Commercial Lease Dispute Lawyers in Melbourne

A lease dispute hits your cash flow before it hits a courtroom

When a tenant goes three months behind on rent, the landlord’s loan covenants quietly become the landlord’s problem too. A lockout stops a business trading by the same morning, and a make-good claim can land weeks after the keys are handed back and double what the tenant thought the exit would cost. Whichever side of the lease you are on, money is going out the door while the argument runs, and the side that has actually read the lease properly tends to set the terms of what happens next.

MK Law acts for commercial landlords and tenants across Melbourne and Victoria. Tell us what has happened on a free first call and we will tell you what the lease actually lets each side do next. Call 1800 130 120.

Locked out, or about to change the locks?

For any breach other than unpaid rent, a landlord cannot simply change the locks. The law requires a section 146 notice first: it must identify the breach, demand it be fixed, and give the tenant a reasonable time to comply, usually at least 14 days in practice. A defective notice makes the re-entry wrongful, and wrongful re-entry converts the landlord’s claim into the tenant’s damages claim.

Unpaid rent is different. No section 146 notice is required, and most leases allow re-entry once rent is a set number of days overdue. Even then, a tenant who moves quickly can apply to the Supreme Court or County Court for relief against forfeiture and get the lease back, usually on condition of paying the arrears and costs.

Acting for landlords, we check that the right to re-enter has actually arisen and that it is exercised cleanly. Acting for tenants, we test the notice, apply for relief and get the doors open again.

The lease decides most of these fights

Rent review clauses, re-entry rights, make-good schedules, options to renew: most commercial lease disputes come down to words someone signed years ago and has not looked at since. Send us the lease and the correspondence and we will tell you on a free call where you stand and which deadline is running. If your position is weak, we say so before you spend anything.

Get your lease read today

Owed months of rent, or billed for charges the lease never allowed?

Market rent reviews go wrong when notices are served late or the mechanism in the lease is ignored, and a missed review notice can lock in the old rent for years. Outgoings disputes tend to surface when a reconciliation lands carrying charges the lease never authorised. Arrears claims look simple on paper, but they turn on evidence: the ledger, the demands, and whether the landlord has done something that waived the breach. We run all three, for either side, and we go after guarantors and security deposits at the same time instead of leaving them until later. That last part matters most when the tenant company is already failing: once it goes into liquidation the arrears claim joins a queue of unsecured creditors, and the guarantee and the security deposit are often the only parts of the claim still worth anything.

The make-good claim that lands after the keys are handed back

Make-good is the exit issue we see litigated more than any other. The lease might require the premises returned to base building, to original condition, or just to a clean and tidy state, and the difference between those phrases is often six figures. Landlords routinely claim full refurbishment where the clause supports far less. Tenants, for their part, hand back the keys without a dilapidation report and lose the evidence they needed. If your lease is ending within six months, get advice on your make-good position now, while you can still document the condition and negotiate the scope.

Which court hears a commercial lease dispute

Non-retail commercial lease disputes run through the courts, and the venue turns on value. The Magistrates’ Court of Victoria hears claims up to $100,000, the County Court has no upper limit, and the Supreme Court takes the larger and more urgent matters, including injunctions to restrain a threatened re-entry. If your premises turn out to be retail premises, the dispute goes to the Victorian Small Business Commission and VCAT instead, so identifying the regime correctly is the first thing we check. Lease disputes that sit inside a wider commercial fight often run alongside our commercial litigation work, and broader property fights are covered by our property dispute lawyers page.

How we run a lease file

The first call is free and confidential. We read the lease and the correspondence, tell you where you stand, and scope the next step with you: a demand, a section 146 notice, a response, or an urgent court application. Where the premises are being sold out from under the dispute, we also check whether a caveat on property is available to hold the title still while the lease question gets answered. Most matters settle once the other side sees the clauses lined up against the facts. The ones that do not, we litigate, in whichever court the value puts us in and at the pace your deadlines demand. Call 1800 130 120. We take calls in the evenings and on weekends too, which is when a fair few lockouts happen.