It’s hardly a true crime podcast but this week, inspired by connections made in the press between the relatives of property developers and their friends with police records, we wade into the murky waters of past cases where the Venn diagrams of criminals and property developers have overlapped.It should be no surprise to anyone that the high-risk, high rewards ventures like unregulated property development and criminal activities would have attracted similar kinds of characters.But whatever’s going on nowadays – and we shouldn't assume that there was anything untoward afoot in the reported cases – it would pale into insignificance compared to some stories from the fairly recent past.Meanwhile, Sue explores the still risky but much safer area of searching for bargains in blocks that are known to have problems.We also look (with clothes pegs on our noses) at a Qld body corporate who thought their responsibility for a flat being flooded with sewage ended where their insurance cover ran out.And we get a resolution on the question of whether the representative of one block on a community committee of four can veto agenda items that they don't like.All than and more in the Flat Chat Wrap.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLJimmy 00:00One of the interesting things that came out of the whole David Chandler, Eleni Petinos thing, was that the company that he was asked to go and deal with (who's building he'd put a stop-work order on)... It came out in a paper, that the brother of one of the directors was thought to be associated with somebody who had a criminal record; they had a picture… and that sent a few people into a tizz. So we're going to talk about the connection between alleged criminals and alleged developers, in the podcast today. We're also going to talk about; you did an article about whether it was worth buying into buildings, where you knew there were problems. And we're going to talk about a body corporate in Queensland that got itself in the poo. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.Sue 00:57And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.Jimmy 00:59And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyProperty developers with criminal connections... Sue, does this surprise you?Sue 01:20Well, it's like going back to the days of the 70s, really, isn't it?Jimmy 01:25I remember, just when we started writing about this stuff, somebody told me a story that they were in a meeting, and there was a building in Victoria Street in Kings Cross, I think, where the notorious underworld character, Lenny McPherson, had been buying up all the apartments in the building, with a view to knocking it down and building apartments. In those days, you had to get 100% approval from the owners, that they would sell the building to whoever. And there was one old bloke who just didn't want to sell. He said "look, I don't want to be difficult, but I've lived in this apartment since I got married as a young man. I brought up my kids here and my wife lived here with me, before she died. I like to just sit in the corner window and look at the world go by. So you know, if Mr. McPherson wants to buy my apartment, all I ask is that I get an apartment in
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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.
