Thursday, August 13, 2026

Sydney owner lists $4m waterfront home for less than $1m in brutal ad





Map showing Granny Flat and Greek Grass built on the boundary  




Chris isn’t leaving any skeletons in his closet after posting his three-bedroom waterfront townhouse for sale.

The home is located along Sydney’s Blackwattle Bay, where townhouses are worth upwards of $4 million.

“We’ve decided, let’s just throw the baby out with the bathwater, let’s just get rid of it,” Chris told A Current Affair. A Current Affair

Chris has listed his home for $999,999.

“We’ve decided, let’s just throw the baby out with the bathwater, let’s just get rid of it,” Chris told A Current Affair.

It only takes reading the sarcastic property description in the listing to understand why.

“BUY THE DREAM ... INHERIT THE NIGHTMARE,” Chris wrote.

“This isn’t just a home. It’s an experience. For nearly $4 million, we thought we’d purchased our forever home. Turns out we’d actually enrolled in an unlimited subscription to ... Strata - The Never Ending Story.”

Chris bought his dream home two years ago, but an ongoing dispute with the building’s Owners Corporation led him to list it for sale. A Current Affair

Chris bought his dream home two years ago, but an ongoing dispute with the building’s owners corporation led him to list it for sale.

“Our advice: forget checking the dishwasher, forget checking the paint, forget checking the roof,” Chris goes on to write.

“Ask for the meeting minutes, read them, every single one, because the biggest surprise in strata usually isn’t hidden behind the walls, it’s hidden in the paperwork.”

Chris says more than 6000 people have emailed or messaged him since the ad was posted, many offering more than $1 million.

“What they don’t understand and what I’ve tried to explain is: it’s not $1 million you’re paying,” Chris said.

“You’re paying that, and then there are all these levies.”

Chris claims a couple of his neighbours undertook unauthorised works on the property in 2017, but things went pear-shaped and now Chris and the other owners also have to foot the bill.

Sydney owner lists $4m home for under $1m amid strata agony. A Current Affair

A letter sent from City of Sydney Council to one of Chris’ neighbours detailed how allegedly unauthorised works on one of the properties – converting a courtyard into a room – were deemed “a breach of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act”. But the council determined “it would not be taking further action at present”.

“Council needs to have a mandate to actively be able to come and say, here’s the demolition order,” Chris said.

Statement from City of Sydney building surveyor:

I refer to an investigation currently being carried out by the City of Sydney in relation to unauthorised development at the subject property.

An inspection carried out on 20 December 2024 has confirmed that the matter (being unauthorised building works by enclosing the ground floor rear courtyard partially and converting that into a room) is a breach of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (The Act), insofar that, the development was carried out without a Development Consent (DA).

Council has determined that although it considered that works have been undertaken without any consent, Council will not be taking any further action in this matter at present.

Read more

Retiree speaks out after being ripped off by convicted fraudster Darren Rudkin

Retiree speaks out after being ripped off by convicted fraudster Darren Rudkin

This does not prohibit Council from taking any future action should further information be bought to our attention relating to this matter

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More than 100 Metro Petroleum service stations raided

More than 100 Metro Petroleum service stations raided across Australia in major illicit tobacco crackdown


Senate inquiry backs ATO data sharing in CDR A Senate select committee has recommended the inclusion of Australian Tax Office data in the Consumer Data Right to help fight fraudulent loan applications



KPMG’s ousted partners 

bring in the big guns

An army of legal and strategic communications 
advisors are on board to help the former partners 
through the reputational quagmire awaiting them.
Columnist
It’s all hands on deck at KPMG, as the firm prepares for its date with the parliamentary inquiry investigating its auditor misconduct scandal on Friday. There’s even a war room set up in its Melbourne office, and another waiting in Canberra once the executives decamp there ahead of the hearing.
But it’s not just the firm’s current executives that are getting a helping hand from its army of advisors. It turns out KPMG has been rather generous with the support it is offering the partners who have been pushed out the door by the scandal as well.

Media Matters: “ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 194 segments about the three major heat events” that hit the US this summer and not a single one of them mentioned climate change. Not one!


Where are the Robocalls?  I don’t think I’ve gotten a robocall in several months.  That’s GREAT news.  Are yours down as well?  It may be that the telecoms really are working with law enforcement to shut these down. Remember that calls from outside the US must have a US-based service to transfer these voice over internet calls into the phone system. And they must have a way to display a Caller ID number, and usually must have a phone number for recipients to call back. Obviously this system should be something we can track.  So whoever is working on this, thank you and great work!  And maybe there could be more work done on spam text messages.



 
New BBB study looks at Artificial Intelligence used for customer service
  • Businesses increasingly using it for chats, incoming calls
  • Often unpopular with customers
  • Complaints also note increase in scams using AI
Supreme Court rules President can remove FTC Commissioners at will; also affects other federal regulatory agencies
 

Fraud Studies: Here are links to the studies I’ve written for the Better Business Bureau: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud,  tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards,  free trial offer frauds,  job scams,  online shopping fraud,  fake check fraud and crypto scams
 
Fraud News Around the worldHumorFTC and CFPBBenefit TheftBitcoin and Crypto FraudRansomware and data breachesIRS and tax fraudJamaica and Lottery FraudRomance Fraud and Sextortion 
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ICAC targets brazen rendezvous at Double Bay pub


 ICAC targets brazen rendezvous at Double Bay pub


On June 24 last year, as Sydney basked in its warmest weather of the month, lobbyist Jeremy Greenwood spent the morning being grilled during a secret preliminary examination at the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

At the end of the interrogation, senior ICAC officials explicitly told Greenwood not to discuss his attendance or the contents of the examination with anyone other than his three-person legal team. It was the last thing said to Greenwood before the 37-year-old former political staffer walked out the door. Breaching the direction can result in 12 months in jail.

The Royal Oak Hotel was the scene of a meeting which attracted the attention of ICAC. BROOK MITCHELL
But that same afternoon, Greenwood travelled four kilometres east to the Royal Oak Hotel in Double Bay, stepped inside and sat down with his close friend Jean-Claude Perrottet, who along with Greenwood is featuring prominently in ICAC’s latest blockbuster inquiry,Operation Rosny. It would be the first of many such questionable meetings or phone calls between Greenwood and those panicked by being caught up in the probe.
CCTV from the Double Bay encounter shows the pair placing their phones two metres from their table, in an apparent attempt to make sure any law enforcement agencies listening could not hear the conversation that followed.
Greenwood insisted during an explosive ICAC hearing on Wednesday this was all very normal behaviour. “It’s not a rare thing,” he offered.
An incredulous counsel assisting the commission, Dr Peggy Dwyer, SC, asked: “So do you say that when you go to any pub with your friends, you deliberately put your phones at another table, a few tables away?”
He replied: “It’s not uncommon for me to do that at all. I remember Barack Obama once said he never brings a phone into a meeting.”
Jeremy Greenwood leaving the ICAC after giving three days of evidence.GEORGE CHAN
Perhaps a factor for keeping his phone – and potential ears – at arm’s length over recent times was the open secret in political circles that the ICAC has been investigating Greenwood and a conservative Christian sub-faction of the Liberal Party known as the Reformers since mid-2022.


The little-known cousin to ICAC’s public hearings, compulsory examinations are convened as the commission builds a case. The law says they are meant to be kept secret to make sure witnesses don’t collude to corrupt the process.
Asked whether he breached the direction to keep his examination by the ICAC secret, Greenwood said he “hoped I haven’t”.
But is it possible he had? “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve said it about 15 times. I don’t know.”
Witnesses who are ordered to appear before ICAC investigators are routinely given a direction not to discuss the evidence or the fact they’ve been summonsed. Greenwood said on Wednesday he knew this, but could not recall whether he had ever shared details of any evidence.
“Mr Greenwood, you’ve described the proceedings as stressful, and they obviously are,” Dwyer said, sympathetically. Then came the kicker: “Is it the case that you cracked under that stress, and you did discuss the evidence that you were going to give?” He again said he could not recall.
The Royal Oak meeting was not the only time Greenwood has met friends and allies who are also feeling the heat; the ICAC has heard evidence of multiple phone calls and gatherings over recent months.
During a trip to London in June, Greenwood met four times with his former business partner and key ICAC target, Christian Ellis. “We were at a pub every single time we caught up, from about midday to 9pm on my days off from a conference,” he explained. The two have continued to speak via phone as recently as this week.
Earlier this year, Greenwood picked up his friend Rob Assaf and drove to a cafe in Belfield. Assaf – a key member of the Reformers sub-faction being probed over illegal donations – was in a state of agitation about the ICAC investigation.
Assaf pulled out his laptop with a summons on the screen, and left it with Greenwood seated at the cafe to inspect. The pair then put their phones in Greenwood’s car and went for a walk.
Assaf claims Greenwood asked him what he would say if a certain question came up at the commission, and recalled Greenwood being concerned about a fellow Reformer and friend, Jean-Claude Perrottet, given he had taken money from a banned political donor, hotelier Michael O’Hara.
On June 5 this year, Greenwood and Assaf met again, this time for a walk along the Cooks River track. Both men left their phones and laptop behind before setting off.
What happened next depends on who is telling the story.
Witness at the ICAC inquiry loses his temper
According to Assaf’s version of events, Greenwood told him he had recently met with other ICAC targets Jean-Claude Perrottet and Dallas McInerney. He also apparently repeated his concerns that the younger Perrottet brother could be in trouble given his obvious links to O’Hara.
“It definitely made me uncomfortable that he was meeting with that many people potentially involved,” Assaf told the ICAC.
As for Greenwood’s version of that meeting? In summary: “I can’t recall.”
Greenwood will return to the witness box in coming weeks to face allegations he and two other Liberal Party operatives were to receive a $2 million bribe from fugitive Sydney property developer Jean Nassif.

Further reading

Here are some of the highlights of our ICAC coverage.
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