Entitled, arrogant, ignorant and occasionally abusive – those are some of the accusations that have been levelled at the latest band of baddies to emerge in strata: downsizing Baby Boomers.

Obviously, this doesn't apply to all Boomers - because we are members of that ageing club too. But, as we discuss in this week’s podcast, making the adjustment from being kings and queens in their own McMansion castles is only half the story.

Finding out that they don’t even own the external walls of their home can come as a shock to some (but not all) downsizers, not to mention the rules and regulations they are subject to.

And all of this is a bit too much for some (not you, of course!) who are used to people listening to them and doing their bidding without question, and who take their frustrations out on strata managers, building managers, committee members and neighbours.

Also in the podcast, a new report asks why so little has been done to remove and replace flammable cladding from our apartment blocks.

And we ask how generous Airbnb is really being with their website that allows hosts to offer their holiday lets to people rendered homeless by recent floods.

What they’re not doing, despite publicity to the contrary, is offering free housing to flood-affected families. What could and should they be doing? We give our rating. 

TRANSCRIPT IN FULL

Due to dubious quality of the original audio supplied to our transcribers, there may be some discrepancies between the following text and the podcast, which has been re-edited and now sounds as good as ever. A big thanks to our heroic transcribers.

Jimmy  00:00

Last week, we spoke briefly about the floods in northern New South Wales and the impact that Airbnb, Stayz and the other holiday rentals could have on the homeless emergency up there. That's been picked up by a couple of MPs, so we'll be talking about that today. You've got some updates on the flammable cladding situation and we're going to talk about the looming problem in strata (according to some strata managers), which is Baby Boomers. That's all in this week's podcast. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.

Sue  00:47

And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.

Jimmy  00:50

And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

Last week, we mentioned the possibility of people who have Airbnb properties, helping out people who have been rendered homeless by the floods, especially up in northern New South Wales, which is Airbnb central, basically; apart from Sydney City. There's a lot of holiday rentals up there.

Sue  01:28

And also in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast.

Jimmy  01:33

What happened after we recorded our podcast last week, is that two MPs, Tamara Smith and Jenny Leong... Tamara Smith is the MP for Ballina and a Greens MP and Jenny Leong is the Greens' spokesperson on housing. They've come out saying that there's a housing crisis already, and there was before the floods up in northern New South Wales (which was greatly exacerbated by holiday rentals). According to an article in The Guardian, there were more than 6260 Airbnbs operating in the area and there was a shortage of about 2300 homes, for long-term rental. Now, we don't know how many Airbnbs were affected by the floods; I'm sure there were some, but I think we can safely say that the situation has not been improved with the floods. Now, Tamara Smith...

Sue  02:38

And Jenny Leong...

Jimmy  02:39

They're saying "look, we need to get all these properties that would normally be long -term residential rents, we need to get them back into the residential rental market, just to alleviate a situation which was already bad, but is now horrendously worse."

Sue  02:57

Because most of these people; their houses have been damaged so substantially, it's not like they can just clear up and move back in, is it?

Jimmy  03:04

No, I mean,