Remember the Retail Leases Act 2003 (Vic)?  We used to talk about it a lot in the good old days … … anyway, reminiscing aside, in a welcome break from all things COVID-19 in the world of commercial and retail tenancies, the Retail Leases Amendment Bill 2019 (Vic) passed the lower house of Victorian Parliament on 4 June […]

On 2 June 2020 I presented a seminar on the Code, the Act and the Regulations for the LIV that has been made available to subscribers to this blog. My colleague David Lloyd also spoke about the impact of COVID-19 on other real estate transactions, so you guys might be interested that too. I have […]

The Victorian Government has published a guidance note that addresses some of the key areas of debate arising out of the COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) (Commercial Leases and Licences) Regulations 2020 (Regulations) and the Act and Code that preceded it. A copy of Victoria’s commercial tenancies relief scheme: Policy guidance on eligible participants and documentation requirements is available here: Guideline. It is […]

The Victorian Small Business Commission has published a FAQ guideline on the operation of the COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) (Commercial Leases and Licences) Regulations 2020 (Vic). The Commission’s FAQs are available here: https://www.vsbc.vic.gov.au/fact-sheets-and-resources/faqs/ The FAQs address many the important questions that practitioners are asking about the Regulations.  All practitioners dealing with applications for rent relief (whether […]

In an earlier note I suggested that the landlord needs to offer to its tenant an extension of the lease term by up to 24 months.  However, it has been pointed out to me that the extension that the landlord needs to offer may be less than that. Regulation 13 states that (emphasis added): Extension […]

Click to access Australian%20Jurisdictions%20responses%20to%20COVID-19-5May2020.pdf

Well, the new Regulations contain a few surprises with some wins for each of landlords and tenants respectively. The Regulations broadly follow the scheme of the Code with a number of notable exceptions. Abi and my preliminary comments are set out below. First, as expected, the Regulations operate for the period 29 March 2020 to […]

The COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) (Commercial Leases and Licences) Regulations 2020 (Vic) have just been published and are available here: Omnibus Regs Abi and I will write a summary shortly.

For those who have not seen it but still want to, here is the link to last week’s webinar that Abilene Singh and I presented: https://www.greenslist.com.au/media/Coronavirus-and-Victorian-retail-and-commercial-tenancies Links to our slides and the Commonwealth Code are attached to the last couple of posts on this blog, which you should have to hand when viewing the webinar. […]

The New South Wales government has produced regulations to give effect to the National Cabinet Mandatory Code of Conduct for landlords and tenants. We have not yet see the Victorian equivalent and it is not clear whether Victoria’s regulations will follow a similar model or take a different approach.  However, it is already apparent that […]