This week’s podcast is mostly (but not entirely) focussed on an announcement we believe is going to change the way we buy apartments in NSW and probably across Australia.Last week NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler announced the first four developers in NSW to achieve more than four out of five gold stars from the state’s revolutionary Independent Construction Industry Rating Tool (iCIRT).And in a speech to the Toga group - recipients of one of the 4.5 ratings – he said that NSW apartment purchaser now no longer have any excuses for buying below-standard apartments from dodgy developers.By the way, we don’t think this will only affect apartment buyers in NSW; will a developer with a four-star Sydney rating hide that from their potential purchasers in Victoria or Queensland?You can read about the first four companies to achieve 4.5 stars – Toga Group, Helm, Meriton and Dasco Australia – in this story in the Sydney Morning Herald.You can hear David Chandler’s speech to the Toga Group in the podcast, as well as credit check agency Equifax executive Alexandra Shaw’s explanation of how the ratings system works.And if you don’t give 4.5 hoots about star ratings, we also pick the bones out of a story about the scheme where visitor parking have been given over to employees of a commercial tenant in the block – and how the strata committee can’t or won’t do anything about it.That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.TRANSCRIPT IN FULL(Timings on these sections may be a little off in places as we rearranged the content in edit)Jimmy 00:00Sue, you were at a big event in the world of strata the other day?Sue 00:03Yes, on Saturday. I was there when New South Wales Building Commissioner, David Chandler, was presenting a gold-star rating award for one of Australia's developers.Jimmy 00:14Okay, well, we'll be talking about that. We'll be listening to David Chandler's speech, and a couple of other things. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue 00:26And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy 00:29And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyOkay, I think before we talk about what David Chandler said, we should possibly listen to the speech he made. This was at the presentation of the four-and-a-half (out of five) gold stars, for the TOGA Group.David Chandler 01:02My role was always to come in and get the customers back. At the end of the day, it's no good having a regulator who just holds a stick; you've got to do it with a purpose and the purpose of this whole exercise (the last three years that we put into turning the compass around in New South Wales), is that we wanted the customers back.And I think we're now starting to see customers talking about feeling more confident, and starting to be more interested in getting back into the market. Frankly, for rated developers, I think the next three to five years are going to be the golden years of residential apartment building sales. I think we're going to see a mass-migration into this country. We're going to see people moving from other asset classes, into this asset class. I think it's just terribly important to realise that this is the time to actual
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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.
