The Wrap is back with a look at sustainable apartments and the reality of spending a bit more to make a unit cheaper to live in.

The latest message is that even if the average ‘green’ unit costs $11k more, it will save you heaps of money… and salve your conscience too.

We also uncover two worrying trends in one of our states where developers are loading up strata committees with their employees – ignoring any allegations of obvious conflicts of interest.

Meanwhile, apartment owners seem blissfully unaware that there may be any potential problems. “They say they’re going to take care of defects and it’s in their best interests to do so, isn’t it?”

Well, is it? Or are there some developers who are more concerned with profits than their reputations – since they can change their names any time they like?

And finally we look at the conundrum of increased immigration putting pressure on the housing stock versus the need for skilled migrants to build more apartment blocks.

Is temporary accommodation in migrant camps the answer? Make them attractive places to stay – they don’t have to be like prisons. And would it be any worse than migrants having to share a two-bed flat with a dozen other renters?

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

Did you know that getting on for 4.5 million Australians live in strata? And who do you think comprises the single largest demographic group, from singles and couples through to one-parent families?

Can you even take a wild guess at the total value of strata properties in Oz, or what percentage of strata schemes don’t have strata managers?

This week we take a deep dive into the latest Australasian (it includes NZ) Strata Insights report from UNSW and SCA.

By the way, we got ourselves into a bit of a fankle over the Nepali language, which we mispronounced “nepawlee” rathere than “nepa-ly”, and which we partially correctly said was Nepalese – as in, the official language of Nepal.

In fact, Nepali is spoken by more than up to 20 million people, mostly in Nepal and neighbouring parts of India. Smaller speech communities exist in Bhutan, Brunei, and Myanmar. And in Melbourne too, it seems.

We also take a quick check on what the various political parties are offering by way of tackling the housing crisis and we talk briefly about why it’s such a surprise to see one of our apartment developer giants exposed in the news.

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

There's a lot going on in the strata sphere this week, starting with the Sydney Morning Herald's big expose on building defects.

It's well worth reading but it's funny how every time a new reporter writes about this stuff, it's treated as if it's just been discovered.

Speaking as people who have been on this beat for two decades, we are just glad that the issues are being aired again.

Meanwhile strata managers nationally want to know why apartment buildings have been excluded from the multi-billion-dollar boost for solar panel battery storage. By the way, in the podcast we erroneously referred to solar panels, not batteries, as a sharp-eared listener has pointed out.

And we dig into the three-way fight over commission payments between owners (in the shape of the Owners Corporation Network) plus the Australian Consumers Insurance Lobby (ACIL), strata managers, and strata insurers.

That's all in this week's Flat Chat Wrap.

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

We’d love to ignore the election but we can’t, so this week we look at what our nation’s political parties are offering apartment buyers and renters as we hurtle towards polling day.

Everybody agrees we need more housing – and that means more apartments – but the policies differ, including one that an economist has dubbed “the worst economic policy of the 21st century.”

And we look at Victoria where the state government is pushing through a no-nimby policy to force councils to accept low-rise apartment blocks.

We have a chat about Strata Community Association, the strata managers' peak body's call for national protection for apartment owners from defective buildings.

And we look why rents of apartments are rising faster than rents of houses, and where this is happening, including one holiday letting hotspot that’s been hit by a 60-night a year limit. That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

We are getting into two of the topics that cause most angst in apartment living, this week: pets and buying property.

Firstly, we take a spin around the question of landlords in NSW no longer being able to ban renters’ pets for no good reason – and how that will affect the more than 50 per cent of apartment residents who are tenants.

This is a question I asked in the Sydney Morning Herald: Will our apartment blocks suddenly be awash with furry friends?

Or will property investors – confronted by the other regulation changes, both recent and impending – decide “stuff this for a game of Monopoly” and sell up or switch to Airbnb and its ilk?

Then we look at a story Sue wrote for Domain (also in the SMH) about how she went looking to find a new flat for a temporarily overseas friend with the instruction to spend up $1million.

What’s it like flat hunting for a friend, knowing that if you have made the wrong suggestion that’s a million bucks worth of misery for them and you?

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap?

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

Last week we said that Strata Community Association NSW - the states' strata managers' professional body - was in disarray. Objecting to that negative characterisation, NSW President Robert Anderson agreed to come on to the podcast and answer a few questions.

We had no shortage of those. For instance, we asked what the changes at SCA-NSW are. Has SCA-NSW been getting it wrong? Is there a new philosophy or culture, following changes on the SCA-NSW board?

Are the changes in the standard agency agreement a recognition that there was something wrong with the previous much maligned version or is it just to comply with changes in legislation?

What does SCA-NSW have to do to regain owners’ trust? What about training for committee members? Who should do it: SCA, the Owners Corporation Network (OCN) or Fair Trading?

And finally, will the SCA continue to claim that it represents owners?

It's a slightly longer than usual session and the sound quality is OK but, thanks to the interview being conducted over Zoom, not up to our usual tip-top standards.

Enjoy.

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

This week we look back at what has been described by some lawyers as one of the most significant legal decisions of the 21st Century – right up there with Donald Trump’s court losses.

We are talking about the “Jo Cooper” decision five years ago which said strata schemes couldn’t impose blanket bans on pets.

So many strata schemes have pets these days that it feels like dog and cat ownership is almost compulsory – and no, the sky hasn’t fallen in and so far, no frail or elderly person has been savaged to death by marauding chihuahuas.

We will also be looking at how the state government is claiming that its moves to ban rent bidding have meant rents have gone down. And hearing why they are likely to start rising even faster.

And we will be answering a question that was asked on radio on James Valentines Afternoons on Tuesday (click here and whizz forward to 1h 35mins) – do you need to have a second, separate laundry sink when you move your washing machine and drier into your renovated kitchen?

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

The long-awaited report into what has become known as the Netstrata Scandal came out last week – too late for the podcast – so we bring it to you in all its shabby glory this week.

Fair Trading NSW have, unusually for them, hopped in with a fairly strident comment and Netstrata has responded with vehement denials of wrong-doing and assurances that anything than needed fixing has been fixed.

You can find our report on the McGrathNicol findings HERE, the McGrathNicol report HERE, Fair Trading’s response HERE, and the Netstrata reaction HERE.

So what’s the truth? We have had the dubious pleasure of owning in a strata scheme managed by Netstrata and seeing the way they work at close hand.

What are they really like? Listen to this week’s Flat Chat Wrap to find out.

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.