Confused about Special Terms for General Tenant Agreement

Hi there

I've been a long time lurker and have learnt a lot from these forums over the past few months.

I have purchased by first investment property in QLD and about to appoint an agent (Form 6) to manage my property. In regards to the special terms section is this drafted by the property owners themselves or does the agent already have a template of special terms that they will supply to new tenants? I've seen a few templates on the internet and was contemplating on just using one of those.

Just need to be pointed in the right direction on this one.

 

Agent will handle it. Not recommended to draft your own terms unless you really, really know what you're doing.

95% of additional terms are void or redundant anyway - the standard terms have pretty much full coverage of issues.

 

@thatbum Spot on!

@krazibone The agent is specifically not allowed to draft their own terms in this section. Those terms must come from you, though there's really nothing stopping you from asking the agent to help source terms for you to provide back to them if there was something in particular that you wanted covered.

It is very strongly recommended that any terms be legally drafted if you do include them, and be aware that any terms that contravene the existing agreement and surrounding legislation is not only void but also potentially threatens the validity of the entire agreement.

Best practice is that if you do have any extra terms, they are only to be a few very specific terms relating to items that may not covered in the standard agreements and have been considered by a legal expert (the REIQ offers fabulous assistance for agents on this subject).

 

@krazibone Your title says 'General Tenancy Agreement'- to me that's between Agent/Landlord with Tenant. This is Form 18a, and is available readily from RTA. Generally there can be Special Terms included such as one adopted from the REIQ, or one specific e.g. from Body Corporate By-law, or you can include anything else when mutually agreed. We have included things like water usage, gardening etc.

The Form 6 is an appointment form between the Landlord and the Agent. Most people have used REIQ format, which is copyrighted. Essentially it provides a skeleton of the fee structure, and you can have any form of charges within that Form, and even have an Appendix.

 

@Pumpkin, Krazibone is referring to the section in the Form 6 that requests the client to supply any special terms and conditions they would like included in the Form 18a agreement with the tenants at their property.

On a side note- I hope you don't mind me asking, did you write your own terms or were they drafted alongside an authority (solicitor, REIQ, experienced Property Manager, etc.).

 

Hi Tom

Apologize for the super late response

The property manager has provided a copy of their Special Terms Agreement to me and i'm happy with what they've got as it covers most of the things that I was concerned with. I'm sure it was drafted up by one of their own solicitors, thank you for your assistance.

Mike