Property Management Fee Structure
Our transparent fee structure is based on the complexity of your tenancy arrangement:
Ongoing Management Fees (percentage of monthly rent collected):
- Single occupancy (one tenant): 4.90% + GST
- Dual occupancy (house + granny flat): 6.90% + GST
- Multi-tenancy (3+ leases / rooming house): 8.90% + GST
Letting Fee (one-time, when a new tenant is placed):
- Without renovation supervision: 1 week's rent
- With renovation supervision: 2 weeks' rent
Marketing Costs:
- REA Premier listing: $217–$280 + GST (varies by location)
- "Leased" board sign: $163 + GST
Legal/Tribunal Fees (if needed):
- VCAT application fees (debt recovery, possession, warrant of possession) are set by the Victorian Government under the VCAT (Fees) Regulations and are updated on 1 July each year — we pass them through at cost. Check the current amounts on the VCAT fees page.
- Tribunal attendance on your behalf: $200 + GST
All fees are clearly outlined before engagement — no hidden charges.
Our 1:50 Management Ratio — Why It Matters
The industry standard in Melbourne is 1 property manager handling 170+ properties. At that ratio, response times are slow, maintenance gets delayed, and landlords feel ignored.
Our ratio: 1 manager to maximum 50 properties.
Behind each manager sits a 30-person support team split into four specialised departments:
- Reno Team: Pre-tenancy property preparation, ensuring compliance with Victorian Minimum Rental Standards
- Renting Team: Full-time leasing specialists handling advertising, inspections, applications, and background checks
- Ongoing Team: Post-tenancy operations — rent collection, maintenance coordination, routine inspections, VCAT preparation, lease renewals
- Local Team: On-the-ground Melbourne team for physical inspections, key handovers, and tribunal attendance
This structure means faster response times, fewer errors, and higher tenant quality — which directly translates to fewer vacancies and higher returns for landlords.
Tenant Screening — Our 4-Point System
We use a strict 4-point screening system to ensure quality tenants:
- Financial check: Rent should sit at or below 30% of the applicant's total verifiable income. We assess whether the income is sufficient and evidenced — payslips, bank statements, employment letters, or benefit statements — not where it comes from. Income source is not a screening criterion.
- Credit check: TICA and Equifax blacklist scan for previous rental defaults, VCAT tribunal orders, or outstanding debts
- Reference check: Previous landlord reference (rental history, payment reliability, property condition at exit) + employer reference (employment stability, income verification)
- Visa verification: For non-citizen applicants, visa must be valid for the entire lease term
Standard lease terms: 12 months initial, with rent review 2–3 months before expiry.
Pet policy (Victorian law): We cannot refuse pets without a documented reason. Tenants with pets are required to cover professional steam cleaning at exit and any damage beyond normal wear and tear.
Recruitment timeline: New properties typically receive applications within 3–12 days of listing. We begin advertising 5 days before the property is ready for occupancy.
The statutory calendar a Melbourne property manager is actually running
Most landlords choose a manager on fee percentage. What you are actually buying is compliance with a statutory calendar that changed substantially between 2021 and 2027, where a missed deadline usually voids the thing you were trying to do rather than merely delaying it. These are the dates that govern a Victorian tenancy in 2026.
Rent increases — 12 months apart, 90 days' notice. Rent can be increased no more than once every 12 months on an agreement that commenced on or after 19 June 2019. On agreements that commenced before that date the interval is 6 months, and a surprising number of long-held portfolios still sit on the older rule. The notice period changed from 60 to 90 days on 25 November 2025, and the notice must be on the form prescribed by the Director of Consumer Affairs Victoria — a Notice of proposed rent increase. A notice drafted to the old 60-day timetable is short-served and the increase never takes legal effect. Rent inside a fixed term cannot be increased at all unless the agreement itself specifies the amount or the method of calculation.
Notices to vacate — a valid reason is now mandatory. Also from 25 November 2025, a rental provider cannot issue a notice to vacate without a valid reason, including at the end of a fixed-term agreement. The end-of-fixed-term ground that Victorian landlords relied on for decades is gone. What remains is a defined list — sale of the property, the rental provider or a family member moving in, demolition, repairs or renovations, change of use, government acquisition, and the social-housing eligibility grounds — with a standard 90-day period, alongside the shorter early-termination grounds (immediate for serious damage or danger, 14 days for rent 14 or more days in arrears, and the other listed 14- and 28-day grounds).
Rental bidding — banned outright. From the same date, accepting rent above the advertised amount is prohibited in all its forms.
Minimum standards — now enforced at advertising, not at move-in. A property must meet all 15 minimum rental standards from the point it is advertised, not merely before a renter moves in. That moves the compliance work forward in the campaign timetable, and it is the single most common cause of a delayed listing on a newly acquired property.
Smoke alarms — annual checks. Mandatory annual smoke alarm checks for all rental properties commenced 25 November 2025.
Window covering cords — from 1 December 2025. All corded internal window coverings must have an anchor installed to secure the cords and prevent them forming loops. This is the fifteenth minimum standard.
Rental applications — from 31 March 2026. A prescribed standard application form became mandatory, along with rules limiting the information a rental provider may request from applicants and a ban on third-party fees for applications and rent payments.
Coming — 13 October 2026. Strengthened bond claim procedures, a requirement to keep records demonstrating minimum-standards compliance, and mandatory gas and electrical safety checks every two years extended across the board.
Coming — 1 March 2027 onwards. New minimum energy efficiency standards, phased. ⚠️ These have not commenced. Any guidance telling you that ceiling insulation or draught-proofing is a current minimum standard is wrong — it is a 2027 obligation, and the correct action today is to budget for it, not to comply with it.
The practical consequence of that list is that a Victorian rental in 2026 is not a passive asset. Roughly six discrete obligations changed inside twelve months, three of them capable of voiding a notice you have already served. This is the work a management fee buys, and it is why the fee is charged as a percentage of rent rather than as a flat administrative charge.
Repairs: the 15 urgent categories and the 14-day rule
Repairs are where a landlord–renter relationship is most often decided, and Victoria draws a bright line through them. Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes 15 categories of urgent repair under the Residential Tenancies Act 1997, and anything on that list must be made immediately — there is no stated number of days:
burst water service; blocked or broken toilet system; serious roof leak; gas leak; dangerous electrical fault; flooding or serious flood damage; serious storm or fire damage; an essential service or appliance for hot water, water, cooking, heating or laundering not working; the gas, electricity or water supply not working; a cooling appliance or service provided by the rental provider not working; the property not meeting minimum standards; a safety-related device such as a smoke alarm or pool fence not working; an appliance, fitting or fixture that is not working and wastes a lot of water; any fault or damage that makes the property unsafe or insecure, including pests, mould or damp caused by or related to the building structure; and a serious problem with a lift or staircase.
Two of those are additions most landlord checklists do not carry: a failed cooling appliance the rental provider supplied, and failure to meet minimum standards — which is the widest category on the list, because it means a compliance gap anywhere across the 15 minimum standards is itself an urgent repair.
Everything else is non-urgent and must be done within 14 days of the renter's written request.
What happens if you miss the deadline. For urgent repairs, a renter who cannot get a response may arrange the repair themselves provided it costs $2,500 or less, and you must repay them within 7 days of receiving their written notice. Above $2,500 they cannot self-arrange at all — they apply to Rental Dispute Resolution Victoria, which reviews an urgent repairs application within two business days. For non-urgent repairs, once the 14 days lapse a renter can ask Consumer Affairs Victoria for a repairs inspection and a report directing you to do the work, apply to RDRV, or go to VCAT directly.
The operational answer to all of this is speed on the first call, and a timestamped record of it. Our full treatment is in the urgent vs non-urgent maintenance guide.
Where a dispute goes now — RDRV before VCAT
The dispute pathway changed and a great deal of published landlord guidance has not caught up with it.
Rental Dispute Resolution Victoria (RDRV) is a free dispute resolution and case management service provided by VCAT. It handles bonds, compensation, rent increases and repairs. It does not handle evictions or terminations, which still go directly to VCAT's Residential Tenancies List.
Two features matter operationally. First, it costs nothing to start. Second — and this is the part that changes the arithmetic on a small claim — an application to RDRV is also an application to VCAT, so if a resolution coordinator cannot settle the matter it moves to a hearing without being filed a second time. A $900 compensation claim that was not worth a filing fee and a two-month wait may now be worth pursuing.
Consumer Affairs Victoria sets out the order of the steps: know your position, talk to the other party, contact Consumer Affairs Victoria, then RDRV, then a hearing.
On VCAT fees. VCAT charges in three categories — concession, standard and corporate — set by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (Fees) Regulations 2026 and updated on 1 July each year. The amounts are published only in VCAT's own fee tool, which is why no dollar figure appears in this guide and why any guide that quotes one is out of date by construction. We pass filing fees through at cost and do not mark them up; tribunal attendance on your behalf is $200 + GST. Guidance still citing the 2018 Fees Regulations is citing a superseded instrument.
On appeals. A VCAT decision can be challenged only on a question of law, only with leave, and only within 28 days — to the Trial Division of the Supreme Court in the ordinary case, and to the Court of Appeal only where the VCAT President or a Vice President decided the matter. Leave is granted only where the appeal has a real prospect of success. In practice, a VCAT loss is a loss.
On enforcement. VCAT does not enforce its own orders. A money order of $100,000 or less is enforced through the Magistrates' Court of Victoria; above that, the County or Supreme Court. Our full treatment of tribunal procedure is in the VCAT procedural guide for Melbourne landlords.
Screening, discrimination and the bond — three places self-managing landlords get caught
Screening and discrimination. A rental provider must not discriminate on the protected attributes set out in section 6 of the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. Consumer Affairs Victoria lists the attributes that bite in a rental context: age, carer status, family responsibilities, parental status, disability, employment activity, gender identity, lawful sexual activity, sexual orientation, marital status, physical features, pregnancy, breastfeeding, profession, trade or occupation (including being a sex worker), race including colour, nationality, ethnicity and ethnic origin, religious belief or activity, and sex.
⚠️ One point of precision that cuts both ways: "source of income" is not itself a protected attribute in Victoria. Employment activity and profession, trade or occupation are, and they cover much of the same ground. That does not make an income-source refusal safe — an affordability judgement dressed up as a view about where money comes from is exactly the reasoning that fails at a tribunal. Our own screening assesses whether income is sufficient and evidenced, applying the same test to every applicant regardless of source, which is both the lawful position and the commercially correct one.
From 31 March 2026 a prescribed standard application form is mandatory, and there are rules limiting what a rental provider may ask an applicant for. A screening process built on a bespoke form and open-ended questions is now a compliance problem as well as a discrimination risk.
The bond — one month, not four weeks. A bond cannot in most cases be more than one month's rent. This is not the same as four weeks: on a $700-a-week property, one month is about $3,033, not $2,800. A larger bond may be required only where the weekly rent exceeds $900, or where VCAT has set a higher amount. Note the direction of the threshold — rent exceeding $900 lifts the cap, so a $900-a-week property is still inside it. The bond is lodged with the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority, which holds every Victorian residential bond in trust; it is the renter's money, not yours.
Claiming against it has its own clock. A rental provider must start a claim with the RTBA within 14 days of the agreement ending, unless the renter claims first. A renter then has 14 days to accept a claim or it lapses, and where a renter initiates, other parties get 14 days to contest it. Miss your window and you are arguing about the bond from a materially worse position — which is the single most common reason a self-managing landlord ends up with an unrecoverable loss on an otherwise clean claim.
The rental non-compliance register. Consumer Affairs Victoria maintains a public register listing rental providers and agents who have been the subject of a VCAT compliance or compensation order, or a conviction or finding of guilt under the Act. Listings remain for three years. It is public, it is searchable by name, and it is the reason we treat a compliance failure as a reputational event rather than an administrative one.