Next year will be when the Victorian Government looks at introducing change to the rental laws, giving the state time to deal with the Coronavirus.

This move has been welcomed by REIV President Leah Calnan who earlier this month wrote to the Victorian Government, calling for a delay to changes to the Residential Tenancy Act due to the outbreak of Covid-19. 

Rental reforms were due to take effect on 1st July, which would have been difficult to implement while the real estate industry was dealing with the fallout of Coronavirus. 

At a Glance:

• Changes due to start in the Tenancy Residential Act for Victoria on July 1 have been postponed
• REIV said the delay is a huge relief to the real estate industry
• Delays will protect VCAT from being overloaded with cases

This week the Victorian Government announced that it agreed that now was not the best time for rental reforms and that they would hold off for the time being.

“The State Governments decision to delay the introduction of rental law changes is a huge relief to everybody in the Victorian Real estate sector and allows us to focus our full attention on dealing with Covid-19.” said Ms Calnan. 

“Dealing with drastic changes to rental laws, would have been impossible to manage when the industry is already dealing with significant increase in workload with reduced resources and income.

"The financial viability of real estate businesses is also heavily impacted at this time.

“Everybody has enough on their plate at the moment, delaying rental law changes was the right call.” 

Ms Calnan said delaying changes to the RTA will also help protect the Victorian Cival Administration Tribunal from being further flooded with residential cases, creating an unnecessary backlog during the pandemic. 

“We congratulate the Victorian Government on listening to our industry and making the bold decision, to delay rental changes and concentrate all of our resources into tackling the impact of the Coronavirus," said Ms Calnan.

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