This week’s podcast discovers a new way of buying property – or at least putting down a deposit.

The problem for many prospective home buyers is that, all the time they are saving for the deposit on a new home, prices keep rising so the amount they need to save gets more and so the property is always just out of reach.

But we've heard about a new proposal that's been introduced where you can put down a relatively small deposit on a new flat and that add to it every week so that by the time the unit is ready, you’ve got enough in the bank to go and get a mortgage.

Now, as frequently happens on the pod, someone in government is clearly hacking into our conversations as we record them, and changing policy to suit.

So while we were musing about how hard it would be to raise a 20 per cent deposit over two years, the government was renewing its policy of allowing first-time home buyers to only put down five per cent deposits.

All of which makes the new CoPosit plan even more feasible. You can have your smashed avo and eat it, and hear all about it here.

For anyone who's interested, the whole "smashed avocado" debate was started by Tim Gurner, a luxury property developer in Melbourne in comments he made on 60 Minutes in Australia, implying that young people can’t afford to buy property because they’re wasting money on fancy toast and overpriced coffee.

Back to the pod we discuss the best and worst strata managers and we take a look at a couple of stories fresh off the Flat Chat Forum, including what to do if one committee member drives everyone away and how to get more people to come along to meetings.

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

TRANSCRIPT IN FULL

Jimmy  00:00

A couple of interesting things have come up this week; we have a new way of buying an apartment.

Sue  00:07

Oh yes?

Jimmy  00:08

It doesn't involve Bitcoin. It's a new way of getting a deposit together, which sounds quite interesting. We are going to talk about strata managers, good and bad and we're going to dive into the forum again, to see what weird and wonderful stories have come out of the Flat Chat forum, on the Flat Chat website. We've got a lot to talk about. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.

Sue  00:38

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

Jimmy  00:41

And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

Now, be honest Sue, have you ever heard of coposit before?

Sue  01:01

Never. I can say that with a huge amount of confidence. So, it's a corruption of the word deposit, is it?

Jimmy  01:08

Co-deposit. It's a portmanteau word, that's got two words in it.

Sue  01:14

Oh, okay.

Jimmy  01:15

Like J-Lo.

Sue  01:17

 Or Scomo.

Jimmy  01:18

Yes. This is co-deposit.

Sue  01:23

Coposit.

Jimmy  01:23

They should have called it coposit, couldn't they?

Sue  01:25

They did call it coposit.

Jimmy  01:26

Did they?

Sue  01:27

Yes.

Jimmy  01:27

That's a good thing, then. Alright, so what is it? We've got a press release; we've never come across it before. Sounds...Well, on the one hand, it sounds incredibly mundane, because it's all about a project; an apartment project in Newcastle, called Dairy Farmers Towers? Wouldn't you just love to live there?

Sue  01:52

I could grow fat, just thinking about it, really. Presumably, it's on the former site of a dairy or something?

Jimmy  01:59

Yes, the big Dairy Farmers bottling plant in West Newcastle. They have come up with a way that they think will get new homebuyers (first-time homebuyers, especially), into the market. As we have constantly said, in this podcast and on the website, and in your stories; the difficulty for people trying to get into the market, is that they save for a deposit and as they're saving for the deposit, the price is going up and up and up and that deposit is getting further and further and...