With property prices soaring but houses outstripping apartments, as detailed in this story, we try to make sense of it all.Why is the gap between the cost of houses and apartments growing, even though apartment prices are coming back up to pre-pandemic levels.And will the current apartment glut in Melbourne – with consequential 11 per cent drops in rents – flip to a shortage, soaring sales prices and runaway rents as soon as our borders reopen and short-term rentals are re-listed?Who knows? But we try to make sense of it all.LISTEN HEREThen we visit the vexed question, raised on the Flat Chat Forum, of whether or not it’s legal for your owners corporation or strata committee to make donations to political campaigns or fighting funds – even those related to strata issues.If not, is there any way owners can support campaigns and movements they agree with, but not all of their neighbours do?And then there’s another old chestnut form the forum – does your owners corporation have a duty of care to enforce by-laws? We say yes and explain why.That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy 00:00House prices seem to have gone nuts all of a sudden.Sue 00:03They certainly have and unit prices are going up as well, but not by as much.Jimmy 00:07And in some places, are actually going down, I believe.Sue 00:10Yes. In some places they are going down; in areas where there's an oversupply.Jimmy 00:14Okay, well, we're going to be talking about that; we're going to be talking about something that's come up on the Flat Chat forum, about whether or not your Owners Corporation can make donations to campaigns.Sue 00:26That's interesting.Jimmy 00:27And we'll be talking about an old chestnut, about whether Owners Corporations have a duty to act on their bylaws. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue 00:41And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for DomainJimmy 00:43And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.MUSICJimmyOkay, Sue, you've been keeping an eye on house prices. Part of your many duties, writing for Domain.Sue 01:06Yes, that's right. It's been kind of quite hard to keep your eye on them all the time, because they're moving so quickly.Jimmy 01:11It's kind of surprising, isn't it? That we're, you know, we've just come out of there so we haven't even properly come out of the pandemic.Sue 01:20But we just seem to be valuing our home so much more now. I mean, most most of us are now working from home a lot more. Time in lockdown has allowed us to look at our houses, and homes and apartments and think, what do we need? We need more space? Are we thinking of relocating? Actually spending a period, thinking about what we want out of life.Jimmy 01:40And what effect is this having on apartments?Sue 01:43It's interesting, because house prices, as you so rightly say, have gone up enormously. Apartment prices have generally gone up as well, but by nowhere near as much. So, it does mean with a growing gap between prices; between houses and apartments, more and more people are having to look at buying apartments, when maybe once they would have wanted to go and buy houses. So, there's gonna be a lot more new people m
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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.
