When Lyell Lamborn’s new lease arrived, it came with an $80 weekly increase and a notice to vacate the property.
Key points:
- Brisbane man Dale Billett was recovering from leg amputation surgery when he received a notice to vacate his West End tenancy
- The Real Estate Institute of Queensland says the move protects landlords from “lifetime” periodic tenancies
- The Tenants Association says the new practice creates unnecessary anxiety for tenants who are already facing a crushing housing market
The Form 12 notice explained that her landlord had the right to terminate her tenancy in Brisbane when her lease expired.
The announcement came after Queensland’s real estate industry peak body recommended all agents implement the “best-practice” strategy in a bid to protect landlords from “lifetime” tenants who can automatically move from fixed-term to periodic agreements, e.g. -month contracts.
Mrs Lamborn’s rental property is an almost 100-year-old worker’s cottage in Manly with a number of outstanding repairs.
Last year, a friend of Mrs Lamborn fell through the worn front steps of the dilapidated tenement.
“I felt that [rent] increase which amounted to $80 a week, which is actually a 23 per cent increase in my rent, that was a huge increase for what I consider to be a very dilapidated house,” Ms Lamborn said.
She said she calculated her options in the current market and felt compelled to accept the increase and therefore the notice to leave.
“I’m being told that if I don’t sign and there’s no negotiation on the rent increase, then I’m out,” Ms Lamborn said.
“In this market I can’t. I’m going to struggle to find anything.
“It leaves you on a knife edge wondering what you’re going to do every year … it keeps me awake at night.”
Laws coming into force in October will make it difficult for landlords to end periodic agreements.
“Should we have a place to go?”
This weekend, Dale Billett and Katie Havelberg are packing up their West End home of four and a half years.
It is also the first week Mr Billet has been out of hospital for four months after an accident caused the amputation of his lower right leg.
While he was rehabilitating in hospital, the couple found out their home was being sold and realized they needed to find a new handicap accessible home.
When they did, an unusual contract came out.
“I was working on the lease and getting ready to sign it and at the end there was a notice to quit attached,” Ms Havelberg said.
The couple signed the lease, but the process of property hunting took a toll.
“It just added an extra burden on top of the burden that was already here,” Ms Havelberg said.
“Sleepless nights, days where you’re just constantly worrying, ‘Are we going to have a place to go?'”
The couple is now navigating their way, with Mr. Ticket limited in what he can lift and carry.
‘Like a guillotine over the heads of tenants’
Tenants Queensland chief executive Penny Carr slammed the industry body over the new practice, which she said was causing unnecessary anxiety for tenants already facing a crushing housing market.
“Every tenant in Queensland would live with like a guillotine over their head the whole time they live in their home,” she said.
“And if they are good or lucky at the end, they can be offered a new term.
“It’s extraordinary to call it best practice.”
But the peak body for Queensland’s property industry has stood by its recommendation.
CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, Antonia Mercorella, said the institute was considering sending the forms’ best practices ahead of new tenancy laws coming into force in October.
“It does not evict the tenant or threaten the tenant in any way as Tenants Queensland suggests,” she said.
“All it does is confirm that the fixed term tenancy ends on that date.
“Unfortunately, from the first of October here in Queensland, if you don’t and you miss the crucial notice period, the fixed term tenancy will effectively default and become a periodic agreement.
“Effectively it will be a lease for life unless they can establish one of the limited prescribed plots that will become vacant from the first of October.”
Ms Mercorella admitted the recommendation came at a difficult time for tenants.
“I agree that the timing of these new laws is incredibly unfortunate and I would also say that we issued this best practice recommendation very reluctantly because we are very conscious of how tight the rental market is,” she said.
