In the latest Flat Chat Wrap, listeners (and readers) get a preview of this week’s Fin Review column which will examine the issue of access to other owners’ email addresses.Do secretaries’ and strata managers’ oft-stated desire to maintain owners’ privacy sometimes stem from not wanting ordinary owners to communicate?How do you balance the benefits of open communication with the risk of being bombarded by abusive messages from serial pests.And is it even legal to withhold email addresses that are on the records of strata schemes?Also on the podcast, we look at the drift back to offices from working from home, and ask if where we work will ever fully return to pre-pandemic patterns.And Sue gets a sneak preview of the upmarket renovation of the controversial Sirius building, which was once the public housing block with the best outlook in the world.That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy 00:00Do you get a lot of emails that you really don't want, Sue?Sue 00:03Quite a lot, Jimmy, quite a lot.Jimmy 00:05One or two a day?Sue 00:08Maybe about 30.Jimmy 00:10A day?Jimmy 00:11Today, we're going to talk about something that's been discussed on the Flat Chat forum, which is, should your strata manager or your secretary, give out all the email addresses for everyone in the building? We're also going to talk about working from home, as people might be facing a conflict of whether or not they want to do that anymore. And, we're going to talk about your visit to the Sirius building.Sue 00:11Yes.Sue 00:39Yes, probably one of Sydney's most high-profile apartment buildings.Jimmy 00:42It is. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue 00:48And I'm Sue Williams. I write about property for Domain.Jimmy 00:51And this is the Flat Chat Wrap. [MUSIC]JimmyYou think everybody in an apartment block should be able to see everybody else's email addresses, is that right?Sue 01:14Yes, it is, because I think we have to be transparent and it can be so frustrating, trying to get in touch with neighbors, or there's a big issue, and you can't actually communicate with anybody else, so I think it's really important. I mean, I think the people who say we shouldn't give out our email mail addresses are always saying "oh, yes, we'll get 100 emails from all these people we don't want," but in reality, you get very few emails from other people in the building. You might get just a few every year, about issues that they feel are really important and I think it's important to try and keep in touch with your community, about those kind of issues, really.Jimmy 01:49So just to clarify, the law in most states says that owners in an Owners Corporation, are entitled to see all documents that relate to the Owners Corporation. In New South Wales, you are required by strata law, if you have an email address, to register it with the Owners Corporation. There is no requirement for that in Victoria and the law says that the owners are entitled to see anything that's on the register, which is the physical addresses of people. Often, those physical addresses are actually the addresses of their agents, or their registered business. So, there
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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.
