Mascot Towers unit owners to foot bill for repairs prompting calls for better consumer protections
3 JULY 2019 Owners of apartments in the Mascot Towers development will be left with a hefty bill to repair structural damage as the building is too old to fall under warranty, with property experts calling for better consumer protections. Residents were forced to evacuate the 10-storey Sydney building on Friday night after major cracks appeared in its beams. Temporary building props were installed in the carpark earlier in the [...]
Buyer interest plummets as Sydney’s failing high-rises trigger headlines
2 JULY 2019 Sydney residents were evacuated from their Mascot Towers homes in June after cracks appeared in their walls, in an incident that echoed Christmas Eve’s Opal Tower evacuation in Sydney’s Olympic Park area. The images of confused residents milling outside the troubled towers with pets and belongings in their arms have come to represent New South Wales’ high-rise housing crisis. Nearly all (97 per cent) of new high-rise [...]
Experts warn of more major building defects to follow Mascot Towers drama
23 JUNE 2019 Just six months after Sydney’s Opal Tower was dramatically evacuated, another Sydney high-rise has been hit by potentially devastating cracks. And experts say the nightmare facing residents of Mascot Towers won’t be the last. According to Owners Corporation Network spokesman Stephen Goddard, these incidents could be just the tip of the iceberg. He said the problem was probably far greater than most people realised because many owners within [...]
Minister defends city’s high-rise housing
23 JUNE 2019 The Minister for Better Regulation has denied there are widespread problems in the city's high-rise residential housing sector, saying “I don’t believe there is any great cause for alarm for other apartment buildings across Sydney". Announcing an emergency financial assistance package for residents of the beleaguered Mascot Towers block on Sunday, Minister Kevin Anderson said the NSW government would restore "confidence" with “the biggest shake-up of the [...]
Buying a new high-rise apartment is a risk best avoided
19 JUNE 2019 I write this piece as one of the lucky apartment owners. Lucky not because I managed to break into the apartment market, but because I survived it financially intact.The predicament facing Opal Tower and Mascot Towers apartment owners is only the visible tip of a very big iceberg. So my advice to my kids today, and anyone who'll listen, is this: do not buy a new apartment, [...]
Cracked up: how can apartment buyers guard against a defective purchase?
18 JUNE 2019 With faults and cracks discovered over the weekend in Sydney’s Mascot Towers apartment complex – and similar cracks in Opal Tower six months ago – the spotlight is back on the quality of New South Wales apartment buildings. Research from the University of NSW in 2015 found that 85% of new apartment buildings had defects at completion – mostly with waterproofing and fire detection systems – and [...]
‘Daunting’ reality for strata lot owners after Mascot Towers evacuation
17 JUNE 2019 Strata lot owners could have to pay for building repairs after the Mascot Towers residents were evacuated. Owners Corporation Network President Gary Petherbridge tells Ross Greenwood the problem is systemic. “People shouldn’t be buying off the plan anymore, you’re better off to wait 10 years until the property is sorted out.” > Listen to the full interview at 2gb.com Brooke Corte
Falling through the cracks: Governments slammed over building standards after Mascot evacuation
16 JUNE 2019 Lawyer and strata specialist Stephen Goddard claimed developments could be rushed through by governments eager to profit from stamp duty and other taxes. “Everybody is on a money hit,” Mr Goddard said. “The government wants to keep the builders building because it gets stamp duty … what happens in the end? People who buy in these apartments get it in the neck.” > Read the full article [...]
Mascot Towers unit owners to foot bill for repairs prompting calls for better consumer protections
16 JUNE 2019 Stephen Goddard, spokesman for the Owners Corporation Network — an advocacy group for owners in strata schemes — said owners of apartments in the decade-old Mascot Towers development were no longer covered by the statutory warranty period and would now be left with a hefty bill. "Consumers have nowhere to go in these sorts of situations, there's nobody for them to sue, there's nowhere for them to [...]
NSW off-the-plan buyers to get better protection under new laws this year
11 JUNE 2019 Off-the-plan property buyers will soon be better protected when long-awaited legal changes come into effect this September – and inject much-needed confidence into the Sydney new apartment market, project marketers predict. As a result of changes to conveyancing laws approved by the NSW Parliament late last year and to be introduced in the next quarter, developers will be made more accountable to buyers, and there’ll be more [...]
Unit rates changes fail to fix fundamental flaw
10 JUNE 2019 Disgruntled ratepayers are amassing a war chest in order to fight future rises, saying changes to the way the charge was calculated in this year's budget do not fix the underlying flaw in the system. Separate rating factors will be introduced for houses and units for the first time, to help smooth out some of the huge rates increases seen by unit owners in the past two [...]
NSW still without Airbnb rules, one year after plan was announced
04 JUNE 2019 It’s been one year since the NSW government announced it would regulate Airbnb but the state is still without firm rules on short-term letting. In the meantime, it has left Anne Sullivan dealing with apartments in her Strathfield complex that are regularly let through Airbnb and used as party houses. “We’ve had people urinating off balconies, throwing beer bottles off the balcony,” Ms Sullivan said. “We’ve called [...]
Falling Through the Cracks
01 JUNE 2019 "The ancient Greeks believed opal came from the tears of Zeus. When opal turns to tears again it will ... bring down Australia's booming high rise apartment business." - From the Opal Tower Sydney Residents Facebook page Three months after the initial evaculation of Opal Tower on Christmase Eve 2018, nearly half of the tower's apartments are still not fit for reoccupation and hundreds of people remain [...]
Tower Residents in Cry for Certainty
01 JUNE 2019 Five months ago, Shady Eskander's short-term plans involved watching the New Year's Eve fireworks from his new apartment on the top floor of Opal Tower in Sydney's Olympic Park. Longer term, he and wife Amy hoped to start a family. But plans were up-ended on Christmas Eve when major cracks found on the 10th floor of the $165 million skyscraper forced an emergency evacuation. Hundreds of residents [...]
Apartments can be great water savers – instead of wasters
20 MAY 2019 Everyone’s talking about water again this week. Sydney Water has announced level one restrictions, high-security water pricing in the Murray region has reached around $175,000 for an Olympic swimming pool’s worth of the stuff and some towns in Barnaby Joyce’s New England electorate face the very real prospect of running out in the coming months. But these issues are literally a drop in the harbour compared to [...]
Buying Off-The-Plan Podcast
20 MAY 2019 > Listen to the full podcast at theelephantintheroom.com.au Karen Stiles
Opal Tower Tenancy Chaos Leads to Calls for NSW Help
17 APRIL 2019 Owners, tenants and industry lobby grops are calling for the NSW government to step up efforts to resolve tenancy chaos at Sydney's troubled Opal Tower. The government, which also owns more than 40 apartments in the tower, should take a bigger lead in clarifying tenancy issues both as a stakeholder and as a statutory body instead of relying on Fair Trading NSW and the NSW Civil & [...]
32 Canberra construction sites shut down
10 APRIL 2019 The ACT government has temporarily shut down 32 construction sites in the past three months, as part of a renewed crackdown on dodgy building work. Access Canberra's building regulators have also inspected 180 sites since the start of the year, as it attempts to shake a widely-held perception that it's failed to respond to the problems plaguing Canberra's construction sector. Release of the figures comes as the [...]
Advocates accuse NSW government of failing to help apartment owners affected by flammable cladding
12 MARCH 2019 Residents at high risk from potentially deadly flammable cladding are being denied information about what they should do to make their buildings safe, consumer advocates claim. Instead, say apartment residents, they are being threatened with huge fines for doing nothing, while owners in some blocks have been told it could cost more than $50,000 per unit to fix the problem. “This decision is bewildering,” says Phil Gall, [...]
What’s in the Lacrosse VCAT judgement for owners of defective apartments and policy makers?
7 MARCH 2019 Despite the wailing of design consultants about the implications of the Lacrosse judgement and the Opal Tower engineering report, the importance of a viable Design and Construct constructor in these cases has proved critical to a way forward. The experiences and the processes that apartment owners have endured is unreasonable in a modern construction industry. It is evident that better design management skills, risk management and trustworthy [...]
