The Real Estate Institute of Victoria is concerned the process for dealing with residential tenancy disputes is cracking under the weight of COVID-19.
With less than one month to go in the original six-month moratorium announced by the Andrews’ government, there is a backlog of 4000 rental cases at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) and nearly a thousand disputes still to be resolved through the Dispute Resolution Centre Victoria (DSCV) process.
Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) has referred more than 8700 matters to VCAT and only about half of those have been finalised. More cases are being referred weekly to the Tribunal than are being listed for hearing.
REIV says the pressure on the Tribunal Members to get through the ever-increasing case load is creating a bias in the system with reports that property managers acting for landlords are being told they cannot speak during the hearing due to time limitations.
they further note the DSCV is not faring much better, with more than a third of the 2800 cases referred to it by CAV still active.
“To their credit, they have recently increased the number of dispute resolution teams to deal with the backlog, but that is too little too late,” the REIV said.
“The REIV warned government in May this year that resources devoted to dealing with the dispute cases were inadequate.
“With the extension of the moratorium by more than three months to the end of the year, these backlog numbers are likely to get much worse with many cases still unresolved at the end of the moratorium.
“Many tenants simply refuse to provide information or even communicate with their landlord or agent to expedite a speedy resolution.
“Nearly 32,000 rent reduction agreements have been lodged with CAV, with tens of thousands more being worked out by mutual agreement, meaning they do not have be recorded at CAV.
“Some opportunistic people are taking advantage of this system overload by simply refusing to pay rent or negotiate resulting in massive arrears in rent being borne by the property owner with little likelihood of it being repaid.”
Now the REIV is calling on the government to properly resource VCAT and DSCV and make it mandatory for tenants to provide evidence of their COVID-19 related financial hardship.
