Fair Wear and Tear in Queensland Rentals

Start with the thing that explains why these arguments happen at all.

Section 188 of the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 requires a tenant, at the end of a tenancy, to leave the premises and inclusions as far as possible in the same condition they were in at the start, fair wear and tear excepted.

It does not then say what fair wear and tear is. The Act uses the phrase, carves it out of the tenant's obligation, and leaves the term itself undefined.

So every disagreement about a carpet, a wall or a window is an argument about an undefined standard applied to a specific set of facts. That is not a drafting failure. A definition tight enough to be useful would be too rigid to cover a nine-year-old carpet and a nine-month-old one, and the flexibility is the point. But it does mean nobody can settle a dispute by quoting a section, and anyone who tells you the Act is clear on this has not read it.

In the absence of a statutory definition, the RTA's description is the working standard, and it has two limbs.

Fair wear and tear happens during normal use of a property, and through changes that occur with ageing and deterioration over time from exposure to the environment.

Normal use is the first limb. Carpet in a hallway wears faster than carpet in a spare bedroom because people walk down hallways. That is the property being used as a home rather than being mistreated.

Ageing and the environment is the second, and it is the one landlords underweight. Curtains fade in Queensland sun. Paint chalks. Plaster cracks as a building settles. None of that has anything to do with who was living there, and all of it happens on an empty house too.

The RTA is equally clear about what falls outside: dirt, grime, grease and damage, including damage caused by an approved pet, are not fair wear and tear. Approving a pet is not accepting the cost of what it does.

The RTA's own examples are the most useful thing published on this subject, because they pair up. The same item appears as wear and as damage, and only the cause separates them.

That is the test in practice. Not what the damage looks like or what it costs, but how it came to be there.

A worn carpet is not a fixed amount of money. It depends entirely on what the carpet was worth when the tenancy started.

If a carpet was already eight years old and visibly worn at the start of the tenancy, a tenant who leaves it nine years old and slightly more worn has done what time does. Replacing it is a capital cost the owner was always going to face, and it is not the tenant's to fund.

If the same carpet was new at the start and comes back with a burn in it, the burn is damage and the age argument does not help anyone.

This is why the entry condition report matters more than any other document in the tenancy. It is the only contemporaneous record of the starting condition, and without it both sides are arguing from memory about a standard the Act does not define. A report with photographs and specific notes, rather than a column of ticks, is worth the twenty minutes it takes.

Worth separating out, because it is where most bond disputes actually live.

Dirt, grime and grease are not fair wear and tear. Cleaning is not covered by the carve-out at all, so a property left dirty is not excused by the fact that it was lived in.

The obligation is to return the property in the same condition it was in at the start, allowing for wear. If it was professionally cleaned at the start, the standard at the end is that standard. If it was handed over merely tidy, the standard is merely tidy.

So the practical distinction is: a bathroom whose grout has aged and discoloured is wear, and a bathroom whose grout is covered in soap scum is cleaning. The first is the owner's. The second is the tenant's. They can be in the same room.

Where the parties disagree at the end of a tenancy, the bond is the thing being argued over, and the RTA's dispute resolution service comes before the tribunal.

Evidence decides these, and the evidence is almost always photographic. Entry photographs beside exit photographs, of the same item from roughly the same angle, settle more disputes than any argument about principle.

What does not work is a claim expressed as a lump sum with no basis. A claim for a full carpet replacement on a carpet that was already half-used will not survive contact with the question of how old it was.

For an owner, the useful discipline is to ask of each item: would this have happened anyway, over this period, to a property nobody mistreated? If yes, it is wear. If no, it is worth documenting properly.