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New Post: Forum: Are uninsured tradies worth the risk? It feels like a minor issue but it could mean a lot of trouble fo...
02/11/2024

New Post: Forum: Are uninsured tradies worth the risk? It feels like a minor issue but it could mean a lot of trouble for a strata scheme. Basically, there is a lot of sense, if not legal pressure on owners corporations to only hire licensed and insured tradespeople. A quick Google search comes up with this: “NSW owners corporations are not required to only employ licensed tradespeople, but they are required to ensure that https://buff.ly/3Yr9qbe

New Post: NSW boosts tenants advice by $1m a year The NSW state government is to boost funding for tenancy advice servic...
01/11/2024

New Post: NSW boosts tenants advice by $1m a year The NSW state government is to boost funding for tenancy advice services which will be good news for apartment renters who make up more than half of the strata community. And it should also be encouraging for the similarly substantial numbers of investors who should be able to avoid unnecessary disputes when new tenancy laws come into effect next year. This week the government announced https://buff.ly/48yan5Z

New Post: NSW boosts tenants advice bodies by $1m a year The NSW state government is to boost funding for tenancy advice...
01/11/2024

New Post: NSW boosts tenants advice bodies by $1m a year The NSW state government is to boost funding for tenancy advice services which will be good news for apartment renters who make up more than half of the strata community. And it should also be encouraging for the similarly substantial numbers of investors who should be able to avoid unnecessary disputes when new tenancy laws come into effect next year. This week the government announced https://buff.ly/48yan5Z

New Post: Podcast: High-rise help, hikes and horror Your intrepid Flat Chat team’s travels take them to London this week...
30/10/2024

New Post: Podcast: High-rise help, hikes and horror Your intrepid Flat Chat team’s travels take them to London this week but that doesn’t mean they have lost touch with what’s happening in Australia. For a start a boost to funding for tenants’ supports agencies has been announced by the NSW state government. That will no doubt be very useful when the inevitable confusion arises from the raft of changes to tenancy laws, https://buff.ly/3C7ztg4

New Post: Forum: Is the chair exempt from proxy limits? The powers of the chair in various states vary, from being direc...
25/10/2024

New Post: Forum: Is the chair exempt from proxy limits? The powers of the chair in various states vary, from being directly elected at an AGM by owners in Qld, to having a casting vote at a strata committee meeting in Victoria (and elsewhere). But do they have the right to over-ride the limitations on how many proxies they can hold, in states where there are restrictions? Considering that restrictions were introduced to prevent proxy https://buff.ly/4ffO0Vd

New Post: Pro-tenant, pro-pet laws pass NSW parliament Tenants advocates have welcomed major reforms to residential rent...
25/10/2024

New Post: Pro-tenant, pro-pet laws pass NSW parliament Tenants advocates have welcomed major reforms to residential rental laws in NSW but have warned that more needs to be done to make the whole letting system fairer and more transparent. This week the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill 2024 was passed in State Parliament and tenants’ advocates say it delivers long-overdue reforms to the state’s rental system. “While the reforms aren’t perfect… they mark a https://buff.ly/3Yc9IT6

New Post: Podcast: Total control, new bloke on the block This week’s podcast comes to you from less-than-sunny Glasgow, ...
24/10/2024

New Post: Podcast: Total control, new bloke on the block This week’s podcast comes to you from less-than-sunny Glasgow, which may explain the slightly different sound quality. But the chat is up to its usual standards as we speculate on what new Building Commissioner James Sherrard (https://buff.ly/4ffsEay) will bring to the job as he fills the substantial shoes recently vacated by the redoubtable David Chandler. Then we have a look at the recent revelations (https://buff.ly/4eUMdVF) https://buff.ly/3NE3PJy

New Post: IMHO: As soon as I turn my back, it’s strata chaos As I wrote in my newsletter editorial last week, it can’t b...
22/10/2024

New Post: IMHO: As soon as I turn my back, it’s strata chaos As I wrote in my newsletter editorial last week, it can’t be long before the strata managers of NSW pay me not to leave the country. The last time I took an overseas trip – to Saigon, if you must know – Stephen Brell, CEO of Netstrata, felt compelled to step down as President of SCA-NSW, the strata managers’ professional body. This was following revelations https://buff.ly/4hgHoYn

New Post: New commish seeks collaboration, not conflict NSW has a new Building Commissioner, and he’s promising a differ...
22/10/2024

New Post: New commish seeks collaboration, not conflict NSW has a new Building Commissioner, and he’s promising a different approach to his predecessor, David Chandler, the scourge of dodgy developers and bodgy builders. Minister for Building Anoulack Chanthivong has welcomed the appointment of James Sherrard, former head of Commercial, Performance and Strategy at Transport NSW, citing his more than 30 years’ experience spanning global construction projects and specialist expertise in strategy, commercial and https://buff.ly/4hgmUyQ

New Post: New commish vows collaboration, not conflict NSW has a new Building Commissioner, and he’s promising a differe...
21/10/2024

New Post: New commish vows collaboration, not conflict NSW has a new Building Commissioner, and he’s promising a different approach to his predecessor, David Chandler, the scourge of dodgy developers and bodgy builders. Minister for Building Anoulack Chanthivong has welcomed the appointment of James Sherrard, former head of Commercial, Performance and Strategy at Transport NSW, citing his more than 30 years’ experience spanning global construction projects and specialist expertise in strategy, commercial and https://buff.ly/4hgmUyQ

New Post: More overcharge shock for Netstrata clients By Sue Williams A new investigation by the ABC has alleged that co...
18/10/2024

New Post: More overcharge shock for Netstrata clients By Sue Williams A new investigation by the ABC has alleged that controversial strata management company Netstrata has overseen its apartment owner clients being charged secret insurance brokerage fees up to six times the industry standard. In the latest expose of the high-profile strata management company (https://buff.ly/4eSCqQc), ABC investigative reporter Amy Greenbank said it was the first time Netstrata customers could see the real cost https://buff.ly/4faeDdV

New Post: Forum: Strip club poser for strata scheme Strata laws in Australia are so full of quirks, loopholes and grey a...
18/10/2024

New Post: Forum: Strip club poser for strata scheme Strata laws in Australia are so full of quirks, loopholes and grey areas, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were written with the sole intention of keeping lawyers in work interpreting them, and former lawyers in clover adjudicating on them in Tribunals. Take the question of the use of a strata lot resulting in an increase in insurance premiums. Specifically, it’s what happens when the https://buff.ly/3Uetqwa

New Post: Podcast: Pumping irony and airbnb on defensive There are so many issues it strata that are “he said, she said”...
17/10/2024

New Post: Podcast: Pumping irony and airbnb on defensive There are so many issues it strata that are “he said, she said” – or “they said, they said”, to put it in a more contemporary context – that the temptation to not take sides is sometimes overwhelming. But consider the plight of an owner on the first floor of a block who has a noisy commercial gym operating from 6am until after 7pm every https://buff.ly/4dPFOd2

New Post: Forum: Allergies are nothing to be sneezed at I never used to take allergies seriously until I took a walking ...
11/10/2024

New Post: Forum: Allergies are nothing to be sneezed at I never used to take allergies seriously until I took a walking holiday in a Portuguese spring and spent the first day red-eyed and expelling tears and snot like I’d sprung a leak. I was convinced I’d picked up an infection on the plane on the way over – because you do – so I went to the local pharmacy. Having no Portuguese and smart https://buff.ly/4eP3bo6

New Post: Podcast: Sapphire buyers look back in anger There’s a lot of anger and frustration behind this week’s edition ...
10/10/2024

New Post: Podcast: Sapphire buyers look back in anger There’s a lot of anger and frustration behind this week’s edition of the Flat Chat Wrap. The fury on display on a recent episode of A Current Affair (https://buff.ly/4f1qECJ) on Nine is both clear and understandable. Prospective owners in the Sapphire apartments in Gosford on the Central Coast of NSW had been told to be ready to move in, only to discover that work has stopped on https://buff.ly/3U2R1jy

New Post: Sapphire: Shattered dreams or a bullet dodged? The whole concept of buying off the plan took another hit this ...
10/10/2024

New Post: Sapphire: Shattered dreams or a bullet dodged? The whole concept of buying off the plan took another hit this week with a TV news magazine’s coverage of a heartbreaking stand-off around a near-complete building in Gosford. As A Current Affair reported (https://buff.ly/4f1qECJ), work has stopped on the Sapphire Apartments building in the NSW Central Coast town, for a variety of reasons, not least that the developer has gone into receivership. The https://buff.ly/4dDHWVb

New Post: Time to finally end the disruptive low levies lurk There’s a little-known, frequently breached and grossly und...
07/10/2024

New Post: Time to finally end the disruptive low levies lurk There’s a little-known, frequently breached and grossly under-utilised section of NSW strata law intended to prevent the low levies lurk whereby developers deliberately underquote on fees needed to run new apartment blocks. Section 89 of the Strata Schemes Management Act that says the Tribunal (NCAT) can order a developer to compensate owners if it finds that the estimated and expected levies for a new block https://buff.ly/3YbW97f

New Post: Time to finally end the disruptive low levies lurk There’s a little-known, frequently breached and grossly und...
07/10/2024

New Post: Time to finally end the disruptive low levies lurk There’s a little-known, frequently breached and grossly under-utilised section of NSW strata law intended to prevent the low levies lurk whereby developers deliberately underquote on fees need to run new apartment blocks. Section 89 of the Strata Schemes Management Act that says the Tribunal (NCAT) can order a developer to compensate owners if it finds that the estimated and expected levies for a new block https://buff.ly/3YbW97f

New Post: IMHO: Afternoons sound like fun with JV again Some of you may have noticed that I have been popping up a bit m...
05/10/2024

New Post: IMHO: Afternoons sound like fun with JV again Some of you may have noticed that I have been popping up a bit more on James Valentine’s Afternoons on ABC radio 702. This follows a hiatus when James was on breakfasts, and after that when he was dealing with a major cancer scare. Nowadays I’m (notionally) on there every two weeks, talking about all things strata. I’m loving it and that’s partly because we https://buff.ly/3XS1WO1

New Post: IMHO: Am I about to be bounced by an A.I. bot? The other day, I looked into the abyss of Artificial Intelligen...
04/10/2024

New Post: IMHO: Am I about to be bounced by an A.I. bot? The other day, I looked into the abyss of Artificial Intelligence and, as the saying goes, the abyss looked right back. It was a moment of alcohol-fuelled bravado, as described in this week’s Podcast (https://buff.ly/3XOU0gC), and we were speculating about what would happen if Fair Trading started using A.I. to answer people’s questions, Chatting over a glass of red (or two) in a pizza restaurant, https://buff.ly/4gNkR5g

New Post: Strata Groundhog Days: Wince, rinse and repeat There’s a reason every new dawn in strata can seem like Groundh...
04/10/2024

New Post: Strata Groundhog Days: Wince, rinse and repeat There’s a reason every new dawn in strata can seem like Groundhog Day; not a lot changes very much, very often. Friend of Flat Chat, Francesco Andreone of GoStrata asks what we can do about the endless cycle of merely wincing at predictable events, then rinsing and repeating until the next time. THE STRATA MERRY GO ROUND Strata building operations and management are basically a https://buff.ly/4gO1iK8

New Post: Strata Groundhog Days: Wince, rinse and repeat There’s a reason every new dawn in strata can seem like Groundh...
03/10/2024

New Post: Strata Groundhog Days: Wince, rinse and repeat There’s a reason every new dawn in strata can seem like Groundhog Day, because not a lot changes very much, very often. Friend of Flat Chat, Francesco Andreone of GoStrata asks what we can do about the endless cycle of merely wincing at predictable events, then rinsing and repeating until the next time. THE STRATA MERRY GO ROUND Strata building operations and management are basically https://buff.ly/4gO1iK8

New Post: Podcast: Could AI spell the end of Flat Chat? When it comes to getting your attention, there’s nothing quite l...
03/10/2024

New Post: Podcast: Could AI spell the end of Flat Chat? When it comes to getting your attention, there’s nothing quite like being warned that the latest innovation will put you out of business. Okay, we’ve heard it all before – Uber was going to kill taxis, smartphones were going to turn us all into cyber-struck zombies and kill interpersonal relationships. Okay, the last thing happened, but imagine if a friend was able to access a https://buff.ly/47PzAIG

New Post: SCA-NSW to get lessons in professional ethics Strata managers in NSW – or at least their governing body – are ...
28/09/2024

New Post: SCA-NSW to get lessons in professional ethics Strata managers in NSW – or at least their governing body – are being nudged back on to the straight and narrow by the NSW government’s professional standards watchdog. The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) says it is working with Strata Community Australia (NSW) to “focus on encouraging SCA to identify and manage the risks to consumers arising from… alleged unethical conduct.” The PSA’s stated aim https://buff.ly/4eChBYp

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'Forced sales' on cards for Queensland, Victoria cracking down on phoenixing builders, developer takes another shot at approval for twice-bounced Little Bay mega-block. Click on the graphic for a little 40-second taste of this: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2116816/episodes/12294682

Suddenly everybody's talking about Mascot Towers. Wonder why... PODCAST: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2116816/12247957-beating-the-drum-for-strata-votes

Why waterproofing is such a big, destructive deal in strata blocks. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2116816/12144873-waterproofing-and-brisbane-booms

Are recycling rebels the same as anti-vaxxers?

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Our new podcast hosting service Buzzsprout offers these things called soundbites. I think this is what I'm supposed to do with them. And here's where you'll find the podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2116816/episodes/12059850-rents-roof-space-and-evs

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