It’s another bumper podcast this week with some topics revisited, some from the Forum and others that are fresh out of the Flat Chat hot cross bunfight oven.

First up, we take a deeper dive into the case of the doctor who was denied the opportunity to charge up his electric car from common property power because … good question!

You can read the dubious reasons given for sealing off the car park power socket (because that's what the committee did) HERE.

You might think he could have made the effort to get his landlord to jump through all the various hoops required to get a by-law passed.

But when you consider that a by-law probably wasn’t needed, and that it was easier to sell the car than do all that, you can sense the frustration rising like the power level on a fast-charge battery.

Also we kick around the news that the state government has done a backflip on its plans to require sustainability measures to be built into new strata blocks, and for them to be kept away from flood and fire-prone areas.

And we look at an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute which has some praise but quite a lot of criticism about the way various state governments, as well as the Feds, responded to the pandemic in terms of housing.

We pose the question that’s been running hot in the Flat Chat forum about whether a tenant who’s been told she can’t use the car park because the driveway is being resurfaced is entitled to a rent rebate.

We revisit the question about what happens to your ‘pay-as-you-go’ deposit for an off-the-plan apartment if you suddenly can’t make the payments.

And Jimmy talks about how a run-in with a debt collection company made him suspicious of the recently announced push towards digital checks on potential tenants.

If you want to know how a misplaced dot in an email address can get you close to being put on a credit blacklist, this is the podcast for you.

TRANSCRIPT IN FULL

Jimmy  00:00

Another packed agenda today, Sue Williams.

Sue  00:03

Okay, Jimmy Thomson, I'm ready.

Jimmy  00:05

Well, I hope so! We've got the doctor who wasn't allowed to charge the electric car. We've got the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute report on the response to the pandemic, as far as housing is concerned. We've got something off the forum, about a tenant, who was told that she can't use the carpark for at least a week, because they're resurfacing the driveway, and that has sparked a huge debate on the Flat Chat forum. We've got a couple of updates about Third-i and their pay-as -you-go deposit scheme and an update on the thing we ran last week about tenant checks, by a company called Equifax. That is a lot!

Sue  00:50

Okay, we better get started then!

Jimmy  00:53

I am Jimmy Thomson, I wrote the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.

Sue  00:57

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

Jimmy  01:00

And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

Okay Sue, I think we mentioned this a couple of weeks ago; you ran a story in the Sydney Morning Herald (and online this week), and it got picked up by radio. You have received a lot of correspondence; some a little bit unsavoury, I believe.

Sue  01:36

But others are very supportive and others are very constructive, as well.

Jimmy  01:41

And it's about a doctor who was not allowed to charge his electric vehicle in his apartment block, for reasons that are beyond him and I have to say, beyond me. So, what's the story?

Sue  01:56

Right, he's a tenant in his apartment building. He bought an EV and he was charging it up; there was a power point in the garage, so he was powering it up, on that power point. The owners corporation said no, you're not allowed to use that power point, because that's common property. He said well, I'm very happy to pay. It's going to cost about $10 a week in electricity, to charge my car; I'm very happy to pay you $10 a we...