The current rental market across Newcastle and Lake Macquarie is running hot. We have been writing for months now about low rental vacancy rates across Newcastle and Lake Macquarie and the impacts this has on driving house prices and rents upwards. 

As in basic economics, as supply decreases and demand increases, prices increase with demand. The thinking of "my property is worth what someone will pay for it", while true, can have more significant consequences. 

In this article we provide an overview from a property management perspective of what is happening right now for renters across the region, our frank opinion on the exploitative nature of some rental asking prices, and the impact this is having. 

We are often asked what happens when a tenant's fixed term lease period ends. In this post, we specifically address a number of questions relating to what happens to the tenancy agreement at the end of the fixed term (rather than discussing the rights and responsibilities of a tenant choosing to leave at the end of the lease). 

Below, we will cover the following questions related to this topic:

• Does the tenant need to move out at the end of the fixed term lease?
• Does the tenant need to sign a new lease in order to stay in the property?
• What happens if a tenant stays on in the property without a new lease?

After significant development, which we first wrote about back in November 2018, NSW Fair Trading has now announced changes to NSW residential tenancy laws which will commence from 23 March 2020.

The changes have been developed primarily to improve the experience of tenants when renting, and to ensure landlords can more effectively manage their properties. The updates aim to reduce disputes over repairs and maintenance and clarify the rights and responsibilities of both landlords and tenants. 

Each of the changes are covered below, including new smoke alarm obligations, allowance for tenants to make changes of a minor nature, changes to break fees and more as sourced from information published on the NSW Fair Trading website. The changes are effective from 23 March 2020. 

An investment property is a wealth creation vehicle. An investor of course wants to return the greatest revenue they can reasonably achieve while the property is in their possession, through capital growth and increases in equity to strong rental return and ideally a positive cash flow. 

In conversations with landlords, we often here that their previous agent handled the rent collection just fine, made maintenance arrangements as needed, and found new tenants when required. However, once a tenant was signed on to the property, things seemed to go into automatic pilot, set-and-forget. This at times included neglected to monitor and action a potential rent increase from time to time. 

​In this article we discuss our approach to completing rent reviews and actioning increases in rent.