It’s very much a tale of two slices of strata in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap podcast. To begin with, you can listen to two over-privileged, entitled professionals (us) whingeing about what went wrong … and right … when we decided to renovate both bathrooms in our flat at once.BOTH bathrooms? “When I was a lad we had a pothole in the road, and used gravel for toilet paper …” says one of Monty Python’s Yorkshiremen.Listen HereRegular readers of this website will have been following our reno (mis)adventures on this website for the past few weeks so we thought it was time to reveal all our triumphs and failures on the pod.From the too-flimsy door that started it all to the crack that appeared in a newly plastered wall, the whole catastrophe is there for your schadenfreude listening pleasure.Free legal adviceAnd quickly moving from entitled renovators to hard-pressed strata residents facing more urgent issues not of their own making, we have belatedly discovered a completely free strata legal service for NSW, based in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Marrickville.Lawyer Justin Abi-Daher joined us on the pod to answer questions about the service like:How long has Marrickville Legal Centre been covering strata?Who is on their strata team and what are their areas of expertise?What is the most common issue or issues that are brought to them?What do they do when both sides of a dispute asking for help?What is the extent of their involvement? E.g. would they ever represent a client at a tribunal or in a mediation?What is the most common piece of advice they give strata residents once they were in the midst of a dispute.To what extent do they find themselves having to explain residents' basic rights and responsibilities?Is there one piece of strata knowledge that surprises people more than any other?Finally we ask this not-for-profit hero to explain how they get their funding and why they need more so badly right now.You can read more about Marrickville Legal Centre HERE and look at their website HERE. And remember, their strata service isn’t just for Marrickville – it’s for the whole of NSW.If you’re not into podcasts – and really, you’re missing half the fun – you can read a transcript of the pod below.TranscriptionHere. slightly later than usual, is this week's podcast transcribed in full.Jimmy 00:00We've got a Christmas gift for our readers and listeners this week; free legal advice.Sue 00:06That's a good gift.Jimmy 00:07Some people will say, ‘well, you give legal advice all the time,’ but we don't really, because we're not allowed to. We just kind of point people in the right direction. Later on, we're going to be talking to somebody from Marrickville Legal Center and they do offer free legal advice for strata owners and residents, specifically resident owners, rather than investors and tenants.Sue 00:31Sounds like a good Christmas gift.Jimmy 00:33I think it is. Before that, we're going to be talking about our bathroom renovation, because that's been keeping people entertained for the last few weeks on the website. I'm Jimmy Thomson.Sue 00:45And I'm Sue Williams.Jimmy 00:46And this is the Flat Chat Wrap. MUSICBathroom updateJimmy How this bathroom thing started, was t
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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.
