There’s good news for those abandoned covid fur-babies and the apartment residents who’d love to offer them new homes. 

The highly dubious tactics clearly aimed at deterring people from having pets in apartments – workarounds for the ban on blanket pet bans, if you like – will be knocked over in proposed changes to NSW strata law.

Application fees, pet bonds and demands for additional insurance cover will be no more. 

These are among several tweaks to strata law on the way in NSW but you’d better believe policy wonks in all the states watch each other’s laws like hawks – and any or all of these changes could be coming your way soon.

Also on the hit list, Fair Trading will be able to recommend dysfunctional schemes have compulsory strata managers appointed to take over the running of the block, putting failed strata committees into deep freeze for a couple of years.

Opportunist developers will have to declare conflicts of interest – and face having costs awarded against them – if they try to use strata funds to combat competing plans.

And all strata schemes, regardless of size will need to get two quotes for work that’s going to cost more than $30,000.

Finally, we have a strata commissioner.  Property Services Commissioner John Minns has had strata added to his portfolio.

We examine how that could be a good or bad development, and pick the bones out of all the above on this week’s podcast.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
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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.