Do you own an investment property? Time is running out! Less than 90 working days to go until the new Queensland Smoke Alarm Regulations kick in on 01/01/2022.
Did you know that with the new compliance legislation all homeowners must ensure the following:
- All homes or units being sold or leased, or existing leases renewed, will require hardwired photoelectric, interconnected smoke alarms. Non-removable 10-year battery smoke alarms can be installed in place.
- Smoke alarms in the dwelling must:
- be photoelectric (AS3786-2014); and
- not also contain an ionisation sensor; and
- Be hardwired to the mains power supply, if currently hardwired. Otherwise, smoke alarms can be either hardwired or powered by a non-removable 10 yrs. battery or a combination of both.
- be interconnected with every other smoke alarm in the dwelling so all activate together.
- The legislation requires smoke alarms must be installed in the following locations:
- on each storey
- in each bedroom
- if there is no hallway, between the bedroom and other parts of the storey; and
- if there are no bedrooms on a storey, at least one smoke alarm must be installed in the most likely path of travel to exit the dwelling.
100% of our property owners can sleep soundly knowing their tenants are in safe properties with compliant alarms. Over 80% of our owners will have their investments fully upgraded within the next month and the remaining will have arrangements in place before year is out.
If you are a property owner and you haven’t even heard from your property manager about the new smoke alarm legislation, let alone a booking to have this done, talk to us NOW about proactive property management.
The reason Clark Real Estate Property Management are ahead of this compliance upgrade with our properties is because we anticipated to following factors:
- COVID lockdowns
- Trade shortages due to lockdowns, construction boom resulting from COVID grants, closed borders, natural disasters (hailstorm still affecting Brisbane home repairs on south side)
- shortage of product due to border controls
- bookings blowing out to 4-6 weeks already and expected to get worse as the bottleneck backs up
- heavy lease renewal and new tenancy periods in January and February meaning your upgrade must be done along with thousands of others in the early part of the year.
- all factors which we knew would put pressure on the system to comply.
Our team at Clark meet regularly to review what is happening in the market. We also forecast future market trends, issues and opportunities so that we can ensure our investor owners can be best from their investments.
We have also noted that the potential reforms at the end of August could likely mean restrictions on rent increases. With this in mind, we have been working hard at lifting rents to ensure if, and when this legislation comes in, our investor owners are assured their property sits well adjusted. If rents are restricted to a CPI increase only once every two years you don’t want to be caught out starting behind the eight ball.
With a 0% vacancy rate and 99% of our tenants who have paid on time, our results are proven, and these are not the only things to be excited about! As property management specialists we work hard for our investor owners and are always focussed on providing respectful, honest and professional services.
If you want to see how we can help you achieve your property goals or obtain a current market valuation of your property contact us on 07 3256 1600.
