My neighbours

Apartment living is such a lucky dip. You never know what neighbours you will get and what building problems you will uncover.

This blog post is about my neighbours.

I live in an apartment block with three towers. There are six apartments in my tower, one on each landing, which is very civilised.

Well, except for the face there’s no ventilation in the stairwell, which doesn’t appear to be have been a consideration in the 70s when the block was constructed.

It means all smells, good and bad, get trapped in it.

The bloke in the ground floor unit is a renter. He chain smokes until bed, then coughs up a lung all night. The stench seeps out under his door and fills the stairwell.

The strata manager accidentally forwarded him an email from me about how pissed off everyone was about the chaining. The email requested that a warning to be sent to tenants about smoking egress.

Instead the renter got a download on how he was destroying everyone’s quality of life.

I was HORRIFIED and had stern words with the strata manager. The renters who live above him were mortified because they were mentioned in the email. I had to apologise profusely to them. FFS.

But it seems to have had the desired effect. Well, the overpowering smell of cigarette smoke in the corridor has been replaced by the overpowering smell of marijuana.

Go me.

On the next level is a long-term owner who uses her three-bedroom apartment as an occasional acupuncture office. However, her husband has moved into care, so she’s decided clear out the apartment for rental. There was outrage among the body corporate committee about her completely filling all the recycling and regular bins for two weeks running with all her crap.

Her ground level balcony is also collapsing and she’s asked to have it replaced. It is timber and I thought aluminium would be a more practical alternative, but concerns were raised by the committee, so I shrugged my shoulders and told the builder to replace like with like.

There is also a mysterious hole in the wall of one of her bedrooms, with bricks tumbling down inside it, which I am told is the body corporate’s responsibility. Seems a bit odd to me.

Apparently the balcony and dodgy wall will cost about five grand to fix. Sigh.

On the next level is an investment apartment. I think the owners lost their nerve when the hot water service exploded last year and they had to pay the clean up bill. They put the apartment on the market before Christmas, with their rental agent in charge of the sale.

Their rental agent. I kid you not. A buyer’s agent told the rental agent it was the worst-marketed apartment he’d ever inspected.

It did not sell at auction. I would be surprised if anyone even turned up. The unit was scuffed and dated, unstyled and unloved.

The owners turned up last week with cans of paint and other bits and bobs to try and give it a budget makeover before putting it back on the market.

I didn’t realise they were the owners, I thought they were the tradesmen. I was very unflattering in my appraisal of it. Ooops. I also didn’t hold back in my opinion of the real estate agent, “lovely, but …”

The owners were drilling and grinding and hammering until 10pm on Australia Day. Jenny in the apartment above was very unimpressed and sent a message to the executive WhatsApp group wondering if they were doing anything illegal.

On the next level up are a lovely couple called Karla and Nick. I’ve had many a chat with Karla and we went for coffee once. They love seeing classic 80s bands like the Stranglers perform live. They refer to the apartment block as “the ghetto” because it looks so rundown.

I am rundown by begging the body corporate to do something about the rundown-ness of it.

Then there is me and my constantly yapping dogs and my front door that occasionally slams with such force that it sounds like a bomb going off. The closer needs replacing and I have been asking for three years to get it fixed. Still waiting, even though I’m the secretary.

And above me is Jenny, who is retired and lost her husband to cancer about a year before I moved in. She secretly scattered his ashes in the garden, which means she has to live in the block forever, despite being close to 70 and living up four flights of stairs.

She’s very fit though and does the Manly to Shelly Beach swim every week. She’s also in a choir that recently performed at Carnegie Hall.

So there you have it, in a nutshell, my neighbours.

Nice bunch, but I yearn to move on. I am tired of the hassles and the lack of outdoor space for the dogs.

I think perhaps I’m not an apartment living person. But I’m stuck with being one because property prices in Sydney are so high.

My favourite real estate agent is popping over today to give me some advice. Stay tuned.

Song of the day: Sesame Street “People in your neighbourhood”