Consider this if…
- You have received a notice of breach or default from your landlord
- You are a landlord with a tenant in arrears or in breach of the lease
- You are unsure whether a notice you received or sent is valid
- The remedy period on a notice is running out
- You want to negotiate a payment arrangement rather than escalate
- A notice has been served and you are considering re-entry or termination
How it works
Send us the notice and the lease
Together with the arrears figures or the correspondence about the breach. Tell us the date on the notice in your first email.
Today
We check whether it is valid
Whether the breach alleged is a breach under this lease, whether the notice identifies it properly, whether it allows the time it has to allow, and whether it was served the way the lease requires.
First thing we do
We set out the options
For a tenant: remedy, dispute, negotiate, or a combination. For a landlord: what the notice preserves, what it does not, and what can follow it.
With the advice
We prepare or answer the notice
A notice drafted to be valid, or a response that protects your position and does not concede a breach you may not have committed.
Quoted before we start
We negotiate the outcome
A payment plan, a remedy program with agreed dates, a surrender, or a defended dispute. Quoted stage by stage.
Quoted stage by stage
Fee
Quoted in writing before we start
GST inclusive
We quote a fixed fee in writing before any work begins.
The notice decides what can happen next
A default notice is not a formality. It is the document that makes everything after it either sound or vulnerable.
For a landlord, a notice that properly identifies the breach and allows the required time supports the steps that follow it. A notice that does not can leave a termination or a re-entry open to challenge, and the exposure if re-entry turns out to have been wrongful is substantially larger than the arrears that prompted it.
For a tenant, the notice is the opportunity to fix the problem. It is also the clock. Once the remedy period passes, the options narrow sharply and the conversation moves from remedying a breach to arguing about possession.
If you are a tenant
Keep paying rent while you take advice. Withholding is the single most common way a defensible position becomes an indefensible one.
Read the date and diarise it. Then work out three things: is the conduct alleged actually a breach of this lease; if it is, can it be remedied and by when; and is the notice itself valid in form and service. Those three answers determine whether you remedy, dispute, negotiate, or do more than one of them at once.
Reply in writing, carefully. A response that accepts a characterisation of events is difficult to walk back later.
If you are a landlord
Identify the breach precisely and by reference to the clause it breaches. Describe it clearly enough that the tenant knows what to do. Allow the time the lease and the legislation require. Serve it in the manner the lease provides, on the parties the lease names — including any guarantor, where the security matters to you.
Then decide, before serving, what you want. Arrears paid and the tenant retained is a different strategy from possession, and the notice and the negotiation that follows should be built for the outcome you actually want.
Negotiated outcomes are the norm
Most default notices end in an arrangement rather than a termination: a payment plan with dates, a remedy program, a variation, or an orderly surrender where the tenancy is no longer viable. Those arrangements need to be documented, including what happens if they are not met, otherwise the same dispute returns in three months with the evidence in a worse state.
Where this can go
If the breach is not remedied, the landlord's options include recovery of possession — by re-entry or through a court — and a claim for what is owed. Both sides should understand that path before the notice is sent, not after.
Frequently asked questions
I have received a default notice. What should I do first?
Read the date, keep paying rent, and get advice before you reply. Do not assume the notice is valid and do not assume it is not. A reply written quickly and in frustration frequently concedes something, and the concession is harder to undo than the breach was to fix.
Can the landlord terminate straight away?
Generally the landlord must give the tenant notice of the breach and an opportunity to remedy it before ending the lease, with the position for non-payment of rent commonly treated differently. What applies to your lease depends on its terms and on the legislation, which is exactly what we check first. Confirm the position before acting either way.
What makes a notice invalid?
Common problems are alleging a breach the lease does not create, describing the breach too vaguely for the tenant to know what to fix, allowing less time than required, serving it on the wrong party or at the wrong address, or failing to follow the lease's own service provisions.
I am the landlord. Should I send the notice myself?
You can, and some landlords do. The risk is that a defective notice does not support what comes after it, so a termination or re-entry founded on it can be challenged. Given what re-entry exposes a landlord to if it turns out to be wrongful, having the notice drafted properly is cheap insurance.
Can I negotiate instead of fighting about it?
Usually, and usually you should. Landlords generally prefer a paying tenant to an empty tenancy, and a documented payment arrangement with clear dates is a better outcome for both sides than a termination. What matters is that it is recorded properly and that it says what happens if the arrangement is missed.
Does paying the arrears fix everything?
It removes the breach, which is the main thing. It may not deal with interest, costs or any other breaches alleged in the same notice, and it does not by itself prevent further action if the problem recurs. Deal with the whole notice rather than the headline figure.
Related services
Tell us the date on it. That date governs what we do first.
Send us the notice