The podcast this week is almost entirely taken up with the new laws that passed the other day in the NSW parliament.

We won’t see most of them kick in until later in the year, but the effects could be immediate.

Dodgy contracts that could see off-the-plan sales rescinded might be being rewritten as we speak.

Building managers and strata committee chairs might well be asking what they have to change to fulfil requirements to act in the best interests of strata schemes.

Developers’ low-ball estimates of levies for new blocks might be getting pumped up a little if a $55k fine could be imposed for deliberately underquoting.

But the one unanswered question – in the podcast, at least – is what form the Strata Taskforce is going to take and how it will operate.

Such are the vagaries of online publishing that we answered that question in this story, after we had switched off the mikes. But we can have a chat about that next week.

And finally, we welcome our new sponsors Strata Community Insurance to the Flat Chat fold. Insurance is all about risk, but we reckon SCInsurance is a safe bet.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
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Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.