The Retail Leases Amendment Bill 2012 (Vic) was introduced into Parliament yesterday. The main purpose of the Bill is to remove the requirement to report to the Small Business Commissioner particulars of a new or renewed lease (currently required under s 25 of the RLA 2003). The requirement to notify the Commissioner of leases and renewals […]

  For those following the debate about the Court of Appeal’s decision about the disclaimer of leases in the Willmott decision, here is another summary and comment on the decision by King & Wood Mallesons.

The third edition of Mortgagee’s Power of Sale will be released soon, written by Clyde Croft J and Robert Hay. Earlier editions of the book have been an invaluable resource for mortgage practitioners, and I am sure that the new edition will only enhance the title’s reputation. For more details, see Robert’s post here.

For those who are interested in the debate following my previous post on the Willmott decision, my friend and colleague Carrie Rome-Sievers has put an excellent summary of the case on her blog here.

The Court of Appeal last week ruled that a liquidator appointed to a land owning company could use the disclaimer power in s 568 of the Corporations Act to extinguish leases granted by that company. This decision may have significant consequences for tenants and their financiers if their landlords are placed into liquidation. The case […]

In the next development in the debate over whether a serviced apartment is a retail premises lease, Justice Croft last week held that the lease of a ‘serviced apartment’ as part of a ‘resort accommodation facility’ was a retail premises lease, but sounded a note of caution against applying the finding to all leases of […]

The Office of the Small Business Commissioner has recently published two new information sheets about: exercising options;  and assignment of retail premises leases. The information sheets provide an overview of the operation of the Retail Leases Act 2003 (Vic) in those areas and are expressed in layman’s terms. They should be a useful resource for landlords and […]

I recently wrote a short note, available here, in relation to an issue that has emerged about the operation of s 251 of the Building Act on the landlord’s ability to recover certain outgoings. Robert Hay has added another post to his blog on this topic that further advances the debate, available here. Unfortunately, I […]

A recent journal article has suggested that landlords cannot recover as an outgoing the cost of complying with essential safety measures under the Building Act. Essential safety measures overlap with a significant number of repair and maintenance costs that may otherwise be recoverable by a landlord under the terms of a lease. This has lead […]

ED – readers referring to this post should also refer to the later, related post here. I am often asked whether a lease to a serviced apartment operator is a retail premises lease for the purposes of the Retail Leases Act 2003 (Vic) (RLA). At this stage, the only indication we have from the Tribunal was […]