Clear View

The first month in a leasehold home

The first month after completion is when a Canberra purchase stops being a contract and becomes a Thursday. You live on a lease. The purpose clause did not expire when the keys worked. Harriet’s note is the household admin that sits on top of that lease: accounts, a filing habit, and the questions you still owe the owners corporation if you bought a unit. It is not a styling guide, and it is not a renovation brief.

Move slowly on anything that changes the building. Paint inside a unit can be a rules question. A new deck can be an approval question. The excitement of the first weekend is a reliable way to start a problem the lease already answered.

• File the contract, the Crown lease, the searches and the final conveyancer letter in one folder.
• Check that electricity, gas and water accounts are in the correct name and start date.
• Ask the ACT Revenue Office channels your conveyancer named about rates and any duty balance, rather than guessing an amount.
• Re-read the lease purpose and any building covenant you flagged before exchange.
• Walk the inclusions list one more time and email discrepancies while memories are fresh.
• Change locks if you choose to, and keep a key with a trusted person.
• If the home is a unit, introduce yourself to the owners corporation or the manager in writing.
• Read the rules before you park, renovate, or put a sign on common property.
• Note the insurance you arranged, the insurer’s name, and the date cover started.
• Put a reminder in the calendar for any residence condition your concession paperwork required, if you claimed one.
• Keep lender mail, if a loan exists, in the same folder as the lease so the two files do not diverge.

The lease is still in force

Completion transferred the leasehold interest. It did not rewrite the Crown lease. The purpose clause, the term and any rent clause travel with the block. If your Lease Conveyancing Inquiry showed nothing outstanding on rates of rent, that was true of the search date your conveyancer relied on. Keep living as if the purpose still matters, because it does. A second dwelling, a business with customers through the living room, or a structure in the setback can be a breach even if a neighbour did it first.

If the lease reserves ground rent and your conveyancer told you an amount was cleared or was never owing, keep that letter. If they told you a rent continues, diary the payment they described and confirm the Territory’s instructions. Do not set a private figure. The lease and the Territory account are the source. The Land Rent Scheme, if that was your contract, has its own ongoing obligations. Re-read the scheme documents you signed rather than this summary.

Approvals live in the building file you saw, or should have seen, before exchange. If you now want to change the building, start from those plans. A wall you remove because it “feels non-structural” is how people meet insurers and certifiers in the wrong order. Ask a licensed person before you demolish. This desk does not certify plans.

Utilities, rates, and the mail that starts arriving

Utilities want a start date and a name. Give them the completion date your conveyancer confirmed, not the day the removalists found a park. Water and electricity intervals that straddle completion are sorted with meter reads or agreed estimates. Keep the reference numbers. If a bill arrives in the seller’s name, do not ignore it and do not pay a random amount. Send it to your conveyancer if it looks like a pre-completion charge, or follow the utility’s change-of-occupancy process if it is simply misaddressed.

General rates in the ACT are a Territory charge. They are not a lender’s interest rate, and they are not an owners corporation contribution. The notice, when it comes, is the notice. The ACT Revenue Office publishes how rates are assessed and how objections work. Those pages change. We do not reprint a rates figure and call it yours. If you arranged a duty concession, the residence conditions attached to that concession are yours to keep. Many first-home concessions expect you to live in the home for a period and to start that residence within a stated time. Read the condition on your approval or on the Revenue Office page for your transaction date. A month of travel that accidentally breaks a residence rule is an expensive kind of holiday. Diary it.

Mail redirection is useful and incomplete. Some Territory notices follow the title, not your old rental. Check the letterbox weekly even if you redirected. A unit’s letterbox and an owners corporation pigeonhole are not always the same slot.

If you bought a unit

Write to the owners corporation or its manager with your name, the unit number, your postal address and your email. Ask where notices are sent. Ask how contributions are invoiced and what the current papers said was paid at completion. The unit title sale certificate you read before exchange was a snapshot. It is not a permanent promise that contributions stay at that description. Read the rules before you book a mover to store boxes on common property, before you install a hard floor, and before you assume a courtyard is yours to enclose.

Insurance for a unit is often split. The owners corporation insures the building under its obligations. You may still want cover for contents and for any improvement the corporation’s policy does not treat as its own. Ask the manager for the certificate of currency they hold, and ask an insurer what you should hold personally. We do not sell either policy. We do not want you to discover the split in the week a tap lets go.

Meetings can sound optional until a vote touches the courtyard or a special contribution. Read the notice. If you cannot attend, ask what a proxy involves under the rules. Silence is also a choice, but it should be a choice you made on purpose.

A filing habit that will save a weekend later

One folder, physical or digital, with the lease, the contract, the inquiries, the EER, the insurance reference, the utility account numbers, and the conveyancer’s final letter. If a lender is in the picture, add the loan’s own statements to a sleeve in the same folder so you can see offset or redraw descriptions next to what you thought you read on a public page months earlier. When a description on a statement does not match your memory, ask the lender, not a reprint of our guide. Our guide only told you which questions to ask.

At the end of the month, walk the outside of the property once in rain if the weather allows. Note where water sits. That note is for a handyman or a builder you might hire later. It is not an emergency unless water is entering the rooms. If it is entering, call the insurer and a licensed trade before you open a wall. Keep receipts. The first month is admin. Treat it that way and the lease stays a document you understand, not a surprise in year three.

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