How Qld government wants to further clamp down on dodgy landlords

Queensland’s Housing Minister says she intends to use the full force of the law to clamp down on unscrupulous landlords who try to dodge the government’s limit to rent increases, following criticism from the state’s peak real estate body.

Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon will convene an urgent roundtable in response to reports of unscrupulous landlords exploiting a loophole in new rental reforms.

The freshly appointed minister will summon key stakeholders, including industry bodies, with The Courier-Mail told she intends to use the full force of the law to clamp down on vulnerable tenants being removed from their homes to allow landlords to dodge the government’s limit to rent increases.

It comes as the state’s peak real estate body said it had warned the Palaszczuk government about the potential for landlords to exploit an obvious loophole in new rental reforms.

The Queensland government earlier flagged clamping down on unscrupulous behaviour from landlords following reports industry figures are actively working around the looming changes.

Parliament passed new laws in March to limit the number of rent increases to one each year in response to landlords hiking rent and leaving vulnerable tenants on the brink of homelessness.

The reforms will come into effect in July but Nine News reported landlords are already being guided by property agents to take advantage of the glaring loophole in the legislation which allows owners to lift the rent more than once if they remove the tenant.

As flagged by The Courier-Mail when the laws were passed, landlords who take on a new tenant within the 12-month period after hiking the rent will be able to increase the price again.

For example, if they have a tenant lease the property for six months and then another tenant leases it for the remaining six months, they could be allowed to increase the rent for the new tenant.

Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon wants a nationalised approach to tough rental laws. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

The Real Estate Institute of Queensland’s chief executive said her organisation had warned the government about the issue when the laws were rushed through parliament.

“This is nothing more than the consequence of ill-conceived and poorly thought through legislation,” Ms Mercorella said.

“This is what happens when you rush new laws through without any consultation and they themselves clearly don’t even understand how these new laws operate and the consequences of the retrospective nature of them.”

Ms Mercorella said the government had a “default position of blaming investors for everything” and said the peak body had told the government the new laws were causing and would continue to cause a “variety of issues”.

“It’s really disappointing to see, yet again, the people who are providing the housing being blamed for greedy behaviour,” she said.

Newly minted Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon said the government was already willing to speak with experts and stakeholders about updating the legislation to remove loopholes where necessary.

She said tenants who are being subjected to forceful evictions for landlords to dodge rent cap laws should contact the Residential Tenancies Authority.

“We need to look at how these laws will come into effect,” she told reporters on Thursday morning.

“The government’s intention is to try and help people right now but if we need to review things — if we need to reform, I’m committed to looking at what we need to do to make sure people have a safe place to call home.”

Ms Scanlon flagged regulations to crackdown on how property agents actively push landlords to significantly hike rental prices and ditch tenants.

“It’s really important people get formal advice (and) they know what their rights are, because in some places I suspect people are taking advantage and they are not following the law,” she said.

In April, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese summoned state and territory housing ministers to meet regularly and co-ordinate a plan to strengthen renters’ rights to ease the crisis.

A constant issue for the Queensland government when canvassing new laws to improve affordability is fierce backlash from industry groups who routinely warn of investors abandoning the state and reducing the amount of new stock being created.

Ms Scanlon said a potential solution for this is for states and territories to adopt a co-ordinated strategy.

She said the state government met with interstate counterparts and canvassed the need for a nationalised approach to strengthen rental legislation so investment wasn’t diverted away from particular jurisdictions with harsher laws.

“We certainly think we need to look at the system as a whole,” the Housing Minister said.

“We need to make sure any measures that we bring into effect wouldn’t impact supply and so if you had one state doing something and other states not you could potentially see investors going to another state and not in Queensland where we need desperately for there to be supply.

“We need investors to be investing as well so I think it’s absolutely appropriate that we look at national approaches so there’s consistency and people can’t take advantage of different states having different policies.”