This week, we delve into the dark arts employed by real estate agents and property stylists to persuade you that an absolute lemon is, in fact, your dream “forever home.”

How come that beautiful tapestry is on the wall of this humble abode? Why are all the lights on and the windows closed?

Why are there three real estate agents from the same firm at a viewing of one relatively humble abode?

Also in the podcast, we try once again to shed a light on electrical vehicle charging and, more to the point, why so many people are dead set against it.

Jimmy posits an unprovable thesis that the same people who expect to be allowed to build an extension on their balcony on a nod and a wink, suddenly want by-laws, legally binding guarantees and acts of parliament before they’ll put a meter on an electrical socket.

This discussion – which is still going on – was prompted by Sue’s story about the doctor who was forced to sell his electric car and followed up by lively exchanges on the Forum.

The upshot? The laws are already in place to make this, theoretically, a slam-dunk for anyone who wants to charge their car.  But they are vague enough to give the climate denialists enough ammunition to stop it.

To be fair there are schemes where the wiring that’s been in place since Day One defies the best efforts of pro-EV residents to move this forward.

However the BS Brigade may have met its match in a webinar planned for next month – and the supporting literature already online – that presents the true facts of the matter.  

We catch up with trends in property prices (softening) and rents (soaring) and what’s happening with flammable cladding when Jimmy does something he almost never does – he agrees with the government.

That’s all in this week’s podcast.

TRANSCRIPT IN FULL

Jimmy  00:00

It's Easter Monday. Everybody else is on holiday, but not the Flat Chat podcast.

Sue  00:05

No, we never holiday.

Jimmy  00:06

We never close, like the old Windmill Theatre in London. Today we're going to talk about; I suppose you could call it controversy... There's a bit of discussion on the Flat Chat website, about electric vehicle charging. It was all started by your story, by the way.

Sue  00:24

Oh, right.

Jimmy  00:26

We're going to talk also, about the latest on cladding and you've got quite a lot of stuff about property prices, and rents.

Sue  00:37

Yep, all about the market.

Jimmy  00:38

All about the market. We'll be talking about that. I thought this might be a short podcast, but I've got a feeling that it's not going to be short. Anyway, I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.

Sue  00:53

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

Jimmy  00:57

And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.

[MUSIC]

Jimmy

It's a bit quieter outside today. We don't have the usual...Well, now that I've said that, we'll probably get a procession of trucks and cars, driving up the road outside. Usually, we have to stop when things get a bit noisy outside and sometimes, we just keep going. It adds to the ambience, or not. Did I get into trouble this week, over electric vehicle charging? You wrote a story about the building that..

Sue  01:38

Refused to allow one of it's residents to use the power point in the garage.

Jimmy  01:43

Yes, and then we had quite a long exchange with people on the Flat Chat forum and I completely misread the situation, because I thought it was the strata manager responsible (or his company had come back), which it turned out, was a completely different person; nothing to do with them. This is on the forum, if you want to catch up with this. It was interesting, because all these situations are different and some of them are unique. This person who wrote to us had, I think it was 36 garage openers, on one circuit. So, you've got an electrical circuit, and you've got 36 garages...

Sue  02:27