 Good morning all. It's Trevor Ronsley here, CEO of Abrama. I just want to thank you for connecting. This is the first webinar for Abrama. So those of you who know me will be used to the fact that you've got my cheery face looking out across the room. But here today is Lynne and I. So Lynne's gotten over her initial morning shock of seeing me in the morning and she's so far recovered. So I want to say thank you for dialing in. Thank you for taking this step into the new era of technology for Abrama. It's a big step for Abrama to deliver webinars in a digital sense. So great. We're all on board. Naturally, we really appreciate Abrama's the support from Abrama members without that there's no point of Abrama being around if we don't have members of course. We also do appreciate the support from our industry partners and we've got a slide up there just to remind you who they are. Just a special mention for EBM who is celebrating 10 years of partnership with Abrama this year. So we're very grateful to EBM. And of course, we have a number of Abrama supporters who provide Abrama with a great deal of support including helping us to sign up new members. So that's our unashamed plug for our sponsors and supporters. Thank you for dialing in and I'd now like to introduce Lynne. For those of you who don't know Lynne, Lynne is the Senior Community Education Officer with the Residential Tenancies Authority and she's here today to talk about the tenancy rules that you need to know as a manager who handle residential tenancies. Lynne's been at the RTA for 133 years and has a vast level of knowledge having worked within the rental sector for over 30 years. There you go. So I refer to Lynne as the Guru of Queensland, Tennessee Laws. We're very happy to have her present today for today's session. Let's face it, tenancy rules are not an exciting topic but one that we must know if we're dealing with landlords and tenants. The way in which we're going to do this is Lynne's going to launch into a presentation which will feature some slides up on the screen for you. This is all being recorded so you will be able to refer to this later. But we anticipate that the presentation will go for about 20 to 30 minutes and there's an opportunity for you to ask questions online. So if you have a question at any stage, type it in. I think there's a typing area, a box on your screen for you to type in questions and we'll see those and Lynne, I'm not sure whether you want to answer those questions as they pop up or leave until the end we'll see how we go. Certainly we'll, I'll talk to you again in around 20 to 30 minutes. So maybe to you Lynne, good luck. Great, thank you Trevor. Okay, so for today's session we're going to be talking about the RTA Services, the Act, the Residential Tenancies and Rumi Accommodation Act 2008, Resolving Tenancy Disputes, we're going to talk about compliance which is involving our investigations area and also questions and answers and throughout the session we will look at answering some of the questions that members have submitted. So what does the RTA do? Our core business is to administer the Residential Tenancies and Rumi Accommodation Act 2008 and the regulations. We do that by providing tenancy information to all parties involved in a tenancy. We have bond management, dispute resolution, investigations and prosecutions and we also provide policy and education services as well. Who do we help? We help tenants and residents, lessors or landlords, agents and that includes yourself, peak industry bodies, community sector groups and other government agencies. So to give you a bit of an outline in relation to the RTA Services our contact center is our 1300 36311 number and what we do is we provide personalized service via telephone or email to people inquiring about tenancy rules or the tenancy processes. To give you an idea our call center on average gets around 1800 calls per day. We also have bond management where you can actually lodge and refund bonds online or submit that to the RTA by post. We recommend that if you are going into management rights that you also register for e-services that way then you can actually have a look on all the bonds that you have listed under your management and be able to manage a few things under the e-services. So please do that if you're not sure on how to register for e-services again contact our call center and they can step you through the process for that. In relation to a rental bond the legislation is very clear under section 116 that you do have to pay it to the RTA and that there is actually penalty of provisions attached to this by not lodging a bond or late lodgment. So you need to fill in a lodgment form and submit that to the RTA. You need to do that and lodge the bond within 10 days of receiving the bond and that's not business days it is a flat 10 days. So best business practice out there in the sector would be that you choose one day a week where you can actually submit the bonds through to the RTA. Your trust account systems should be able to actually lodge those bonds through or disperse those bonds on a weekly basis as well. The maximum you can charge for a bond is if it is under $700 per week it's four times the weekly rental amount and if it's over $700 a week it is negotiable in relation to what you may charge. For the RTA we also have our free dispute resolution service available to assist landlords and tenants resolve their tenancy and bond disputes and I will actually be talking a little bit more about our dispute resolution service later. We also have our investigations. So investigations area looks into the breaches of the Act that carry penalty provisions for non-compliance of the Act and our Act has about 568 sections of the Act and about 125 of those sections have penalty provisions attached. The previous slide that I had up you would see that it was a maximum penalty use points of 40 penalty units for not lodging the bond with the RTA so this is what our investigations area looks into. We also have a policy and stakeholder engagement unit. Our website you can order forms, publications and a whole pile of other resources are available on our website. Just to give you an idea on the rental sector so 34.2% of the properties across Queensland are rented 71.1% of those properties are in southeast Queensland and 96.7% of the properties are either houses flats or townhouses or units so to give you an idea the balance to make it up to 100% would be deemed to be like roomy accommodation so like purpose built student accommodation and boarding houses and also movable dwellings the permanent rents in Carram parks. 30% or more of the household income is spent on rent for approximately nearly 13% of households 42% of all households renting are privately are actually families and the fastest growing age group of tenants is the aged 55 plus the median of the average length of tenancy is 13.7 months and 43% of tenants have been renting for 10 years so Trevor I know that we've got some questions coming in so if you would like to just have a quick look at that yeah Lynn I've got a couple questions I actually noticed also somebody said they can't hear us I wasn't sure if that was not good it's all good okay so a question here Lynn RTA has been very helpful it's a long question RTA has been very helpful when you phone them there's a person on the other end of the phone can you share with me what are the main oh so what are the main topics that RTA receives with that what are the most common questions sure about half the calls the RTA receives at the in our call center are actually bond related so where how do I get a bond refund or where is the bond dispute and so forth so about half of them are bond related the rest of my tenancy matters and usually the top ones are in relation to repairs and maintenance the end of a tenancy or how the process might be to end a tenancy that also actually includes a topical one around lease breaks where people are leaving their agreements early entry issues and also renteries so there's another question here about lodging and bonds online I think have you answered that already I kind of had buzz first at the end of the day you can actually lodge on the forms online just make sure that when you're scanning and uploading your images that they are clear images and make sure that you complete all the fields appropriately if you do lodge a bond online you'll get a b-pay reference within a few days and you just need to use that reference to make sure that you pay the bond in time so Lynn I've been out of residential tenancies and operated for some time this is all space age stuff for me so you're saying that and please forgive me those people who don't even know how to do this but question for me are you saying that I don't need to go anywhere and deposit a check or I can just transfer funds out of my bank account into the RTA bank account yes so what we'll do you can still send a check from your trust account that's fine however you can actually um go online the RTA's website um go in where it says lodgements and refunds and fill in the fields and actually upload a scanned copy of the lodgement form the RTA will then send you out a b-pay reference number and you use that reference number to pay the bond okay and that will come through it's not a necessarily direct link I suppose between your trust account and our account it's actually a b-pay process it's available at this point it's not a problem so the law states you have 14 days to lodge bonds 10 days 10 days so thank you for that it was a quick question and you answered it correctly um so why would why would people take need to take longer than 10 days using that process they could do it almost almost do a daily good they could travel and that's a really good question you can lodge you can disperse bonds as soon as you actually receive them that's fine what we have seen in the um agent and manager world is that some people are lodging only at the end of the month or some people are dispersing their bonds mid and end of month and if you do that you may not necessarily be complying with the legislation so that's why we know that if you choose one day a week um there's a good chance that you know you're going to make that 10-day time frame that's required all right thanks win okay well just keep going and thank you for your questions so in relation to the lessons obligations under the residential chances act and now I'm just going to go through the next part about talking about key areas of the legislation to help you as part of your business and understanding the laws the lessons obligation is that they must ensure the premises are clean fit for the tent to live in good repair and not in breach of any health or safety laws while the tents it continues they must maintain the premises and inclusions in good repair and this is a very good um section to use when you're dealing with a landlord who may not necessarily want to be doing repairs we recommend dealing with repairs in a timely manner or reasonable time frame if there's going to be delays in getting something fixed again communicate that with the tenant make sure that they're aware that things are actually being addressed and not been um kept in the dark in that regard noise issues and Trevor tell me if I'm right with this that there's always full peas parties pets parkings and personalities or is it more than four passive smoking so that's five peas so one of the peas would be in relation to the peas that for parties and that would be the noise issues that we have so under section 184 b and c the tenant must not cause a nuisance by the use of the premises or interfere with reasonable peace comfort or privacy of a neighbor so this is where your if someone is a um having parties or loud music this is a section where they would be breaching the condition of the property is that the tenant must keep the premises and inclusions clean having regard to the condition at the start of the tenancy that's one part of section 188 it then continues on to the end part where it says at the end of the tenancy the tenant must leave the premises and inclusions as far as possible in the same condition they were in at the start of the tenancy fair wear and tear accepted and this is a situation where you might find tenants come to you at the end of the tenancy and say to you oh but you know Trevor I left it in better condition than what it was when I moved in and that's quite a common thing that we actually also hear at the RTA in our call centre and in our dispute area as well so it's really important that you have a thoroughly completed entry condition report and an exit condition report and we recommend also taking photos um because let's face it if this matter progresses and it comes through a dispute resolution it's not resolved and it goes off to the tribunal yours trying to claim some cleaning or some repairs for damages you need to have all that evidence and how you do that is that documentation and those photos so again really really important section of the act um and again those reports to be completed and those photos with body corporate bylaws they do form part of the tenancy agreement and um on the tenancy agreement you'll see under item 16 are there any body corporate bylaws applicable and also has the tenant been given a copy of the relevant bylaws so section 69 of the act says that the less or less old age it must give a copy of the relevant bylaws um and the tenant needs to actually comply with those bylaws as they do form part of the tenancy agreement just want to quickly touch on the rules of entry and this is an area that um people need to comply with because they do actually have penalty provisions attached so under sections 192 to 201 outlines the less or less right of entry it actually gives you the reasons for entry so it may be to do a routine inspection for general tenancies you'd have to give seven days notice to the tenant uh for repairs and maintenance to show a prospective purchaser through or prospective tenant through or to check if maintenance has been already carried out um all these require 24 hours notice to the tenant you need to issue a form nine entry notice the purpose of this is to inform the tenant who is coming in um and what day and date and time that that person is um coming in to enter the property if it is an emergency um or there's a suspect that you know by not entering um that the damage would actually occur to the property then you can enter without actually the 24 hour notice you can enter straight away obviously communication is key um in relation to entering a property if you are to enter for routine inspection and you have a tenant that might say to you no you cannot come in then it's maybe a case of asking a series of questions as to why if you have followed the rules um and issued the correct notice and complied with the legislation you are entitled to enter however if you do have a tenant standing there saying you cannot come in um it may be because they have a sick person inside or that they might need to um negotiate another date or time so again um going down that path of actually communicating with the tenant um is ideal but as I said if you have followed the rules then you have you do actually have a right to enter if you can't get into a property because the tenant is continually refusing you you can actually apply to our dispute resolution service for assistance just on the quickly on the compliant side of um entry under section 202 it does state that unlawful entry of premises that you cannot contravene the rules of entry um and if you do there's a penalty unit of 120 so Trove I think we've got a couple more questions yeah look a lot of these um questions coming through today very familiar to arama we get a lot of questions about airbnb for example and subletting so what what are the rules regarding subletting Lynn sure um in nutshell the lessor does have to give written permission to allow a tenant to sublet um they also do have to have good reasons to refuse that but it is actually part of the standard terms of the tenancy agreement that the tenant does sign that they if they are looking to sublet that they do need the landlord's written permission to do so so uh tenant can't just rent out a bedroom whether they listed on airbnb or not without the written permission of the landlord or the landlord's agent correct yes it is actually a term as I said in their standard terms that they've actually signed if they do rent out a room um they then take on the rollers ahead tenant as well so there's rules around that they actually read a case in New Zealand where a tenant whose sublet without authority was ordered by the courts to repay all of the commissions that they had gained while they were subletting so um and there was a case in the Supreme Court of Victoria that ruled in favor of the landlord uh where the tenant insisted that they had a right to sublet through airbnb so clearly without written authorization from the agent uh or the land or the landlord or the landlord's agent uh subletting is not they can't airbnb tenants can't airbnb yeah okay um another quick question about water charging um which comes up all the time we've got a section on the arama website as well on water charging so what can can't you charge a tenant okay so you can charge water consumption however the act states that the property has to be individually meted it does have to be water efficient and also that the agreement does state the tenants agreement does state that the tenant will pay for water consumption it is the consumption part only it is not all the services charges if it's not water if it's not individually meted that's where probably a lot of the complexes may have some issues if it's not individually meted then they cannot be charging it's going to be a landlord to actually be covering those sort of costs okay thank you i've got another uh you want me to do some more yes a couple more yes just uh so when a tenant breaches a bylaw i know you covered bylaws before did it does the body corporate get involved what's so what involvement does the body corporate have in terms of the bylaw breach for a tenant sure um if a tenant has breached the agreement breached a bylaw then they breach their tenants agreement and you can follow the form 11 knows to remedy breach process that's available to you under our laws a contravention notice is not with the rta but it is under the body corporate and community management act um so rules would apply there i would believe that it's not necessarily the on-site manager that's actually issuing those contravention notices it's body corporate manager that would actually be involved in doing that um i suppose i'm not sure the time frames that that may be a little bit longer process however you do actually have the rta's process that if they do breach a bylaw say hypothetically here um it's noise issues um and um then you can actually give them seven days to rectify the breach under our laws okay so let me just put that into plain speaker beach breach of the sorry i didn't mean to like that a breach of the bylaws yep here's a breach of the tenancy agreement correct okay so you as an agent for a landlord can affect a breach of the tenancy agreement because they breach the bylaw and that bylaw breach might have been repeatedly parking and visitors parking spaces or smoking in areas where you're not meant to smoke yeah party about the pool it's not a question that's popped up here yet um but uh smoking can you restrict smoking in a tenancy yes so um i know that special terms is something that um always pops up um you could actually to um put a special term in in relation to smoking outside the unit and outside the lot and everything like that that's okay outside your unit oh you mean requiring them because under the bcc and act it's you can't restrict smoking in the common area under the current laws but under the tenancy act you can if you are putting that as a special term and then there's nothing saying that you couldn't put that they can't smoke inside the lot inside the unit um you could still put something like that in okay so if you want to stop smoking inside the lot you need the approval of your lot owner first of all in writing and you need to put it as a special condition what about um so that's smoking um uh very clear uh under the act can't ban smoking at the moment what about pets though can you ban pets can we get rid of animals out of tenancies good question i am a pet lover i've got two fluffy white dogs but if you if the if you didn't want pets in yeah tenancy units can um you can it is actually the landlords right to actually um either agree or disagree in relation to having a pet and what you need to do is be very specific on your tenancy agreement um and it's on the uh i think it's the second page of the agreement where it says are pets allowed yes or no it also then further goes down says if yes then put the type of pet that's there um again this is a an individual situation whether um the owner is allowing a pet or not um but keep in mind if you are allowing a pet my advice would be to be very specific about not to say it's one cat or one dog but to actually be specific about the type of um animal that it is right down to the fact of um saying that it's it's a chihuahua named trevor thanks for that man i bet you its bark is worse than its bark um so just to clear up the whole passive smoking and um uh pets thing to two of the peas you can through the arty through the act residential tenancies really accommodation act um prohibit pets entirely and prohibit smoking entirely providing that's the will of the landlord and it's advisable to put those into special conditions at the commencement of a lease yeah and as i said there is a part for pets on the lease where the pets are approved or not so that easily gets um that part solved um in relation to the smoking you can put special term in as with all special terms just make sure that it doesn't contravene contravene the residential tencies act so um and i know that there's always more questions coming in about special terms which we will um get to shortly um so um we will get that so i'll just keep going for a moment in relation to resolving disputes i know that we've got a question uh thank you in relation to water so again it really comes down to it must be individually meted um and that you must also make sure that um the tenancy agreement states that the person does pay the water on the agreement okay so i'll just go in start talking about resolving disputes um we start as like a three step process so the first part is self resolution we want you to communicate you're actually as managers of being on site managers um you are living on site you're probably building relationships and can communicate quite easily with the tenants that you have on site so we ask that you talk communicate share evidence stick to the facts um and negotiate if need be so try and all those skills to actually try and resolve the matter yourselves if it's cut if you cannot resolve it the next step is dispute resolution and i'll talk about our dispute process shortly and then again if it's still not resolved your next option is to go to the tribunal which is QCAT Queensland civil and administration tribunal there's urgent and non urgent matters under the act so if it's an urgent matter usually that is if you're probably trying to end the tenancy seeking a termination order or want a possession or anything outlined under section 415 of the act then it's a straight go to QCAT you don't need to come through dispute resolution any other matter and it's usually um either bond or money related matters or to get something fixed can actually come through our dispute resolution first it's a non urgent matter before progressing off to the tribunal so the types of common disputes we receive um about half of our disputes and last financial year the RTI received about 27 000 disputes um half of them are about bond matters so where someone is actually disputing um a bond claim um we also have compensation so excess of the bond amount so you're claiming the bond plus you're looking for more money and need to get that notice of unresolved dispute to go off to the tribunal uh non lodgement of bond so again this is an offence under the act but sometimes we are receiving disputes where the bond has not actually reached the RTI that would also go into our investigations area but the people the tenant would also have to go through disputes um to get a notice to actually proceed the um proceed to the tribunal repairs the maintenance ending a tenancy renter is an entry it's interesting a lot of the disputes that we receive are very also very similar to the types of inquiries we receive at the RTI as well so when you come through the RTI the first thing we will do is an intake process to check the dispute resolution form and assess it if it is suitable to go through to a telephone conference we will then um make that decision and book in a time for you if the matter is unsuitable and a lot of times we find that people will not participate in a telephone conference or participate in the process um or the matter is not um a matter that is actually compliant with our legislation then if that be the case we would close that or issue a notice of unresolved dispute we do have on our website all matters that are deemed to be unsuitable um that's all listed um as a requirement so with the conciliation process the first part would be that we would have a telephone conference um the parties to the dispute actually own the dispute outcome the conciliator is impartial so they're not there to take sides nor make decisions they may um share information with you making sure that each side understands what the dispute is about um but they're not there to take decisions to make decisions sorry the outcome is actually the people who are in the dispute so that would be potentially yourself and the tenant or yourself acting on the instructions from the owner it is a confidential and voluntary process so as I said before as part of the intake if someone does not want to participate in the conciliation process we can't force them to do that and that means that we would actually have to close down their file but as I said it is voluntary and we would highly encourage people to participate in our conciliation process look we've got some more questions there Lynn are we running into how are we going for time no I think we're going good Trevor okay so let's keep going so the elephant in the room right now is a case that was recently prosecuted through the courts uh by the RTA uh regarding um special terms and we talked about special terms a little bit before so we're starting to see cases where RTA are becoming more investigative if that's the word so tell us tell us what's going on there okay so um I will talk a little bit more on compliance in a moment um however but let's just talk about the special term there is a couple of recent cases um you're correct um where we have prosecuted a large agency in Brisbane and also an agency up north Queensland and those prosecutions um have actually involved two parts one of special terms and the other part of unlawful entry for members of ARAMA who are listening today or in the future you can actually find those articles on our website under newsroom and I would recommend actually having a read of those particular outcomes um with special terms the main thing is to understand that someone can actually a party to the contract can actually draft a special term so that's either the landlord or a tenant um and it's really making sure that if you are drafting a special term that you're not contravening outside the legislation and under section 53 is contracting outside the act you can't do it's prohibited so people are putting special terms in that um a breach of the legislation and one of the big ones is about carpet cleaning and with carpet cleaning all you can do is if the carpets were steam cleaned at the start you can ask them to steam clean at the end put all your evidence in your entry condition report as to what that standard is yeah your receipts your photos and write on your entry condition report what that is if you have a special term on your tenets to your agreement and I'm going to be very clear on this if you have one that says the tenant must have the carpets professionally clean and must use ABC carpet cleaning then you are in breach of the legislation and where this also comes into um if you have a special term that says you must have the um premises professionally clean at the end you must have blinds professionally clean if you have those sort of requirements where you're asking a tenant to purchase goods and services which is a breach of section 171 then you are breaching the legislation let me clear this up if I require a tenant to professionally steam clean their carpets on completion of the lease that's a breach of the act correct good question Trevor so at the end of the day if I was staying clean at the start I need to be staying clean the tenant has an obligation under section 1884 return the property back same condition less fair wear and tear how they are doing that is up to them so if they choose to use a recommended cleaner they choose to get someone else or they choose to hire a machine that's fine the main thing is that you cannot ask them to purchase a particular service or goods and that they how your main concern should be is that the property is left in the same condition less fair wear and tear okay now I know you don't write the policy but I'm going to ask I'm just going to challenge you with this question okay so I know it's a policy question if I say you must use my steam cleaning services as a condition of your exit it's pretty clear that's a breach of the act you can't force someone to take your services correct if I say you must use a recognized professional steam cleaning company in order to clean those carpets I'm hearing that that's also a breach of the act and I kind of get it but to be able to say to a tenant that these carpets have been steam clean prior to your entry and here is the receipt and here's the evidence and they must be returned in the same condition which necessitates steam cleaning then they can do it themselves as long as they can show evidence that the carpets have been steam clean and return in the same condition less fair wear and tear so that's not a breach yeah so I think where the main thing comes into again going back to return the property is the same condition your very detailed entry condition report that's going to have that it was professionally cleaned here's evidence to say that it was this is a standard it's about setting that standard and you can ask the tenant to return the carpets in the same standard as what it was how they do that is not really your concern it's about making sure that condition is the same at the end just to continue on this the RTA does have a video that has been recently launched it's on the RTA's website at the end of today's recording we will actually include that video and it does talk about special terms and particularly in relation to compliance and particularly in relation to carpet cleaning next one thank you so great question Trevor and it's always as you said we have an elephant in the room at this point in time I'm a bit conscious of time so I'll just keep going through just to give a information in relation to what is the dispute versus investigation so with dispute resolution and resolving disputes it's a tenancy and bond dispute it's a breach of the terms of the tenancy agreement and as I said before if it's not resolved through conciliation it goes off to QCAT and that's how you actually go through this process is completing a form 16 dispute resolution request form with investigations this is actually in the alleged breaches of the penalty provisions of the legislation this is not going to QCAT this is actually going to the magistrates court and the RTA does proactive and reactive cases in relation to investigations and to give you an idea last financial year we did 815 cases of where people have actually complained or done a proactive or investigators have done a proactive case we get sometimes people around the call centre and it may be that the bonds not lodged at the RTA you know they then need to obviously let us know that it wasn't lodged they then can go through a dispute process to claim the money from that side through but they also can actually do a complaint to the RTA because there was a breach of the act we can also get referrals from officer fair trading so that is actually the government body that deals with the property occupations act which you would actually be complying with and all the trust accounting processes as well Queensland Police Service and also Queensland Fire and Emergency Services as well so I understand for this financial year we are actually probably up about 10 to 20% in relation to the amount of files that we're actually dealing with so the common types of investigations the non-lodgement of bond or the late lodgements so again if your business practice is to lodge at the end of the month or lodge mid and end of month you may not be complying with our act so again change your business practices to make sure you are dispersing the bonds more regularly to meet that 10 day time frame unlawful of entry which I've actually touched on earlier unlawful recovery of possession under the legislation there's seven ways how a tenancy can end and that is form 12 a nose to leave is issued a form 13 nose of intention to leave mortgagee in possession abandonment mutual agreement a tribunal order or death of a sole tenant that's how the rules state in the legislation how a tenancy can end going outside those rules under section 353 there are actually penalty provisions in place for that contracting outside the legislation in relation to special terms we've just kind of had that bit of a conversation there Trevor but again as I said please refer we have information on our website in relation to special terms and as I said a video which will also play at the end of the recorded webinar photos used in advertising without written permission you cannot use tenants belongings a photo that contains the tenants belongings if it actually for advertising that has penalty provisions and also conducting an open house also has penalty provisions just on that last point if they give permission if you get a permission slip look I want to come in you're leaving I want to come in take some photos can you sign this little thing saying it's okay to take photos while my stuff is used absolutely so this is actually getting that written permission from the tenant to say yes come in I'm fine that you take the photos and that you're going to use that for advertising I said it's all about the tenants written permission for that and not having a written agreement or intercondition report also does have penalty units attached to it so just to keep you an idea the RTA investigation a complaint if it is substantiated we can provide education so they may sort of just have a conversation with you a bit like probably slap on the wrist I think Trevor I know it's called education it doesn't have to involve capital punishment issue a warning letter and if that were the case they may still also monitor things issue a penalty infringement notice is a what we call a pin and this is a little bit probably like a speeding ticket as such so it's a smaller amount of a penalty that could be it's a smaller amount like compared to what a full prosecution might be and that you do have there's some rules in relation to the penalty infringement notice and we do have information on our website particularly if you do get issued a penalty infringement notice or more importantly if we do commence prosecution with prosecution as I said before if we go down that path and you have breached the penalty provisions of our legislation the matter will go before a local magistrates court if he is a company director they must be advised and also they must have authority to bind the company it's really important for that we would recommend whether if you have been issued with a penalty infringement notice or if it is a prosecution that you seek your own independent legal advice it's really important that you understand what the process is in relation to our investigations process there is probably going to be legal costs and as I said if you read the latest articles that we have in our newsroom on the RTA website you'll see the recent cases in relation to two real estate agents that we have recently prosecuted so we have a lot of information on our website so it's rta.qld.gov.au and again if you have an urgent question that you need answering either today or in the future please contact our 1300 363 111 number or again you have access to Trevor at Arama as well for what it's worth yeah are we done I think we're nearly done Trevor I think you've got some more questions look I've got some questions which frequently asked of us but we've done all of the online questions so I just want to let people know that we have recorded this webinar we will be sending out a wrap up to you and we'll also be in a survey to you asking what you thought of this suspicious occasion and for webinars to members but we'll also have this webinar online on our Arama website under education resources and Lynn you're going to connect the link to the video that explains special conditions absolutely we will actually I don't actually have the technical skills Trevor however but we will have someone here that has those skills embed the video about special terms in amongst this recording for you so we'll have those links available it'll be on the website if you have a question in the future you can ring the 1300 number the RTA 1300 number or that previous slide yep those numbers or the website address very helpful people in here at RTA or you can give a Arama call or an email and we'll flip the question on to the RTA or you can jump on to the Arama discussion forum you can help member discussion forum is also helpful so there's a number of ways in which you can get your questions answered and that really is what we've done today we've tried to either spy some questions with your presentation which has made it very interesting Lynn I only nodded off once or twice you probably didn't notice I'm a power mapper so I look I think we've there's no other questions have popped up but if you do have questions plenty of ways to ask them Lynn I'd like to thank you for your presentation I want to thank everybody who's who has dialed in for dialing in and not nodding off we can tell and I want to encourage you to tell your friends that Arama is in the webinar business and that the next time we've got them out there you can you can tell them whether you had a good experience and and also tell us whether you've had a good experience with this webinar when we send you a survey so that's all from me okay great well thank you Trevor and thank you everyone again for attending today's session as I said a copy of the recording and also the video in relation to special terms will actually be available for Arama so we take the opportunity again thank you Trevor for coming in and again we look forward to working with you in the future in relation to doing more webinars and coming into the digital age again this webinar will now end thank you very much for your time everybody Lee is a property manager for a Queensland real estate agency Lee's company is firm but fair to protect the interests of all parties to a tenancy property owners readily use Lee's company because they have an established reputation for complying with legislation and working with tenants to resolve issues wherever possible after seeing a recent court outcome in the media Lee phoned the RTA to discuss the tenancy agreement that the agency had been using their version includes additional terms to the tenancy agreement which is sometimes called special terms Lee was advised by the RTA that some of the special terms could be unlawful because they required the tenant to purchase professional goods or services if a special term states that a tenant must provide a receipt or engage a professional it is a breach of section 171 of the Act this means that these special terms placed an additional burden on the tenant which was already provided for in the Act or sought to evade the obligations of the landlord or agent under the Act Lee was shocked and concerned that the agency might be breaking the law and asked the RTA what would happen the RTA advised that if a penalty infringement notice was issued there could be a penalty of $1,200 or more for the agency while an individual could receive a penalty of more than $250 if the matter was prosecuted in the magistrates court the penalty for the agency could be more than $12,000 and up to $2,500 for an individual there were over 200 tenancy agreements in place with these special terms included and Lee did not want to receive a penalty infringement notice or defend a prosecution in the magistrates court Lee asked the RTA what should be done the RTA advised Lee that if the property owner or the managing agency took reasonable steps to remedy the situation the likelihood of the RTA taking enforcement action would be reduced Lee could issue a written statement removing the unlawful terms in the existing tenancy agreements or notify tenants in writing that the special terms would no longer apply effective immediately immediately after getting advice from the RTA Lee's agency amended the tenancy agreement by removing any unlawful terms the agency also added information to their vacate packs reminding tenants of section 188 of the act which states tenants must leave the premises and inclusions as far as possible in the same condition they were in at the start of the tenancy fair wear and tear accepted at the start of each tenancy Lee and the tenants complete an entry condition report and attach photos to record the standard and condition of the rental property then at the end of the tenancy an exit condition report is completed with more photos when the tenants vacate this helps to protect both the tenant and Lee to avoid disagreements and disputes about the condition of the property when the tenants leave importantly Lee learned that the way in which that same condition less fair wear and tear is achieved at the end of the tenancy is entirely up to the tenant that means that while Lee's agency can provide a list of companies to assist tenants to return carpets and other items to the same standard tenants will not be obliged to use these companies one year later a tenant made a complaint to the RTA about unlawful terms provided in the tenancy agreement by Lee's agency the RTA investigated the matter and sent a letter to Lee asking for a response to the allegations the RTA was provided with evidence that proved the agency had written to tenants to advise that the terms were unlawful and would not be enforced reminded tenants of the obligations under the act when they provided notice to vacate the property advised the tenant in question that the terms would not be enforced and had not made a bond claim on these grounds the RTA decided that the case would not be progressed the tenant was advised that no penalty or prosecution would be pursued for more information on special terms RTA investigations entry and exit condition reports please contact the RTA on 1300 366 311 or visit rta.qld.gov.au