It’s another bumper podcast this week with some topics revisited, some from the Forum and others that are fresh out of the Flat Chat hot cross bunfight oven.First up, we take a deeper dive into the case of the doctor who was denied the opportunity to charge up his electric car from common property power because … good question!You can read the dubious reasons given for sealing off the car park power socket (because that's what the committee did) HERE.You might think he could have made the effort to get his landlord to jump through all the various hoops required to get a by-law passed.But when you consider that a by-law probably wasn’t needed, and that it was easier to sell the car than do all that, you can sense the frustration rising like the power level on a fast-charge battery.Also we kick around the news that the state government has done a backflip on its plans to require sustainability measures to be built into new strata blocks, and for them to be kept away from flood and fire-prone areas.And we look at an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute which has some praise but quite a lot of criticism about the way various state governments, as well as the Feds, responded to the pandemic in terms of housing.We pose the question that’s been running hot in the Flat Chat forum about whether a tenant who’s been told she can’t use the car park because the driveway is being resurfaced is entitled to a rent rebate.We revisit the question about what happens to your ‘pay-as-you-go’ deposit for an off-the-plan apartment if you suddenly can’t make the payments.And Jimmy talks about how a run-in with a debt collection company made him suspicious of the recently announced push towards digital checks on potential tenants.If you want to know how a misplaced dot in an email address can get you close to being put on a credit blacklist, this is the podcast for you.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy 00:00Another packed agenda today, Sue Williams.Sue 00:03Okay, Jimmy Thomson, I'm ready.Jimmy 00:05Well, I hope so! We've got the doctor who wasn't allowed to charge the electric car. We've got the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute report on the response to the pandemic, as far as housing is concerned. We've got something off the forum, about a tenant, who was told that she can't use the carpark for at least a week, because they're resurfacing the driveway, and that has sparked a huge debate on the Flat Chat forum. We've got a couple of updates about Third-i and their pay-as -you-go deposit scheme and an update on the thing we ran last week about tenant checks, by a company called Equifax. That is a lot!Sue 00:50Okay, we better get started then!Jimmy 00:53I am Jimmy Thomson, I wrote the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue 00:57And I'm Sue Williams. I write about property for Domain.Jimmy 01:00And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyOkay Sue, I think we mentioned this a couple of weeks ago; you ran a story in the Sydney Morning Herald (and online this week), and it got picked up by radio. You have received a lot of correspondence; some a little bit unsavoury, I believe.Sue 01:36But others are very supportive and others are very constructive, as
____________________________________________________
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.
