There’s been quite a big hoopla from the real estate community regarding the proposed changes. Some warranted and some a bit over-blown if you ask me. Let me run through some of the proposed changes and my thoughts on them.
1) No reason termination
Ok so this is probably the biggest change of them all. Currently during a periodic lease a landlord can tell the tenant they no longer want them to be their tenant and give them 60 days to find a new home. The new laws that are proposed would end this and the only reasons a landlord can end a tenancy is to move in themselves, to sell the property or to do major renovations. The aim is to give tenants more security of tenure. Basically so they aren’t living with the threat of being booted from their home.
REIWA has come out with a study saying 61% of landlords will sell their rental properties if this law is passed. No offence to REIWA but that’s a bit of codswallop. I imagine they sent out a questionnaire saying how bad the changes would be to the owners and asked them if they would then sell. Of course the people filling in the questionnaire are going to tick yes, I’m going to sell. In the real world i’m very doubtful owners would throw away their retirement income and a great asset with plenty of capital gains to be made just because they couldn’t give their tenants the boot when they feel like it. Most owners prefer to keep tenants for as long as possible because changing tenants costs them time and money. The majority of landlords I know love having long-term tenants because it means they get a regular payment of rent and only when they have to do they terminate a lease.
I’m still not a fan of the proposed change however. You see I’ve been a tenant and a landlord so I can see it from both sides. I’ve experienced the threat of potentially being booted from my home. That made me want to keep it in good condition and abide by the lease. I’ve also had tenants who moved their mates in to the property after the first week and instead of having 2 people living in the apartment I had 8. I issued a breach notice and waited the appropriate time then found they had moved them out and it was back to 2 people. 2 months later and the exact same thing happened. I could never terminate the lease because they always rectified the situation before I could issue a termination notice. I’ve had a similar incident with tenants being loud and disruptive in a small strata complex. I give them a warning then a breach notice and they stop. However a couple of months later it happens again. Again I issue warnings and breaches but unless I have proof and some sort of recording then I’m never going to get a termination in the courts. Now I don’t know about you but I’m not really overly keen on waiting outside my rental property every night with a recorder. I’ve heard similar stories from a number of property managers where the tenant breaches the agreement but does just enough to rectify the situation before breaching it again and again and again. Owners don’t kick out good tenants for no reason. Just those that cause more harm than good.
I’ve probably bored you witless with all this so i’ll leave it at that for now. the other major changes proposed are that all pets are allowed in a rented property and that tenants may do minor alterations to a property without consent as long as it can be rectified at the end of the lease.
