Thursday, 4:50 PM. The last rent increase notice of the batch is done except one box. Section 5, method used to calculate the rent increase. You type "market review", because that is what it was, and move on to the envelopes.
Every jurisdiction makes you announce a rent increase. Victoria makes you explain one. That box is not a formality that survived from an older form; it is the point of the form. The notice must state the method behind the number, and the increase cannot be more than the amount that method produces. Whatever you write in section 5 becomes a ceiling, set by you, in writing, on the day you serve it.
Which changes what a lazy answer costs. "Market review" feels safe precisely because it commits to nothing, but a method that commits to nothing caps nothing, and a renter reading it learns only that you did not show the comparables. The same document then hands them the response: the last section of Victoria's notice is an application form for a free government investigation of the increase. Tick a box, add a phone number, post it back. Your notice ships to the renter with its own appeal form printed on it, and the renter has 30 days to use it.
And if they do, the first thing examined is not the market. The government's dispute service opens an excessive-rent case by checking whether the notice itself complies with the law: the official form, the 90 days, the once-in-12-months spacing, the method. Since November 25, 2025 the notice floor is 90 days rather than 60, so the fastest way to lose is a habit: every notice drafted from last year's template is 30 days short before anyone reads a word of it. The number you chose gets discussed only after your paperwork passes, which means the paperwork is where a dispute is usually won, quietly, months before anyone disputes anything.
Your notice ships with its own appeal form.
Here is what changes when the paperwork is produced rather than assembled. The dates stop being arithmetic you redo per unit: the 12-month spacing, the 90-day floor, and the post allowance are counted for you, per agreement, before anything can go out short. Across forty agreements that is forty clocks and forty receipt dates you no longer carry. The form arrives filled with everything a system can know, and what is left on your desk is exactly the part that was always yours: the method. One box, answered with the comparables or the index you actually used, on a notice that is otherwise already right.
That is how Scaalr runs it: each scheduled increase is validated against Victoria's rules when you set it and again before anything serves, the official Consumer Affairs Victoria form comes filled for the core fields, and the market's note lists what stays with you, section 5 first. The full Victoria rulebook, every rule tied to its official source, is here: Victoria Rent Increases: No Cap and 90 Days' Notice.
For the complete guide to the 90-day floor, the mandatory form, and the review path, see: Victoria Rent Increases: No Cap and 90 Days' Notice.
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