Landlords who offer accommodation which is intended to house six or more tenants, where individual rooms are rented to tenants with shared facilities such as a kitchen and bathroom, may be operating a boarding house under the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA).

National Manager Compliance and Investigations & Information and Education Steve Watson says landlords should be scheduling their time now to complete any work required to make their properties comply with each of the standards.

"There are just over six months left until the first healthy homes standards compliance deadline, meaning now is the time to act to ensure you have everything in place by the time the deadline rolls around.

All landlords of boarding houses must comply with the standards from 1 July 2021.

If you need to get any work done that may require booking a tradesperson, such as getting an extractor fan installed to comply with the ventilation standard, do it sooner rather than later so you don’t run the risk of missing the deadline in July.

It’s important to comply with the standards to reduce negative health impacts for tenants by ensuring they have a warm and dry place to live and to maintain the value of your rental property.

Landlords may face financial penalties if their rental properties are not compliant with the standards once the deadline comes around.

From 1 December 2020, landlords will be required to include a statement of their current level of compliance with the standards in most new or renewed tenancy agreements.

The compliance statement document is available to download from the Tenancy Services website.

Private landlords must ensure their rental properties comply with the healthy homes standards within 90 days of any new, or renewed, tenancy from 1 July 2021, with all private rentals being compliant by 1 July 2024, regardless of whether the tenancy has changed."

The standards became law on 1 July 2019 and introduce specific and minimum standards for heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture ingress and drainage, and draught stopping in all rental properties, including boarding houses where rooms are rented to tenants individually. 

Information about the requirements of operating a boarding house, including how boarding house tenancies differ from private tenancies can be found on the Tenancy Services website.

Find out more about boarding houses.

Find out more about the healthy homes standards.

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