Via The Australian:
Commercial landlords will be required to reduce rent proportionate to a business’s fall in turnover in a mandatory code of conduct unveiled by Scott Morrison and the national cabinet.
Flagged last week, the Prime Minister and premiers have struck a deal with industry players which is designed to protect both landlords and tenants.
Landlords and tenants must honour leases, and rent must be reduced via waivers and lease extensions.
The code will apply for businesses who are eligible for the JobKeeper payment and have a turnover of $50 million or less.
“Landlords must not terminate the lease … tenants must honour the lease,” Mr Morrison said.
“Landlords will be required to reduce rent proportionate to the decline in turnover.”
Good job, ScoMo. And:
The Prime Minister has said the national cabinet won’t have much more to say about residential rents, and will defer instead to the states and territories.
The six-month moratorium on evictions still applies.
Chief Landlord was ropable:
REIA president Adrian Kelly said he understood the complexity the Federal Government has had, dealing with eight jurisdictions in the realm of residential real estate.
“Nevertherless, I am disappointed that a uniform approach could not have been agreed to for all Australians,” said Mr Kelly
“We now face the potential situation where Australians will be treated differently depending on where they reside.
“This will add to the confusion and most likely there will be the misinterpretation of messaging.”
Mr Kelly said the rationale that commercial tenancies have a wide national impact, in this case economic, applies also to residential tenancies.
“For residential it is a social as well as economic impact – after all we all live in dwellings and not all of us either own or lease commercial property,” said Mr Kelly.
“REIA requests that further consideration be given to a national approach to residential real estate.”
There is a national approach that all states should adopt. Do nothing:
- the banks will provide relief and if that’s not enough then obviously those landlords are ponzi-borrowers and don’t warrant support;
- in economic terms it’s great for our bloated and uneconomic rental price deck to deflate and lift competitiveness.
Let landlords burn.
