/**<js>*//**<js>*/{"id":993,"date":"2018-11-10T17:27:18","date_gmt":"2018-11-10T21:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jimmythomson.com\/?p=993"},"modified":"2018-11-10T17:27:18","modified_gmt":"2018-11-10T21:27:18","slug":"apartment-living-highs-and-lows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/apartment-living-highs-and-lows\/","title":{"rendered":"APARTMENT LIVING: Highs and lows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About 15 years ago my partner Sue and I bought a new apartment off the plan <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-208\" src=\"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/apartment-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" \/>and had a truly hellish\u00a0time with corrupt committee members, self-serving building managers, incompetent strata managers, rapacious developers,\u00a0mendacious attack-dog lawyers and neighbours who refused to help but then were quick to point the finger when things went wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Our saving grace was that we are both authors and journalists\u00a0and we decided to write a book about it to warn other people about the pitfalls.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-994 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-capture-300x212.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\" srcset=\"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-capture-300x212.jpg 300w, http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-capture-1024x723.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-capture-768x542.jpg 768w, http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-capture-1536x1085.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-capture.jpg 1713w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>That was Apartment Living which was published by ABC books. From it came my weekly Flat Chat column, first in the Sydney Morning Herald, now in the Australian Financial Review, which has now been going for 15 years, and from that came the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flat-chat.com.au\/\">Flat Chat website<\/a> which offers advice and empathy to the tens of thousands of others who are struggling with the new realities of strata living.<\/p>\n<p>I also turn up once a month on the James Valentine show on ABC radio 702 to talk about apartments and answer questions <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-887 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jimmythomson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Title-screen-shot-231x300.jpg\" alt=\"Title screen shot\" width=\"150\" height=\"195\" \/>from listeners and I frequently get asked to speak at conferences and seminars.<\/p>\n<p>If you were wondering, that&#8217;s why this website is called The Accidental Guru. \u00a0I never set\u00a0\u00a0out to be an expert on strata living but, hey, if no one else was going to do it, it might as well be me.<\/p>\n<p>In 2014 Sue and I\u00a0launched a magazine called Title, promoting the positive aspects of apartment living. The website <a href=\"http:\/\/www.titlemagazine.com.au\">www.titlemagazine.com.au<\/a> is still going strong although the realities of the print market, the vagaries of advertising and the cost of distribution have overwhelmed its physical incarnation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About 15 years ago my partner Sue and I bought a new apartment off the plan and had a truly hellish\u00a0time with corrupt committee members, self-serving building managers, incompetent strata&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[62,63,64,65],"class_list":{"0":"post-993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-flat-chat","7":"tag-apartments","8":"tag-flats","9":"tag-strata","10":"tag-website"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}