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PODCAST

FLAT CHAT WRAP

Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams

All about living in apartments (condos), from dealing with your committee to getting on with neighbours and – a dose of healthy skepticism about dubious developers. Please subscribe by clicking on one of the icons below, to take you to your favourite podcaster.

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All Episodes

28:37

Behind the scenes with the Strata Trap reporter

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/09/11

We’re rolling the Wrap out a little early this week because it’s connected to the hottest topic in strata right now.Linton Besser, the reporter who brought you the Four Corners report The Strata Trap on Monday, has come on to the podcast to answer our questions about what he’s found in the strata industry, not only in NSW, but across Australia. What questions? How about what piqued his interest in the story that led to the exposure of strata management firm Netstrata and the resignation ...

en-au

24:09

Are your appliances giving your kids asthma?

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/09/05

Are your cooking and heating appliances giving your kids asthma? This week in the Flat Chat Wrap, Sue talks about a story she’s been chasing where families have found that switching from gas to electricity for their heating and cooking appliances has seen their kids’ asthma disappear.As we head for net zero emissions and electricity becomes the affordable power source of choice, you might want to start checking your pots and pans to see if they work on induction stoves.Before that, with Sprin...

en-au

28:12

Sins of commissioner - or just bad timing?

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/08/29

There’s been considerable speculation about NSW Strata Commissioner John Minns this week after the revelation on an ABC news report that he has retained a significant holding in a property management company, albeit through a family trust.Is it a serious problem for the man tasked with overseeing strata management (among other things), especially in the wake of the Netstrata scandal?Or is it just an unfortunate embarrassment at a time when NSW Fair Trading has launched new legislation intende...

en-au

24:53

Company title chaos and strata commish game-changer

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/08/22

In this week’s podcast, we look at why a problem in a company title block .would have been much easier to resolve had the apartment been in a strata building.The story in the Sydney Morning Herald is about a 71-year-old woman who has had to move out of her home because of damp caused by faulty water pipes in common property.We explain why that problem could have been much more easily resolved had it been in strata.We also touch on the recent albeit modest recruitment drive in the Strata Commi...

en-au

24:19

Sound and fury at soft response to strata scandal

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/08/15

So the NSW Fair Trading Minister has revealed his law changes in the wake of the Netstrata scandal and they are, as one strata insider put it, like being slapped on the wrist with limp spaghetti.With the news hot off the printer, Jimmy jumped in with both feet to claim this is a pretty poor response to the revelation that apartment owners are being misled and ripped off by some of the people whose job it is to look after them.Admittedly, this was recorded before he got the response from Fair ...

en-au

25:57

Future looks bright but present is tense

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/08/08

Having been to more conferences that they’ve had Ubereats deliveries – and with drawers full of lanyards to prove it – Jimmy and Sue headed off to the Gold Coast last week to the Strata Impact conference full of hope that this wouldn’t either be another whinge-fest (not least because JT was MC).In fact, it turned out to be absolutely fascinating with all sorts of interesting research from why the wrong apartments are built in the wrong places, to why new buildings are infested with mould and,...

en-au

27:27

Renters boost and $235k safety alarm

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/07/30

Three serious stories straight off the website have caught our attention this week – but there’s a bit of fun too.The first two reports are changes planned in NSW laws to make life more secure and a bit easier for renters.Premier Chris Minns announced last weekend that the government is going to stop no-fault evictions – where landlord move tenants out of their properties because that’s the easiest way of pushing rents up beyond what might be considered reasonable.At the same time the governm...

en-au

21:15

Struck off and probed in the naughty corner

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/07/25

Oh, dear. Not another swipe at strata managers, please! Yes, OK, it’s a well-trodden path but, to be fair, the baddies have made themselves easy targets for the past few months.As for the goodies, we’d say, as we often do, that they are in the majority. And how frustrating must it be to try to earn an honest buck and provide a good service to your customers, knowing that your rivals are getting ahead by playing fast and loose with the rules and regulations?And it’s with that in mind that we v...

en-au

26:24

Chandler's challenge, crowd-funding property buys and...

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/07/17

In this week’s podcast we look at NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler and how he’s ramping up his efforts to get his message across before he retires next month.And that message is, basically, if you are buying off the plan right now and you don’t go with a developer who has an iCirt gold star rating, you’ve only got yourself to blame when it all goes pear-shaped.We take a look at Sue's story about people buying property, not only with the help of Mum and Dad, but with investment from ex...

en-au

29:10

SM crackdown and luxury threat to low-cost homes

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/07/10

It’s a bit of a catch-up in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap and a look to the immediate future, too.We’ll be getting abreast of the news that NSW is planning to tighten regulations on strata managers in the state – a move that was announced a couple of weeks ago when Sue was off air.What will this so-called crackdown mean? Will really bad strata managers lose their licences? Not very likely, we say, and for a number of valid reasons.We’ll also be looking at a story that appeared this week in which...

en-au

33:54

Strata lawyer answers your questions

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/07/03

In this week’s podcast we ask leading strata lawyer David Sachs to run the rule over some of the questions in our Forum.For instance, can the owners corporation charge Airbnb hosts the difference if insurers increase premiums because there are short-term holiday lets in the block?Is it okay to have a paper only AGM with the committee elected by pre-meeting electronic votes?Who pays the costs when a renovator has to get a retrospective by-law for works done without permission?Which law – anti-...

en-au

26:40

Chandler chats: five years of the good fight

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/06/27

This week on the Flat Chat Wrap we get a glimpse behind the scenes as NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler is a guest at a “town hall” meeting for members of his team.In it David outlines some of the Building Commission’s achievements over the past five years, including the creation of a “defects library” so that certifiers, owners corporations and eventually universities can access the same information about defects, employing the same definitions, so that everyone is on the same page wh...

en-au

19:09

Tax cheat landlords, 'CSI Strata' spies, and...

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/06/20

The tax office is coming after double-dipping landlords who claim all sorts of things they shouldn't, or just claim for stuff the wrong way.And what about levies? It turns out some are tax deductible and others aren't. But which?By the way, in the podcast we say 86 percent of owners who use tax agents get their returns wrong, in fact the ATO says the majority of investors make mistakes in their tax returns despite 86 percent of them using tax agents. Oops! Big difference.Moving on, we a...

en-au

21:37

Cheap shots and gentrification Vs affordability

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/06/13

A slightly shorter but more pointed podcast this week as Sue reports on plans to demolish two affordable-rent apartment blocks and replace them with one luxury block with fewer, but presumably high-end apartments.It's another potential blow to the supply of affordable housing in desirable areas. City of Sydney have said “no” so the developers have appealed to the Land and Environment Court (LEC)– which held a kerbside hearing outside the site, the other day. Apparently there are half a d...

en-au

25:02

Nimby dog whistles, company title and micro apartments

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/06/06

This week we take a swing at polarising polititicians who are hoping to fire up the Nimbys against medium-density housing.They know it's what the state needs, they know it will help resolve the housing crisis, they don't have a viable solution, but hey, if it means they can get a few more votes in marginal constituencies, to Hell with the homeless.Then we go back to the future with Company Title. Are apartment blocks where owners set their own rules and have nothing to do with strata la...

en-au

25:59

Balcony singer creates his own soap opera

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/05/30

The Podcast takes a musical twist this week when we discuss the ear-bending plight of residents of four apartment blocks in the Sydney suburb of Meadowbank who have been subject to an opera singer practising his scales for 90 minutes every Sunday.How bad can it be? The perp is clearly talented and may even think he’s doing his neighbours a favour by standing on his balcony belting out his do-re-mis, but really?Oddly enough, music-loving Jimmy thinks hitting the high notes for a non-cons...

en-au

27:36

Best and worst embedded networks... with bees

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/05/23

This week’s podcast is mostly devoted to embedded networks, what they are, why they can be good or bad, and what you can do to make them work for your strata scheme. To that end, we chat to Joseph Arena of Embedded Networks Arena, a company that will analyse your embedded network contracts – e.g. for energy and hot water systems – and tell you how you can get a better deal.This was recorded via Zoom so the audio may not be up to our usual standards but if you listen to the en...

en-au

28:05

Challenges and changes as Chandler checks out

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/05/15

The only story in strata in the past week has been the decision by Building Commissioner David Chandler to hang up his hard hat and retire in August. So we thought the time was right to look at what he has achieved, the challenges he's faced - like being encourage by his then Minister to have a sit-down with a very dodgy developer - and the legacy he leaves behind for his successor.He says his challenge for the last few months of his tenure is to get the message out there that ther...

en-au

27:58

Hot seat 2: By-laws, bathrooms and ebikes (really!)

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/05/09

This second part of Lawyer In The Hotseat opens with an apology for promising a discussion on ebikes in last week's podcast, forgetting that it's actually in this, the second part (promise).Otherwise our discussion with strata lawyer David Bannerman covers renovation by-laws and the value of by-laws that would stand up if challenged at a Tribunal but send out a signal about what is unacceptable even if it's legal.We also look at strata managers acting unilaterally, the controversial Bui...

en-au

24:58

Hot Seat pt 1 - Strata rolls and ebikes

FLAT CHAT WRAP ·

2024/05/02

en-au

406 results

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