perhaps a good busines opportunity for someone wanting to start their own business….  I am sure vendors and agents would be happy to outsource this.

Problem is who is going to fill out the form.  There are 56 question on the current draft form that are not easy to answer. Note this is just a draft form. The government has introduced this new piece of legislation but as just still haven’t worked out extactly what they want and it comes into effect in approx 6 weeks time.

Margaret www.dmrealty.com.au

Fingers crossed this new procedure stays in the Sales Offices and doesn’t creep over into Property Manager – has anyone else heard anymore?

In the recent REIQ forum I attended it was recommended to us to not complete this form as an agent, as so much can come back to us. No matter if the form stays in sales or not – stress to your agents not to get involved with this document – always get the owner or third party to complete.

I mean it is a great idea in theory, to know as much about the property as possible as to market it in the best and most efficient way, but the questions are extreme! No Vendor or Landlord will know most of the information required. It will however create a lot of jobs in the sense that if Vendors/ Landlords are over seas and they have no family or friends close to the property who completes the form? I am sure that we will find a lot of ads popping up offering their services to complete this form. It is definately going to cause a few hiccups due to the fact that Vendors and Landlords a like already have so many forms to discuss and complete at time of signing.

What our office intends to do is to ( where possible) is drop the form and a letter explaining why they need to complete the form off to their house a few days earlier that the sign up appointment – obviousaly this won’t work if the Vendor/ Landlord lives overseas etc.

Oh well just another piece of paper to worry about I guess. Lucky us….

Yes Rebecca, we at ADL Software (www.adlsoftware.com) will be making the new form available to agents in our ADLForms service as at the 1st January. But the legislation is worse than most and could get you into trouble if you get something wrong. Our legal team have found a number of flaws in the legislation and I will soon be doing an article on the new form. One thing that stands out is that on the form itself it says to complete to the best of your ability, yet in the legislation it states that fines will apply if incorrect information is applied to the form. If I were a real estate agent, at this stage I would be thinking this is one form I definitely would NOT want to have anything to do with.

A whole new industry will probably pop-up ready for you to take advantage of.

I may have pre-empted my article a little here, having not researched thoroughly as yet, but these thoughts are my gut feel for now.

Sorry I have just read my post and I apologise – it does look like I am for it lol. I like the idea as I know in our household we are really making such an effort to go green so in that regard I am looking forward to something that will help inform me – in every other regard – as in most of the questions – the form itself and the legalities I am in no way looking forward to it!!!! I think your gut feelings may be right…

I understand there is already contractors that will charge approximately $300 for the check. Yes, agree with all of you…considering there isn’t action required from the report at this stage, it seems a waste of paper….and requires expenditure of extra energy on trees & electricity!  But embrace it, we will :-)

Well, we are now some 5 weeks away from the start date of the sustainability form, here in Queensland, and at this stage, I have not identified that the form has changed. We will be sending it to our current listings, in the next week or so, to have it available for each listing, from the 1st of January. From my reading, if a landlord chooses to answer “Not Known” for any of the questions, they would not be in breach. Does any one else have a view?

Peter we have been thinking about doing this too in sending out the form to our vendors but we are reluctant to do so because from what we have heard the form is only a draft. The government as far as we are aware have not decided on what should be in the form definitely as yet.

We think the government needs to sort this mess out ASAP and who is going to fill out the form for out of town vendors?  Jodie you mention that there are contractors in Brisbane that are doing this for approx $300. Wow that is alot of money for a 2 page document. From our understanding whoever is doing this will need to have knowledge in 3 areas plumbing, electricals and building. It is going to be hard to find someone that will be able to deal with all 3 areas—maybe it will take 3 different people to fill out the document.

If this is not sort out soon I can foresee major darmas in agencies come January 1 as not many agencies are going to be able to sell anything as they cannot market anything. What are we meant to do?—take down all of our properties for sales off our windows and websites and stop any paper advertising and open houses. I’m sure sites like realestate.com.au and the local papers are going to be impressed when agents stop advertising Our sales people might as well go take a hoilday or find another job as they won’t be able to sell anything.

When they decided to introduce this into property management the dramas are just going to compound. Properties are going to be vacant so tenants are not going to be found that easily. No tenant and landlords won’t be able to afford to keep their property and then there will be dramas with trying to sell the property as it can’t be marketed for sale too.  What an absolute mess!!

Margaret www.dmrealty.com.au