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-discrimination or building codes – takes precedence when an owner wants a chairlift installed in a common property stairwell?

Can an ordinary owner take a strata manager to the tribunal for failure to fulfill their responsibilities?

What can an owner do if their motion for the AGM is left off the agenda when it is published?

There are answers to all those questions 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 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 when it comes to claims and remediation.

He also outlines his plans for post-retirement – he’s not leaving, just winding back a little – celebrates the fact that a team from another state has been looking closely at how the NSW BC works, and relates how inspectors from flammable cladding Project Remediate discovered serious defects in a newish building and got them fixed by the developer without needing to go to court and at no cost to the owners.

Just to clarify, David is introduced by Elizabeth Stewart, associate director of Building Compliance, and the other voices you will hear are Assistant Commissioners Tom Carney and Matthew Press. And the Yolande to whom he refers is Yolande Nyss who built and leads the Project Intervene section which helps strata schemes navigate defect rectification with their developers.

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

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 also look at how the NSW state government is pumping millions into the Building Commission - turning it into an effective CSI-Strata as they track down dodgy developers before they can do too much harm.
Turns out it's a case of "round up the usual suspects" as they said in Casablanca (the movie, not the city).
And finally, we look at if or when you can record strata committee meetings, and whether or not you should.
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; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.