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 there are more protections for consumers than there ever have been.
And you can see his point - people who haven't lived in strata before have zero interest in the stuff we discuss here.
But there is a strong message and it's worth spreading. He and we just need more people to listen.

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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; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

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 Building Design Practitioner's Act and how it adds a lot to the cost of home renovations.
We look at who's responsible for repairing and replacing bathrooms in older blocks - especially when they have never been renovated.
And, yes, we discuss eBike and scooter batteries, especially in older less fire-resistant unit blocks.
And finally, for all the questions we couldn't get to, we point listeners to the very slick Bannermans Lawyers website.
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; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

As promised, this is the first part of the recording where JimmyT fires questions at leading strata lawyer David Bannerman.
Topics include:

• Does your strata manager have to give you access to the strata roll (including other owners' email addresses)? And what do you do if they don't.
• What are the new strata laws all about?
• What do you do about do-nothing strata committees.

All this and more 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; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

This week’s Flat Chat Wrap covers a lot of ground. including a prison cell in in a studio flat – seriously! – in the same small town in England where our very own Sue Williams cut her journalist teeth.

We take a long, hard and highly suspicious look at how real estate pictures are altered to make us think we’re getting something that just isn’t there. You'll find a link to the video HERE.

We get a preview of Jimmy’s “Lawyer in the Hot Seat” chat with strata lawyer David Bannerman – including whether or not strata managers have to let you see other owners’ email addresses and how the Design and Building Practitioners Act is making renovations a lot more expensive.

We hear about a strata manager who revealed that dubious insurance practices are more widespread than we thought – but then took a pop at Jimmy for writing “clickbait” articles.

And Jimmy wonders if he’s been blacklisted by the Strata Community Association … or is it the other way round? 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; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

It feels like the dust has settled a little too quickly on the Netsrata Scandal, as exposed by ABC TV. There has been no public statement on it from the state government or their professional body, Strata Community Australia (NSW).
But strata managers are hurting, as even the most cursory skim of LinkedIn posts will attest. The good operators know they are being tarred with the same brushes that have seen the SCA-NSW President resign - and it doesn't feel fair or good.
You could argue that they only have themselves to blame. Did they know what the bad actors in their industry were doing? And if they did, why didn't they ring that alarm bells?
Well, we know the answer to that. Whistleblowers soon find themselves out in the cold and out of work in this country.
That said, it was a senior strata manager who first brough the dodgy dealings of embedded networks to our attention. And an ex-employee of Netstrata contributed to the report that blew the lid off those shenanigans.
With all that in mind, we set out in this week's podcast to find a way forward for the strata management industry - some simple fixes that would restore some pride and confidence in the profession.
However, as we discovered, once you open any can of worms, there's a lot of wriggling going on.

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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; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

Are we building the wrong kind of apartments for families? There’s a very interesting report in the Sydney Morning Herald about a survey that suggests that the cookie-cutter apartment designs we see all around us may be fine for singles and couples but are all the wrong shapes and sizes for families with growing kids.

How can this be? For a start, a two-bed units – three-bedders are well outside the price range for most young families – are configured with a main bedroom, maybe with an ensuite (if you’re lucky) and a smaller room as the guest bedroom.

OK, Mum and Dad can give up the big room if they have two kids and let them share it (as they do in the SMH story) but surely it would make sense to have three smaller rooms and call it a family unit, or have more flexible internal configurations. More on that in the podcast.

We discuss the suggestion that we should be building more apartments over railway stations and rail lines.

We hear about Sue’s new book Run For Your Life, the true story about a family fleeing Russian oligarchs by hiding for three years in the Dampier Peninsula in the remote north of WA. What’s the connection with Flat Chat (apart from Sue)? Dad was structural engineer who was an expert in steel and glass (okay, a bit tentative).

If you are interested, the book’s first launch in Sydney (there are others in Perth, New Zealand and London) is on Wednesday April 17 from 7pm-8pm at the Mosman Library. Sorry, apparently you have to book in advance, ie asap, and pay for it too ($11 or concessions $9). Click HERE for more details to book.

The second Sydney launch is on Thursday May 2 from 2pm-3.30pm at the Australian National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour. This event is free but you also have to book asap in advance. Click HERE for details.

And finally our Great Escape this week follows Jimmy to Saigon, Vietnam, where he was “doing the Graham Greene thing” and finishing his new novel.

All that and more in the 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; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

It's interesting listening to the podcom Hyperbole Towers - the podcast comedy we recorded almost four years ago - to hear how much has changed.
There's a reference in there to pets not being allowed - that's gone. And the whole episode centres around a by-law permitting owners to meet online. That's now part of the fabric of strata law.
But some of the issues are timeless, not least how strata committees bring together hugely diverse people who under other circumstances might cross the street to avoid each other.
Add in characters who work from home in their underwear, use “you’re breaking up” as their get-out-of-jail card and get involved in the usual committee power struggles, and you have a potent recipe for some serious fun.

The Hyperbole Towers characters are:

· Charlie, the long-suffering chair;

· Alfie the manipulative and scheming building manager;

· Brooke the hopeless secretary;

· Steve, the committee treasurer who sees everything in terms of money;

· Wendy a do-gooder who is also a nasty gossip and a racist;

· Joe a class warrior retiree for whom nothing is Left-wing enough (until it affects his hip pocket);

· Damien a manic day trader for whom the committee is his only social contact

· Amber a "massage therapist" who says it as she sees it

There is also a cameo guest appearance by star of stage and screen Todd McKenney, adding some pizzazz to the proceedings.

The Story centres around the Hyperbole Towers committee in online crisis meetings to discuss the potential conversion of their former meeting room turned commercial space into a day spa … or is it a massage parlour?

Meanwhile, constant thumping sounds, are driving everyone mad, especially since building manager Alfie seems very reluctant to do anything about it.

In its style and format, this is like a classic radio sitcom with some very modern themes. But it’s a work of fiction and any similarity to anyone living or deceased is purely coincidental.

I you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends and fellow strata dwellers and professionals through this link, and encourage them to do the same.

Credits: Hyperbole Towers featured Tsu Shan Chambers, Valentino Arico, Amelia Conway, Eveline Schubert, Michelle Rouady, Robin Queree, Matias Klaver and David MacPhail.

It was narrated and directed by Warren Coleman.The podcom was written and produced by Jimmy Thomson and Warren Coleman. Audio editing and effects were by Sydney Sound Brewery under the watchful ear of John Hresc. Phoebe Armstrong was production assistant.

Hyperbole Towers is a Flat Chat Production, copyright (2024) Words Worth Pty Ltd. It could not have been made without the financial assistance of City of Sydney Council.

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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; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

As you’d expect, a lot of this week’s podcast is taken up with the resignation of the SCA-NSW President and Netstrata boss Stephen Brell, as well as the ABC News story and its follow-up that exposed his company’s business practices..

We’re taking the stance that Netstrata is not the only strata management company engaging in dubious (though not illegal) practices and allegedly concealing what were effectively strata insurance commissions is not the only breach of trust between many strata management companies and their customers – strata owners.

In short (and at greater length in an accompanying article – coming soon) we highlight all the areas in which the strata management culture in NSW is failing both strata owners and the strata managers who simply want to make an honest buck.

But first off, and at no cost to its members, SCA-NSW needs to disband its owners’ section and stop saying they represent owners. That’s like banks saying they represent account holders, car sales people saying they represent motorists or Uber drivers saying they represent Friday night drunks.
And listeners might want to click on one of the links to the ABC stories (above) and scroll down to the section calling for your stories about strata managers.

Also in the Wrap this week we discuss the new Pattern Book about to be released for comment by the NSW state architect, in an effort to show that apartment blocks don’t have to be huge and ugly.

And our Great Escape takes us to India with a couple of Masterchef judges. That’s all on the menu for 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; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.