CAUTION Dual Living/ Duplex / Granny Flat Brisbane City Council Action Against Owners

I do have a property that can be converted to meet all the above. With all the a lot of the electronics requirements can be pick up on gumtree for cheap

RPI do you know when the update is expected?

Not sure on the update.

Am in Court on this matter next week

Saw a house over the weekend within Brisbane City Council. Upstairs was 3 bed 1 bath and thats how it was advertised. Downstairs i found a second bathroom, kitchen and bedroom (looked professional quality, not dodgy home handyman).

Spoke to agent and asked about it. He said it was rented out separately. I asked is it legal? The just of it after his long rambling seemingly evasive answer was i think: they have permission for it? But the bedroom is not legal due to height? (This is true im sure or it would be advertised 4 bed 2 bath) but its not a problem to rent separately? as they already have a few like this. Then he said "its not like there are rental police"

.....So it is not legal to rent separately (2 different tenants) and would never be unless council law changed. There is no way to make it legal. It would need to rented out as a 4 bed 2 bath house with a single family as tenants?

Cheers, nat

Nattl3s said:

It would need to rented out as a 4 bed 2 bath house with a single family as tenants?

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*3* bed 2 bath house to a single household, yes

I had similar scenario in Nerang QLD, 2 properties on 1 block, front property 4x1, rear 3x1 council approved office.

The two properties were rented out to two separate lots of tenants/two separate leases, this is not legal because the g/flat was actually an office and not an approved g/flat. I found that many re agents are managing dual income properties in this area which are not approved. However, you can not charge separate electricity and water as apparently this is illegal.

From my experience this did not work well in Nerang as it was very difficult to find suitable tenants that wanted this set up, therefore the cash flow eroded very quickly due to the length of time required to secure a tenant. I eventually sold the property.

I have similar set up in West Syd, however found this to be totally different market where the property is rented out immediately, with high demand.

Moral of the story, do your homework, not every market is the same

Cheers
MTR

Still definitely frowned upon in BCC. We are fighting this at the moment for over a dozen clients and BCC has engaged Queens Counsel, not a minor matter.

"You have been charged with falling asleep in a chair - how do you plead?"

I find the BCC regulations around legal height bizarre (perhaps it's REA marketing). If one has a downstairs area that is not legal height then it only gets marketed as a utility room/storage room/rumpus, but not a bedroom. Presumably I'm allowed to sit in a chair in a rumpus room - but if I nod off am I committing an offence?

Ed Barton said:

I find the BCC regulations around legal height bizarre

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It's not just BCC; I believe it flows from the National Construction Code (formerly BCA), so applies Australia-wide.

Thanks all. I am going to steer clear of this sort of property. Nat

Multiple leases on a property in Brisbane City Council are not unlawful. I took BCC in the P&E Court late last year on this matter and won.

The BCC rates department have a rating category for it (multi residential) and I have a report from the author of City Plan 2000 stating that multiple leases are not unlawful.

Rooming Accommodation has been around for years and is exactly that ; multiple leases on one property.

Sadly there are some people in council that would like to tell you (and may even still believe) that it is unlawful, but that is untrue.

The new City Plan 2014 which has come into affect this year clearly supports up to 5 leases on a house under Rooming Accommodation.

Building issues (such as legal height, habitable rooms and building approvals) are another separate discussion. I would definitely ensure the building has been approved before touching it.

Has there been any progress in this matter?

There seem to be a good number of properties in Brisbane particularly on the Bayside that are affected by this; they're built specifically for leasing the two sides or storeys out separately, they look like normal houses but with separate entrances and completely self-contained.
Apparently they're still being built (by whom? who would dare)

I'm also seeing unapproved houses; i.e. houses with a rejected DAs. I wonder what the legal risk of purchasing something like this is...

The cases are still running and will continue into next year.

Hi Dualitii,

It depends what it's approved as an whether it was built under the old City Plan 2000 or the new City Plan 2014.

I've seen a multitude of different approvals for properties like you describe. For example:-

• House with secondary dwelling
• Rooming Accommodation
• Dual Occupancy
• Multiple Unit Dwelling (MUD)
• Individually titled duplex (basically 2 houses with a common wall)

You'd need to find out details of the approval as different types of approvals carry different requirements. (eg. size of dwellings and how many people can occupy).

My guess is that any new properties would be approved as Rooming Accommodation as this is the easiest (can be done in low density residential and is self assessed for 5 or less people) under the new City Plan 2014.

The court case relates to the old City Plan 2000 and only to a specific property for a specific time period.

It's anyone's guess as to why council would spend so much time and money on a superseded city plan.

They're mostly houses that seem to be built fairly recently looking at the condition (~5 years old or so), so they'd be built under the old City Plan. What happens to properties that are not approved though under either the old or new City Plans? I assume the buyer will then have to file out paperwork to get it approved, or if it's not approved would the Council request to have the building scrapped?

If Rooming Accommodation is self-assessed, does that mean it's automatically approved if the owner says it is? Seems quite lax to me. I just read the Rooming Accommodation code and there's no restriction on frontage, land size, or even minimum m2 of the building for 5 or less people.