Residential tenancy law review

What is this about?

In NSW, tenants, landlords and property managers have rights and responsibilities that are set out in the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 (the Act).

Following 5 years of operation, the Act was recently subject to a statutory review.

What is happening now?

Following a public consultation, the NSW Government has released the findings and recommendations from its review of NSW tenancy law.

View the report: Residential Tenancies Act 2010 – Statutory Review (PDF, 808 KB).

Next steps

Amended legislation will be prepared in 2017 based on the recommendations of the review. Stakeholders will be consulted, where appropriate, over the drafting of the amendments.

The report on the review recommends further consultation on unresolved questions. These include:

• incentives for the uptake of longer fixed-term leases
• the rights of renters in shared households.

Please check this web page to keep up-to-date on the review process. You can also subscribe to our tenancy enewsletter, The Letterbox, for updates. You can also subscribe to Property matters if you are a property manager.

Consultation background

On 29 October 2015, the NSW Government released the Discussion Paper: Statuory review of the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 (PDF, 2090.37 KB), was released. The discussion paper covered key topic areas including:

• Starting a tenancy
• Rental bonds
• Rent and other charges
• Rights and obligations of landlords and tenants
• Terminations
• Resolving disputes
• Other key issues.

The public consultation closed on 29 January 2016. NSW Fair Trading received 210 submissions.

Fair Trading also carried out face-to-face consultation with several stakeholder organisations during February and March 2016. Stakeholders discussed the operation of NSW tenancy law and specific issues such as:

• domestic violence
• security of tenure (including the control a tenant has over rent increases, their decision to stay in their rental accommodation, and their rights regarding its condition)
• the scope of NSW tenancy law (that is, which renting matters should be regulated).