What actually has to be in a tenancy agreement

There is a particular kind of landlord confidence that ends badly, and it usually begins with the phrase “I added a clause”. Residential tenancy agreements in New South Wales and Victoria are prescribed documents. The states publish the form, the form contains the terms the Act requires, and your job is to complete it accurately — not to improve it.

You are filling in a form, not writing a contract

The standard form already contains the obligations that matter on both sides: rent, the bond, repairs, entry, what happens at the end. Those terms are there because the legislature put them there, and they cannot be traded away by agreement — not with a willing tenant, not with a handshake, not with an initialled addendum.

The details people get wrong

Almost none of the trouble comes from the legal architecture. It comes from the boxes at the top of page one.

• Names: every adult who will live there as a tenant, spelled as on their identification. A person who is not on the agreement is not a tenant, and you cannot pursue them for anything.
• The rent: an amount, a frequency, and a payment method. “Weekly” and “monthly” are not interchangeable, and converting between them badly is a classic source of arrears that never existed.
• The bond: the amount, and the fact that it will be lodged with the state authority rather than held by you.
• The term: a start date and, for a fixed term, an end date. Be clear about what happens after it.
• Anything included: parking, storage, furniture, appliances. If it is not listed, you will be arguing about it later.

Additional terms that do work

Additional terms are allowed, provided they do not conflict with the Act. The useful ones are specific, factual, and about this property rather than about tenants in general.

• That the property is furnished, with the inventory attached.
• That the garden is watered and mown, where there is a garden and a reasonable expectation about it.
• How many people may ordinarily reside there.
• Whether a pet has been agreed to, and in what terms — noting that both states now constrain how a landlord may refuse.

The clauses landlords most want to add are usually the clauses the Act has already dealt with, in the tenant’s favour, on purpose.

Signing, and the copy nobody keeps

Sign before the tenancy starts, not three weeks in. Give the tenant their copy, and keep proof of when you gave it. A surprising share of disputes reach a tribunal with two parties holding differently annotated versions of the same agreement and no way to establish which one was executed.

Digital signing solves this cleanly, because it produces one document, one audit trail, and one copy that both parties received at the same moment. If you are still printing, scanning and emailing, the thing you are risking is not the trees.