Posted by Rob Honeycombe on 22 June 2010
Keeping up with changes in legislation can be tough and for Brisbane property owners the penalties for non-compliance can be nasty. Somehow you’re supposed to absorb all the info and make changes, often without much notice. So here’s a heads-up on one of the latest.
The legislation won’t be passed until September but from December 1st it looks certain you’ll need a pool fence inspection if you want to sell or rent your property. A qualified inspector will need to check it and issue a compliance certificate, and you’ll need to do any works to bring it up to today’s laws. So for example those self-closing doors on the living room won’t be enough any more. Your certificate will need reissuing every 2 years and body corps will be required to have an annual inspection.
Our suggestion: get these underway well before December because you won’t be allowed to sign a lease or a sale contract without your certificate and the inspectors are going to be a tad busy. Watch the small print too – any body of water more than 300mm deep that’s kept full and usually used for swimming will be captured. Visit the website or talk to your property manager now.
Landlords might like to keep an eye on further changes in the wind. We expect you’ll be required to prepare a Sustainability Declaration from mid 2011 to show any prospective tenant if the home’s energy efficient etc. And in a controversial move the tenancy lobby groups are currently arguing for an end to giving tenants a “notice to leave without grounds”. So landlords may lose the ability to choose who lives in their property. If you’d like to have a say on this one why not send the Housing Minister an email? It’s Karen Struthers at communityservices@ministerial.qld.gov.au
Like to have a rant on these issues?! Make a comment.
Tags: pool fencing laws Queensland, Queensland tenancy legislation, Residential Tenancies Authority, Sustainability Declaration Queensland, tenancy agreement Queensland, tenant selection Brisbane, Tenants Union Queensland
Posted in Brisbane landlords, real estate marketing | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 16 October 2009
No matter the tenancy screening we do or the interviewing of tenants, a strange occurrence of matching tenants with owners often just happens!
For example, we just rented a property that was a new management where the owner kindly offered to pay for a new hot water system and new flooring (no he didn’t ask for more rent!) and the tenant also thoughtfully offered to clean and dump all the fallen leaves and throw away a couple of boxes in the garage left from the previous occupant (even though we had approval from the owner to get a tradesman out there right away).
How nice is that! Talk about the start of a long and happy tenancy! On the other side of the coin, I hear about an owner flat out refusing to complete necessary maintenance, turning the already inconvenienced and unhappy tenant into a screaming mess, scrawling out their Notice to Remedy Breach forms every other week!
We know whose property is going to be vacant come the expiration of the lease, don’t we?
You don’t have to be a professional property manager to work that out. How do they attract one another? It’s a crazy universal law across the world of rental properties. So pick your battles, landlords!
Tags: Brisbane property manager, property maintenance, tenant selection Brisbane
Posted in Brisbane landlords, Brisbane's rental market | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 10 September 2009
A "corporate" apartment.
There are a thousand too many 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, fully furnished apartments on the rental market right now. There are many factors that lead to supply exceeding demand, but I’ve seen a major drop in the enquiry from ‘corporate tenants’ – which is when the tenant has their boss, or their company, paying their rent. The company provides an accommodation allowance for the staff member, often as an incentive to take the new position within the company.
With the job market softening a bit, the company HR team find they have enough applicants for the jobs they’re offering and they don’t need to offer these incentives right now to get the right staff.
These fantastic ‘corporate’ tenants are disappearing and enquiry is not coming in from this normally active source. And for some landlords the hopes of this seemingly perfect scenario are unrealistic. The thing is a company can go into administration at any time, or cut short a job contract or a project. A company can walk away, call it liquidation and you can’t stop them. A company won’t pay any more in rent to you, and their staff member won’t take better care of your property and their expectations of the premises are similar to that of a hotel – consumable.
I get enquiry from professional couples and wealthy families moving interstate, changing jobs, selling and buying, waiting for their dream home to be built and I get sisters who’ve lived in their apartment for years and the owners selling and they need a new place, and I get single men who need a special kind of garage for their Porsche! This is what I want in a tenant, not a company lease with a chief technical officer with no name!
These are all excellent tenants who care for their home and treat it as their own. They know you are a person and they respect your property. They often have their own investments and they know what the expectations are.
Tenants in the inner-city want a nice lifestyle and they’re not afraid to pay for it. Corporate’s want a bed, and a fridge, and a cheaper-than-$195-a-night hotel room.
Don’t worry about tenant selection, we’ll get it right. The market is still okay and rent will come in either way!
Tags: Brisbane executive property, corporate tenants Brisbane, furnished rentals Brisbane, property vacancy Brisbane, tenant marketing Brisbane, tenant selection Brisbane
Posted in Brisbane landlords, Brisbane's rental market | No Comments »
Keeping up with changes in legislation can be tough and for Brisbane property owners the penalties for non-compliance can be nasty. Somehow you’re supposed to absorb all the info and make changes, often without much notice. So here’s a heads-up on one of the latest.
