This week’s Flat Chat Wrap covers a lot of ground. including a prison cell in in a studio flat – seriously! – in the same small town in England where our very own Sue Williams cut her journalist teeth.

We take a long, hard and highly suspicious look at how real estate pictures are altered to make us think we’re getting something that just isn’t there. You'll find a link to the video HERE.

We get a preview of Jimmy’s “Lawyer in the Hot Seat” chat with strata lawyer David Bannerman – including whether or not strata managers have to let you see other owners’ email addresses and how the Design and Building Practitioners Act is making renovations a lot more expensive.

We hear about a strata manager who revealed that dubious insurance practices are more widespread than we thought – but then took a pop at Jimmy for writing “clickbait” articles.

And Jimmy wonders if he’s been blacklisted by the Strata Community Association … or is it the other way round? That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

It feels like the dust has settled a little too quickly on the Netsrata Scandal, as exposed by ABC TV. There has been no public statement on it from the state government or their professional body, Strata Community Australia (NSW).
But strata managers are hurting, as even the most cursory skim of LinkedIn posts will attest. The good operators know they are being tarred with the same brushes that have seen the SCA-NSW President resign - and it doesn't feel fair or good.
You could argue that they only have themselves to blame. Did they know what the bad actors in their industry were doing? And if they did, why didn't they ring that alarm bells?
Well, we know the answer to that. Whistleblowers soon find themselves out in the cold and out of work in this country.
That said, it was a senior strata manager who first brough the dodgy dealings of embedded networks to our attention. And an ex-employee of Netstrata contributed to the report that blew the lid off those shenanigans.
With all that in mind, we set out in this week's podcast to find a way forward for the strata management industry - some simple fixes that would restore some pride and confidence in the profession.
However, as we discovered, once you open any can of worms, there's a lot of wriggling going on.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

Are we building the wrong kind of apartments for families? There’s a very interesting report in the Sydney Morning Herald about a survey that suggests that the cookie-cutter apartment designs we see all around us may be fine for singles and couples but are all the wrong shapes and sizes for families with growing kids.

How can this be? For a start, a two-bed units – three-bedders are well outside the price range for most young families – are configured with a main bedroom, maybe with an ensuite (if you’re lucky) and a smaller room as the guest bedroom.

OK, Mum and Dad can give up the big room if they have two kids and let them share it (as they do in the SMH story) but surely it would make sense to have three smaller rooms and call it a family unit, or have more flexible internal configurations. More on that in the podcast.

We discuss the suggestion that we should be building more apartments over railway stations and rail lines.

We hear about Sue’s new book Run For Your Life, the true story about a family fleeing Russian oligarchs by hiding for three years in the Dampier Peninsula in the remote north of WA. What’s the connection with Flat Chat (apart from Sue)? Dad was structural engineer who was an expert in steel and glass (okay, a bit tentative).

If you are interested, the book’s first launch in Sydney (there are others in Perth, New Zealand and London) is on Wednesday April 17 from 7pm-8pm at the Mosman Library. Sorry, apparently you have to book in advance, ie asap, and pay for it too ($11 or concessions $9). Click HERE for more details to book.

The second Sydney launch is on Thursday May 2 from 2pm-3.30pm at the Australian National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour. This event is free but you also have to book asap in advance. Click HERE for details.

And finally our Great Escape this week follows Jimmy to Saigon, Vietnam, where he was “doing the Graham Greene thing” and finishing his new novel.

All that and more in the Flat Chat Wrap.

____________________________________________________


Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai; Transcription tidied up and sensified by Raphie.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.