Are you feeling under-exposed and ill-informed? That may be because the much-vaunted NSW strata data Hub doesn’t tell anyone who doesn’t already know stuff very much about your apartment blocks at all.We take a look at the information available on the Hub to non-residents (not much) and residents (not much more) and what’s in the “coming soon” section (ditto).Which prompts the question – if having strata information on the Hub is a good idea, why isn’t there more of it. What’s so sensitive about some of the info we aren’t getting? Shouldn’t there be an option to provide greater detail, if the strata scheme wants to?Sometimes in life, less is more – but, usually, less is just less.Also this week we dig down into the Building and Design Practitioners Act (whoo-hoo!) to explore why simple renovation jobs are suddenly costing two or three times the original asking price.And we ask why you have to be an expert data miner, digging through layer after layer of building laws, to discover the genesis of the word “exempt” beyond the tail-chasing, tautological, circular meanings you first encounter.And for those of you who are not in NSW, we are spreading our wings and bringing in a strata expert from interstate.Also, we take a moment to wonder how many ways our artificial intelligence transcription service can get the words “Flat Chat Wrap” completely wrong. All that and more in this week's podcast. Enjoy!TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy 00:00Well after last week's marathon flood chat wrap [I left this in deliberately – JT], we're going to go for a slightly shorter version this week, partly because you're heading off to the UK.Sue 00:10Yes, that's right. Yes, I leave tomorrow.Jimmy 00:13I was just telling somebody about the transcription service we use for these podcasts, Otter AI, which is really good. Except it's completely incapable of getting the words Flat Chat Wrap. It gives us, flat check rip, flat pack rope. But by the time we have tidied it all up, of course it appears as it should.Sue 00:44Yeah, fabulous Rafa, what would we do without her? (Well, this, is the answer. She’s still on a well-earned break so the transcript could make a lot less sense this week).Jimmy 00:48Indeed. Now today, we're going to talk about what is on the New South Wales strata hub information website thing, and what isn't? We're going to talk about problems with the design and building practitioners act. And we're going to briefly mention a new correspondent coming on to the Flat Chat website. He's from Queensland, which is really exciting.Sue 01:12Fantastic.Jimmy 01:13All right, well, we'd better get on with it. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the flight check (sic) column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue 01:20And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy 01:23And this is the flat chat wrap.[MUSIC]JimmySue, you suggested that I should have called us the flight route check and see what Otter did with it.Sue 01:48Anyway, maybe it's your accent, maybe that's what the AI can’t understand.Jimmy 01:52They gotta get used to it. And there must be other Scottish people, other Scottish Australians using Otter. But it is really good. Okay, the data hub, the big information
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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.
