Jimmy 00:00
Welcome back!
Sue 00:01
Thank you very much!
Jimmy 00:01
How was Kenya?
Sue 00:03
It was fabulous! I did lots of game drives. I went to the Maasai Mara and I went to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, just outside Nairobi. We saw all of the big five, and lots of other things, as well.
Jimmy 00:18
What were they?
Sue 00:19
Rhino, lion, leopard, buffalo...
Jimmy 00:22
Giraffe?
Sue 00:24
Elephant; that's the big five.
Jimmy 00:28
So what are hippos?
Sue 00:31
Hippos aren't in the big five.
Jimmy 00:33
They're quite big.
Sue 00:34
They are, but maybe they're in the big marine five. There were loads of hippos. We stayed right on the River Mara in the Maasai Mara and it had been flooded and there'd been a lot of damage to some places. There were hippos and crocodiles everywhere.
Jimmy 00:52
Most dangerous animal in Africa, the hippo.
Sue 00:54
No, I disagree. The most dangerous animal in Africa is the tiniest; the mosquito. That causes the most deaths.
Jimmy 01:01
Well back here in strata land, the most dangerous animal is a bloke who goes out on his balcony and practices his operatic scales for an hour-and-a-half every Sunday. So we'll have a listen to that. And we're going to talk about the comparison between rental returns on houses and apartments. Sue, what else have you got there?
Sue 01:26
Also, the state government is watering down it's key housing density policy. You know, where it was going to build more apartments near town centres? Watering that down a little bit.
Jimmy 01:36
What a surprise, government watering down radical policy. I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.
Sue 01:44
And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the AFR and Domain.
Jimmy 01:49
And this is the Flat Chat Wrap. Sue, have you heard about the strata Pavarotti?
Sue 02:09
Absolutely. And I heard you on radio the other day talking about it, too.
Jimmy 02:12
It was funny; I went on Tim Webster, who's basically sitting in for James Valentine in the afternoon, and will be for the next few weeks, if not months. They called me up and asked me what I thought of this. Basically, the story was that somebody was practising their operatic scales. I thought "oh well, maybe their apartment isn't very well sound-proofed." But then I saw an Instagram post, and I'll give you a quick listen to what the neighbours can hear... (Extremely loud tenor voice is heard).
Sue 03:07
Oh, my goodness! Hes got quite a nice voice; it could be worse. But that is very loud, isn't it?
Jimmy 03:12
It's very loud. He does it for an hour-and-a-half every Sunday apparently and it's not like he's in his back bedroom doing it and only annoying the people around him (or let's say, delighting some of the people around him). It's quite obvious, when you look at the video (and I'll put a link in the story notes), that he's standing on his balcony, booming out. It looks like it's a sort of three-sided area, with apartment blocks on three sides, so it forms this giant echo chamber. He's loving it.
Sue 03:49
He's able to hear himself really clearly; it bounces off the other buildings.
Jimmy 03:53
Like he's standing in the mountains, hearing echoes of his voice. So when I was on Afternoons on ABC, people called in and people sent messages. It was quite interesting, because a lot of people were saying you should consider yourself lucky to have such a talented person living in your apartment block.
Sue 04:14
But what if you don't like opera? What if you don't want to have an hour-and-a-half of loud voice every Sunday? Well, we have a neighbour who's a few doors down, who plays a piano and apparently, plays it incredibly well. I hear him every second day, practising scales and I find it really irritating, because to be honest... I know this is terrible, but I don't much like music; it just gets on my nerves. Other people might think "oh, how wonderful!"
Jimmy 04:43
I think he's brilliant, but I'm not as close to the sound as you are. But I mean, I do like to hear little snippets of music now and then. It's better than the 'doof doof doof' that you get at nighttime. Everything is better than that. So there was lots of people that sent messages and phoned in and one person said they had somebody who used to practice a musical instrument. They countered this by putting speakers on the balcony and playing, I think it was heavy metal, or punk rock or the Ramones, or something like that, at full volume, every time this person started, which doesn't make for a harmonious community.
Sue 05:25
Or a nice life for the rest of the residents, I suppose.
Jimmy 05:29
They're getting double the noise intrusion. But it did raise the question of what are your rights and responsibilities in an apartment block, to not annoy your neighbours? I have to say, that some of the people who responded to the radio broadcast said it was outrageous that we were describing this as noise.
Sue 05:49
Because they thought it was beautiful music.
Jimmy 05:53
Even though it's just scales, it is a product of a musical instrument, being the human voice and it was obviously somebody with considerable talent.
Sue 06:04
You had one person phone in, didn't you, who was also an opera singer and they were saying during COVID ... Well, all the time, they have to practice for five hours a day and during COVID, when we weren't allowed to go out, they were having to do it in their apartment. So they had similar problems with their neighbours complaining.
Jimmy 06:23
But that was COVID; everybody had to adjust their way of life during COVID. You couldn't go out. They probably could have gone to the park, if they'd had a dog.
Sue 06:34
Do you remember that there were lots of people who were singing on their balconies? People were enjoying it. I guess it depends how accessible the music is and how good they are at performing it.
Jimmy 06:47
Well, there's a big difference between having somebody who is playing some quite nice music, and some kid who's practising the recorder for the obligatory one hour every night after school, or the drums. You could reasonably classify that as noise. We had a story years ago, about people in a townhouse development, which had garages and one owner had let her son and his band practice their drums and electric instruments in their garage...
Sue 07:21
Didn't Silverchair start out in a garage?
Jimmy 07:23
A lot of bands started out in garages, but they started out in garages in houses, back in the day. This was a garage opposite somebody's house and they were getting this music blasting at them every night. And of course, the person who owned the garage came up with the classic "I own this place, I can do what I like."
Sue 07:44
But these days, there doesn't seem to be an excuse for it, because can't you have an electronic kind of music thing?
Jimmy 07:51
Not with your voice.
Sue 07:52
Okay, but with drums, you can, can't you?
Jimmy 07:54
You can have syndrums, as they're called.
Sue 07:56
Okay, so you can wear headphones, so you can hear the drums, but nobody else can hear them.
Jimmy 08:00
Yes. If your kid is practising piano loudly every night in an apartment block, you really need to think about getting an electric piano.
Sue 08:09
Maybe I could suggest that to our neighbour?
Jimmy 08:11
No. He's got a beautiful grand piano. He's going to come after us, now that you've said this. But most musical instruments can be adapted, so that you don't have to play loudly to practice your skills. The other thing that came out of this was people were saying well, he's doing it during the day, and there's no restriction on noise during the day. It's not true, not in an apartment block. Local councils set basically the same restrictions under the Environmental Health Act, that you cannot play loud music after 11 o'clock at night, and before seven o'clock in the morning, and people think that means that you can play loud music the rest of the time, but not in apartment blocks. In apartment blocks there's restrictions on how much noise you can create that will intrude on your neighbor's right to peaceful enjoyment of their home. And that's 24 hours; that's what a lot of people don't realise. But you know, the thing that came out from this whole chat was there were people who were annoyed about music or noise from their neighbours, who complained to each other, but didn't do anything about it.
Sue 09:31
Which is crazy, because they were kind of saying apartments are really bad places to live, because of this noise. But the thing is, in apartments, you can actually control the noise; have bylaws in place to do that. Whereas in houses, there's very little you can do, unless it's at night and you can call the police. So apartments are much better than houses.
Jimmy 09:50
And in fact, one of the callers said that they'd lived next to somebody who was an operatic teacher and so on. All day, they had different people at different levels of ability turning up for practice sessions, and they lived in a house; they could not do anything about it, because the law doesn't cover that. If they'd been in an apartment, they could have got it stopped.
Sue 10:15
So it just shows how apartments are so much better now; much more healthy. Hopefully, there are better quality apartments being built now, and there'll be better soundproofing. As you made the point, David Chandler is in there, checking on all the new apartments, so hopefully in the future, it'll be a much quieter life.
Jimmy 10:34
It's funny... The ABC reporter on this; her name is Rose. She said that in her apartment, she could hear her neighbours emptying the dishwasher. She said that when she first moved into the apartment, she was outraged by this, but then thought well, this is what apartment living is like, this give and take.
Sue 10:56
I mean, improving your tolerance levels is a good idea.
Jimmy 11:00
It did occur to me that hearing the neighbours emptying the dishwasher would just make me feel guilty, because I know I don't do that enough.
Sue 11:10
I grew up in a house in England, and it was a terraced house, and we always heard the neighbours whenever they went to the toilet; we heard the toilet flush. We never thought anything of it.
Jimmy 11:21
Well, back in those days Sue, you were lucky to have a toilet inside, and not at the bottom of the garden.
Sue 11:27
I guess any sound of flushing toilets reminded my parents how lucky we were.
Jimmy 11:32
It's all relative. When we come back, you've got a story about nimbyism being encouraged by the state government.
[SOUND SAMPLE]
Jimmy
Sue, you have discovered a story today in the Sydney Morning Herald. The state government is apparently quietly changing some of the zones that it was going to rezone for residential apartments.
Sue 12:05
Jimmy, it's not changing, it's 'refining.' The government's just released a policy refinement paper. So it's not backtracking whatsoever and how dare we even suggest that.
Jimmy 12:19
Honing and polishing.
Sue 12:23
They're planning to increase the supply of medium and low-rise density housing, with duplexes, terraces, and small apartment buildings. And that's within 800 metres of train stations and town centres, so that was always the idea. That would provide 112,000 additional homes in the next five years.
Jimmy 12:45
That is significant.
Sue 12:46
Absolutely. But now they're kind of watering it down in the City of Sydney and also in the Inner West, because a lot of councils and NIMBYs have said "no, we can't have that, because we've got lots of terraced housing and if we have a small low-rise apartment building that will interrupt the flow of the housing." You know, if you get a really well-designed little apartment building, maybe five levels high, it's going to look good, and it will reflect the terraced housing around it. I mean, with architects, that's what their skill allows them to do.
Jimmy 13:20
That's why they're supposed to have this design book, isn't it; the pattern book? So they can say "that would fit." They don't?
Sue 13:26
That's right. And it's interesting, because the town centres are excluded if they lack a full-line supermarket and also if their regular bus service runs less than once an hour. What is the point of that? Why not allow this medium-density and low-density housing and increase the bus service? I was in Lithgow yesterday, and that's a town centre. The buses run about once every hour-and-a -half. They don't have a full-time supermarket... Not in that town centre. So Lithgow would be exempted under this and yet, the main centre is kind of dying. There's lots of empty shopfronts. That would be perfect for actually building a few medium-rise apartment buildings. It would be absolutely ideal for them and it would bring more life back into that main street. So you think, what's the point of excluding those? It doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.
Jimmy 14:30
Well, they're caving in to pressure from the precious councils that have been resisting and resisting and resisting putting up anything that goes above two storeys for decades now, and we're kind of reaping the wind on that one.
Sue 14:47
You know, it's just the loudest voices prevail. I mean, the City of Sydney and the inner west; they're full of articulate, well-heeled professional people who know how to push governments. They know how to get publicity for their beliefs, and it just seems ridiculous.
Jimmy 15:04
The City of Sydney; Clover's mob.
Sue 15:07
That's right.
Jimmy 15:08
They don't want to build medium-density housing, but they do want to shut down the golf course.
Sue 15:14
In some areas. They want to reduce the new policy's impact in general residential...
Jimmy 15:19
To be fair, the City of Sydney has more than its fair share of apartment blocks. You know, when you look at the stretch down towards Mascot and Pyrmont and places like that...
Sue 15:29
And the eastern suburbs, absolutely. And we've talked before about how locally, a guy jumped off the top floor of his apartment building, because the apartment building was going to be razed and another building was going to be put in its place, with only 12 luxury apartments it.
Jimmy 15:49
Was it 60 or 100?
Sue 15:53
Something like that. Small studio apartments that exist there. The City of Sydney is actively trying to stop that kind of development happening, so that it can only have 15% or less fewer dwellings. Sorry, I got muddled up there.
Jimmy 16:11
Well, that makes sense. But you know, we shouldn't be too hard on the City of Sydney, apart from their policy and golf courses...
Sue 16:23
Actually, I quite agree with that golf course thing. I mean, Moore Park... There's loads of golf courses around. Why not increase the public common land for people to wander around, without the danger of being hit by golf balls? My friend was in Britain, in York, and he was walking along and he got hit by a golf ball, on his nose.
Jimmy 16:44
That was extremely unlucky. I've been hit by a golf ball in the past, but unfortunately, I was the person who was trying to hit the golf ball. Right enough of this. When we come back, we're going to talk about the comparison between the yield that you'll get on renting a house as compared to letting an apartment. Sue, you've written a story for Domain magazine?
Sue 17:22
That's right and it's about rents for apartments, which are now rising at a faster rate than those for houses. And that's happening in nearly every single capital city in Australia, except Adelaide. Adelaide has always been the kind of exception, in lots of ways. So the gap between the rents is now narrowing; it's historically, the narrowest it's ever been. The experts say it represents a shift in lifestyle preferences towards apartments. And obviously, apartments are more affordable generally than houses, so people are going for a more affordable option as well.
Jimmy 18:00
How big is the gap? I mean, you say it's closing, but is there still a gap?
Sue 18:05
There is still a gap, but the gap is getting smaller all the time. So you look at the latest report... There's this report from MCG Quantity Surveyors, and also a report from the Domain Rental Report. In Sydney, unit rents rose by 2.9%, as against house rents of only 2.7%. And in Melbourne, they rose 5.8%, against 3.6%. And in Brisbane, 5.4% versus 3.3% in houses. So the rises are still significant, but there are much bigger rises in unit rents than in house rents. That gap is narrowing all the time.
Jimmy 18:45
So you would still go to an apartment, if you wanted to save money?
Sue 18:49
Absolutely.
Jimmy 18:50
Even though they're going up, they're going up from a lower base.
Sue 18:54
That's right. I'd say difference in rents; often an apartment will be maybe two-thirds of the rent of a house generally. The place in Australia, where unit rents are going up the most is Bentleigh East/North in Melbourne, and rent increases over the past year for units have been 36%. Whereas, houses rose by just 10%.
Jimmy 19:20
Right. And is there a specific reason for that? I mean, was there a new supermarket opened next door?
Sue 19:25
I think a lot of investors are seeing these kinds of rent rises as being really quite attractive, so they're buying apartments much more. There's a huge demand for apartments to rent from tenants. There's much more demand in the market and demand and supply means prices will rise. In Sydney, Turramurra on the upper North Shore, the gaps' changed the most, with unit rents rising 23% compared to house rents, which haven't changed at all over the past year.
Jimmy 19:59
I think of Turramurra as being one of these NIMBY suburbs that has held out against apartments for a long time, but maybe not.
Sue 20:08
I think they did for a while. I mean, there's no huge high-rise apartments, but there are plenty of medium-density apartments there. They tend to be quite luxurious and quite nice, because they cater a lot for the downsizer market. Or for children who've grown up in Turramurra and want to still live in the area they know and be close to their parents. They tend to be kind of quite well- heeled. It's quite astonishing. I mean, closer in Rockdale and Banksia, which are in southern Sydney... We've got north Sydney, we've got southern Sydney... There, unit rents have jumped 30% over the last year, and houses just 7%. People are kind of actively choosing apartments, rather than houses. If you're renting, you're not taking the gamble of putting a million dollars into a building which has been developed by somebody who is less than honest. That's right. So it might be easier to rent an apartment, than it is to buy an apartment sometimes.
Jimmy 21:09
When a building starts falling down, you just move to one that isn't.
Sue 21:15
I mean, I think rents have gone up so much. Lots of tenants are borrowing money from parents or grandparents or being gifted money to try and get out of the rental market, because it's so difficult. You know, some places you're paying 80% of your income on rent. So they're desperate to actually own property, rather than rent property. It may well be that some people are renting places in apartment buildings to see what it's like, and then choosing maybe if it works out well, to try and buy in that apartment building.
Jimmy 21:47
I had a bit of a,...I wouldn't say an argument, but somebody responded to something... All our stories end up on LinkedIn, and somebody had responded to a thing about house prices or apartment prices and said "we've got to get away from the situation where property is a form of investment. People who want to invest should be investing in stocks and shares and homes are homes." While I sympathise with that to a large extent, my response was "well, who's going to build the houses that we need? If the so-called mum and dad investors aren't going to come and buy the properties, who's going to buy them; who's going to build them?" You would say well, that will push prices down; at which point the developers will just wander off and go and do something else. A lot of developers are in the business of making money, rather than in the business of housing people. Housing people is just the way they make money.
Sue 22:47
I mean, we have a free market economy, so it's great that we have this system where people can invest in property, but at the same time, it needs to be backed up by determined state and federal government action to provide homes where they might not be making a profit. And that's kind of affordable homes and people who really need homes and can't really afford to live in these places as well.
Jimmy 23:10
And tax breaks for super funds that invest in housing. If you get a superfund that's going to come along and build affordable housing, then give them a tax break, so that even if they're not making as much money as they would if they were building luxury apartments, they can still make a decent profit for their clients and more homes will be built. Well, that's online on Domain, so people can read that; I'll put the link in. And before we go, I just want to direct our listeners to the Flat Chat forum, because there's a story that's come up in the past couple of weeks, about somebody in a townhouse development, who has decided they want to keep bees. Now, bees are really important animals in our environment. They pollinate the flowers and the plants and the things that grow, that we need for food. They also make honey, which is nice.
Sue 24:12
And also, having come from Kenya, they're incredibly important, because the only thing that elephants are scared of isn't mice, it's bees. They're terrified of bees. Lots of elephants are trampling through villages and often killing people, because their land is reducing and the only way to control that is with beehives. Because as soon as elephants see a beehive, they retreat, because they're really terrified of the bees getting inside their ears, because they can't get rid of them. So yes, there's more and more beehives all around Africa, stopping elephants coming into villages. Bees are very important.
Jimmy 24:49
So this guy in this townhouse development; when the committee comes along and says "you've got to move those hives. They don't really belong in this sort of environment," they can say "I'm keeping the elephants away." When they say "but there are no elephants," they can say "see, it works!". And on that rather silly note, thank you, Sue for coming back from your journey to keep us up to date with what's happening in strata. And thank you all for listening. We'll talk to you again soon. Thanks for listening to the Flat Chat Wrap podcast. You'll find links to the stories and other references on our website flatchat.com.au. And if you haven't already done so, you can subscribe to this podcast completely free on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite pod-catcher. Just search for Flat Chat Wrap with a W, click on subscribe, and you'll get this podcast every week without even trying. Thanks again. Talk to you again next week. click on subscribe, and you'll get this podcast every week without even trying. Thanks again. Talk to you again next week.