaten, and all the better for it.

So, as we hurl ourselves at our 23^rd year of stirring the pot and creating trouble in the name of solving problems, I have to salute the most important people in all this – you lot out there who read this website in your thousands and write to the Flat Chat forum with questions that never fail to amaze and amuse. You make it all worthwhile.

And I have a final thought for the cheats and chisellers, dodgy developers, corrupt committee members and mendacious managers who prompted the writing of Apartment Living – thanks for 22 years of steady work.

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