At the start of every tenancy, the landlord or agent must give you a copy of a Fair Trading publication called New tenant checklist. The New tenant checklist is a fact sheet that contains important information you should be aware of before signing a new lease. Make sure you read it carefully and ask your landlord or agent about anything you do not understand. 

You should also be given a copy of your lease and two copies of the premises condition report, which you should fill in and then return one of the copies to your landlord or agent within 7 days. You should take your time to fill it out with as much detail and accuracy as possible.

The condition report will be a key piece of evidence at the end of the tenancy if there is a dispute about who should pay for cleaning, damage or the replacement of missing items. For more information, go to the Filling out a condition report page.

Watch a video on the tenancy condition report

To view or download the standard Residential Tenancy Agreement and Condition Report, go to the Forms page.

You should not be asked to pay for the cost of preparing your lease, or for the initial supply of keys and security devices to each tenant named on the lease. You should not be required to pay more than 2 weeks rent in advance, or more than 4 weeks rent as a rental bond. For more information about what the landlord must do with your bond, go to the Taking a bond page.

The information on the following pages may also be useful to you when starting a tenancy.

Tenancy databases
Discrimination when renting

Fact sheet quick access

All the information in this section, Starting a tenancy, has been compiled into one ready-to-print PDF document. To print or download information on any or all of the two topics in this section, go to Starting a tenancy - information for tenants (in PDF format size: 692 kb).

All the pages in this section listed above can also be individually viewed or printed as fact sheets by clicking on the PDF icon located on each page.

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