Submission to the Victorian Department of Justice and Community Safety – Residential Tenancies Regulations 2020

The Residential Tenancies Regulations, and the wider reforms to the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (RTA), have the potential to transform people’s experience of renting in Victoria. They represent one of the most important consumer reforms in recent decades, by creating the basis for a fairer rental market with increased consumer protections. CPRC strongly supports the Victorian Government’s intent for the reforms to address ‘the reality that a growing proportion of Victorians are priced out of home ownership and likely to rent for longer periods of time’, and that there is ‘consequently a need to rebalance the market through additional protections for a highly diverse population of renters’.

In this submission we comment on four areas of the proposed Regulations:

• minimum rental standards • modifications to rental housing
• mandatory disclosure before a tenancy
• information that cannot be requested from a rental applicant.