Breaking a Lease in Queensland

For a fixed-term lease signed on or after 30 September 2024, what a tenant owes for leaving early is capped. That charge has a name. Reletting costs are the money an owner can recover for finding a new tenant, and the cap runs off one thing. How much of the fixed term had already expired on the day the tenant handed over vacant possession, meaning the day they moved out and gave the keys back.

The scale, in full. It covers a fixed term of 3 years or less.

Read the trigger date carefully, because this is where landlords get it wrong. The scale is keyed to the date the agreement was entered into. The date the tenant walks decides nothing here. A lease signed on 1 September 2024 and broken this week is still running on the old rule.

The Act pins the measurement down too. Section 357A(4) sets the bands by how much of the fixed term had expired at handover. Notice day is a separate moment, and the two can sit weeks apart. On a lease near a band boundary that gap is what decides between 3 weeks rent and 2.

The scale amount is a ceiling. The other number is the rent payable between handing over vacant possession and the day a new agreement starts. The tenant pays whichever comes out lower.

The RTA's own example makes it concrete. If the property is relet five days after the tenancy ended early, the reletting cost is five days rent, and the percentage calculation method doesn't apply at all.

So a fast relet decides the bill. Every week the property sits empty is a week closer to the ceiling, and once the new tenancy starts the meter stops.

The RTA publishes a worked example in dollars, using a weekly rent of $500 as its basis. That $500 is the RTA's illustration figure, so swap in the actual rent to get a number that means something. On the RTA's basis the four bands come out at $2,000, $1,500, $1,000 and $500.

There's a free RTA reletting cost calculator for agreements entered into on or after 30 September 2024. Useful for sanity-checking a number. The RTA calls it a general guideline for informational purposes, says it isn't legal or financial advice and shouldn't be relied on as a definitive determination, and doesn't calculate reletting costs for callers.

Reletting costs are their own bucket. Money a tenant already owed doesn't go into it, and it doesn't disappear because a cap exists.

Then there's the step most owners skip past. An owner can only charge reletting costs if the tenancy agreement carries a term saying so. Section 357A(1) sets the conditions that term has to meet, and the table further down this section lists them.

Miss any one of those and the term is void under section 357A(2). Void is the Act's word for having no legal effect. Without a valid term the tenant owes nothing for reletting.

A special term can't be written around it either. The RTA states that any special terms about reletting costs cannot contradict the criteria the Act sets for calculating them.

One comparison worth making, and it's ours rather than either publisher's. From 30 September 2024 the maximum bond for rental premises other than moveable dwellings is 4 weeks rent, under section 112 of the Act and per the Queensland Department of Housing and Public Works rental law changes page, last updated 3 November 2025. The maximum reletting cost on the RTA scale, read 2026-08-25, is also 4 weeks rent. Put those two rules side by side and an early exit in the first quarter of a lease can absorb the whole bond before arrears, water charges or damage are counted. Neither publisher draws that link. We're drawing it.

Two situations sit outside the reletting cost term, and the first one isn't negotiable for a landlord.

A tenant who ends the agreement, or their own interest in it, after experiencing domestic violence is not liable for reletting costs. The Act says the term simply does not apply to them. Those protections have run since 20 October 2021. The affected tenant gives 7 days notice and can vacate immediately.

Excessive hardship is the second, and it runs through QCAT. Either the tenant or the property manager or owner can make an urgent application to QCAT for an order terminating the agreement, for serious financial or health reasons for example. QCAT may still order compensation after ending it. Tenancy law leaves excessive hardship undefined, so whoever hears the case at QCAT decides it on the individual circumstances.

One confusion worth clearing up while we're here. Ending a tenancy without grounds is a different thing from breaking a lease. The RTA's notice periods page sets out the mechanics. A tenant ending without grounds gives at least 14 days notice, and on a fixed term the tenancy ends on the later of the notice period or the agreement's end date. That notice lines up with the end of the fixed term.

Section 362 of the Act puts an obligation on the other side. Lessor is the Act's word for the owner. A lessor must take all reasonable steps to mitigate the loss or expense, and mitigate means keeping the cost down. The same section says a lessor isn't entitled to receive compensation for any loss or expense that could have been avoided by taking those steps.

The RTA puts it in plainer language for property managers and owners. You're legally required to minimise the costs associated with the tenant breaking the lease, and you should start arrangements for reletting the property as soon as practical.

It has teeth at the tribunal. In making a compensation order in a lessor's favour, QCAT must have regard to whether the lessor complied with that section 362 duty. The RTA adds that any amount in a QCAT order about reletting costs cannot exceed what the calculations in the Act produce.

For an owner, that turns a paperwork question into an operational one. Leaving a property vacant and expecting the full 4 weeks is the position the duty is written against.

The RTA lists four routes for a tenant who wants out early, on top of the domestic violence exit above. Two of them can end in a compensation argument.

An owner's reasons for wanting the property back for their own use all hit the same limit. A Queensland landlord can't end a fixed-term agreement early because they've signed a sale contract, want to move in themselves, need to do significant repairs or renovations, plan to demolish or redevelop, or want to change the use of the property. Each of those carries 2 months notice, and the tenancy still finishes on the later of the agreement's end date or the notice end date. On those grounds, ending a fixed term early takes the tenant's written agreement.

The reverse case comes up more than owners expect. If the owner is the one who wants out early and there's no QCAT order ending the tenancy, the tenant doesn't have to move. The remaining route is negotiating a compensation payment with the tenant, their moving costs for instance.

Selling is where this bites hardest, because a sale contract carries 2 months notice and still can't shorten a fixed term. Worth reading up on before you list.

Short section, and it decides which page of the rulebook you're on. A residential tenancy agreement entered into before 30 September 2024, which included a term requiring the tenant to pay reasonable costs for reletting the premises and was compliant before the rental law changes commenced, is still considered compliant under the Act. That term still applies at the agreement end date.

The capped scale doesn't reach back over it. If you're holding a lease signed in mid-2024, the four-band table further up this page isn't your rule.

One more case sits outside the four bands. For a fixed term of more than 3 years, the Act does a different sum. Take one month's rent for each 12-month period left on the agreement, capped at 6 months rent. Then compare that against the rent payable between handover and the day a new agreement starts. The tenant pays the lesser of the two.

FAA Property manages residential investment property across the Sunshine Coast, including Maroochydore, from our Maroochydore office. The properties we manage reach past the Coast too. Everything above is Queensland-wide law and it applies the same way in Cairns as it does in Caloundra.

The honest version of what a manager adds. The duty to mitigate under section 362 is, in practice, the work a leasing and tenant placement service already does. Advertise, screen applicants, place a replacement tenant, and do it quickly. Leasing and tenant placement are both on our services list. That's our own read of how the Act's wording and the services list line up. Treat it as a read, because we haven't published a break-lease procedure.

What you can check for yourself is the rent roll. Our live listing store, read on 2026-08-25, showed 16 distinct current properties across 14 suburbs, and 13 of those suburbs carry a rental we manage. Those 13 are Meridan Plains, Nirimba, Caloundra West, Griffin, Gympie, Jimboomba, Kallangur, Lawnton, Logan Reserve, Maroochydore, Peregian Springs, Scarness and Sippy Downs. The fourteenth is Battery Hill, where the only current listing is a property for sale, which supports a sourcing claim and never a management one.

Take that rentals list on its own, and treat it as a floor rather than a census. A tenanted property isn't advertised, so a suburb on the rentals list proves we manage there, while a suburb missing from it proves nothing either way.

FAA Property Pty Ltd is a licensed Queensland real estate agency, Office of Fair Trading licence 4220395.