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 panels (we know the answer, by the way).

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.

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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.

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 Australia’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.

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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.

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.