(Advice needed) VIC: any laws preventing a LL from lying to you to get more money during a tenancy?
In short: 3rd rental increase in 3 years, 21% increase all up. Rent increases have been accompanied by a CMA which looks legit, but if I actually went and looked at the property listings themselves it seems like the information in the CMA has been manipulated.
For example: the Rent increase notice says increase is based on 2 bedroom apartments in the area but some are actually townhouses, the sizes of the properties have been manipulated to either be internal size/internal+balcony/internal+balcony+carspace and then altered to seem like they are similar in size.
The most expensive property in the CMA for a previous rent increase claims the similar apartment is 77m2 (and that is close my current unit with a balcony) but in a sale listing for the same apartment I found online it has a floorplan - and in that floorplan, if you add the balcony, it comes to 140m2.
The most recent increase I've actually sent to CAV to assess as it just didn't make any sense with what I was given on the CMA. After being unsatisfied with the agents responses (it seemed like they pulled a number out of thin air and manipulated the CMA to make it seem legitimate), I've only just started looking at my previous rent increases. I'm stunned at the level of barefaced deceit and misrepresentation they can get away with extort more money out of tenants.
I thought there were laws about misleading and deceiving consumers but there are no protections in the RTA at all once you've signed a lease.
Am I missing something?
EDIT: I've looked into it and, based off of some recent VCAT cases, the method used to calculate the rent increase (in this case: fixed dollar increase based on comparative properties) needs to be either 'coherent' (make detailed sense) or the CMA (as a VCAT member judged): 'should contain sufficient information to the renters to enable them to not only answer the question as to why it is given, but also enough information for them to determine whether the rent being proposed is excessive and should be challenged.' Failure to do either of these things can make the increase 'invalid' - meaning (if the renter applied to VCAT correctly) that any rent increase must be returned. It is also interesting to note that any subsequent rent increase notice would also be considered invalid (as the notice hadn't used the correct 'current rental amount') and those amounts would also need to be returned to the tenant.