PM - It’s much better to be safe than sorry

Your property manager is required by Law to ensure that your lease complies with current legislation whenever you enter into a new Lease Agreement.

Why? In today’s leasing environment there are a number of compliance issues that must be addressed before entering into a Lease Agreement. Some of these compliance issues could be new and therefore they may not have affected you before. Issues every property investor must comply with today BEFORE the property is leased include ensuring the rental property:

•  Is smoke alarm and water usage compliant,

•  Has window and blind cord safety devices installed,

•  Has achieved pool safety compliance (if there is a pool on the property).

While there is a cost to the property investor to ensure legislative compliance, the risk of non‐compliance far outweighs the cost to be compliant. Unfortunately a number of property investors today are choosing to ignore the need to ensure their property is compliant, claiming it is either because they have never needed to do it before or because they cannot see the benefit of the cost involved.

By ensuring your property is lease compliant you avoid the risk of having an invalid Tenancy Agreement or worse – facing heavy penalties and having an insurance claim denied in the event of a loss incurred due to non-compliance. Worse still, you could be liable in the event of a public liability claim made against you as a result of a non‐compliance loss. As an industry we have witnessed too many cases where this has occurred, for instance when a rental property goes up in flames and the property investor is found to be personally liable if the property is found without compliant smoke alarms in place.

As your property managers, we are faced with the unenviable task of informing you of these additional lease compliance costs.  However we cannot stress strongly enough how vital it is to heed our advice and ensure your property is compliant in order to minimise your risk and protect you against the potential of future legal action and additional costs.