Once you`ve decided to rent a building, use our checklist on retail rental contracts to make sure you know the right questions you need to ask before signing. The Act amends the definition of “eligible leasing” from a lease agreement of a tenant who is a small business and an employer qualified for JobKeeper payments and is assigned to you to “a retail or non-retail lease or a commercial license or lease or a non-commercial license of a particular class that is mandatory.” Good business practices when renting your retail or commercial space include: Information on and dispute resolution services for commercial/retail leasing, visit the Victorian Small Business Commissioner website. VCAT can hear all kinds of disputes over retail and commercial rents. These disputes include: A commercial lease allows you to formalize the rental of a commercial property between a landlord and a tenant. This commercial lease is suitable for the lease of most types of commercial premises, such as warehouses, offices, factories and commercial real estate throughout Victoria. It may not be appropriate for retail stores. If you are renting a building where the tenant is dealing with members of the public, you cannot use that commercial lease – you must instead use a retail lease. In Victoria, the rules for commercial leasing differ somewhat because the flexibility for the types of activities that apply to commercial leases is much more limited. If a tenant or business landlord is in a situation where the tenant is having difficulty paying rent because of coronavirus (COVID-19), we recommend that tenants continue to pay what they can afford, find out what their declining turnover is and write to their landlord to try to reach an agreement on the rental facilities. Tenants should do so as quickly as possible, as they are only entitled to rent relief from the day they write to their landlord.

Learn more about the process for tenants and professional landlords under the commercial rent relief program. The government also provides property tax relief to commercial or commercial landlords who end up reducing the rental burden on their tenants: after these changes, commercial landlords must provide rental facilities in relation to the decline in turnover, the legitimate tenant must be informed from the date a tenant applies in writing to his landlord, between September 29, 2020 and December 31, 2020.