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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →A notice to leave that arrives a day late is not a small slip. In a Queensland tenancy, almost every step that matters is taken by written notice: the entry for an inspection, the demand to fix a breach, the end of the agreement by either side. Each notice starts a clock, and the next step is only lawful once that clock has run in full. If the notice was sent by a channel the other side never agreed to, or the days were counted from the wrong starting point, the step that follows can fail.
A notice may leave an agency or a tenant's phone as an email attachment. That is permitted, but only on conditions, and the conditions are not written where many people look for them. They sit in the tenancy agreement itself, in the items filled in on its first page and in one standard term near the end.
This guide follows an emailed notice from start to finish: what makes email a valid channel, which Residential Tenancies Authority (RTA) forms are sent this way, when the law treats the email as received, how the RTA counts the period that follows, where text messages and apps stand, and what happens when the person on the other end says nothing arrived. It leaves the grounds for ending a tenancy and the length of each notice period to the magazine's guides on those subjects.
Sources: RTA General tenancy agreement (Form 18a), version 23 dated September 2025; RTA fact sheet "Allowing time when serving notices", version 3 dated September 2025.
The rule lives in the agreement
A reader who opens the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 looking for a list of permitted delivery methods will be disappointed. An article published by the REIQ on 28 June 2022, written by an in-house advocate at Carter Newell Lawyers, makes the point directly: the Act does not itself prescribe how a notice is served, and the method is settled by what the parties agree in their tenancy agreement.
Related readThe law behind e-conveyancing: how a national scheme binds QueenslandFor a house, unit, apartment, townhouse or houseboat, that agreement is the RTA's General tenancy agreement (Form 18a). The form has two parts. The first is a set of numbered items completed for each tenancy: names, addresses, the rent, the term. The second is the standard terms, which are the same in every agreement.
Service is dealt with in both parts. Items 1, 2 and 3 identify the lessor, the tenant or tenants and the lessor's agent, each with their addresses. Item 4 is headed with the words that give it away: it records to whom notices may be given, and by which electronic means. The standard term on notices then says what those entries allow.
In the version of Form 18a dated September 2025 (version 23), that standard term is clause 48. The REIQ's 2022 article cited it as clause 44, the number it carried in the version then in use. The clause number therefore depends on the date of the agreement in hand, and anyone checking a particular tenancy should read the notices clause of that agreement, wherever it sits.
Items 1 to 4: where consent is recorded
Clause 48 of the September 2025 form sets out three ways of giving a notice to a "relevant party", meaning the lessor, the tenant or the agent.
The first is personal: handing the notice to the person. The second depends on an address for service being stated in item 1, 2 or 3, in which case the notice may be left at that address or sent to it by prepaid post as a letter. The third is the electronic route, and it has two conditions that must both be met. An electronic address for a type of electronic communication must be stated for that party in item 1, 2 or 3. And item 4 must indicate that a notice may be given to that party by that type of electronic communication. When both are present, the notice may be sent to that electronic address in accordance with the Electronic Transactions (Queensland) Act 2001.
Related readPrivacy law and real estate: what an agency may collect, and keepItem 4 is a small grid. For each of the lessor, the tenant and the agent, it offers a yes or no answer for email, for text message and for facsimile. Each answer is given separately, so the consent of one side says nothing about the other. A tenant may accept notices by email while the lessor does not, or the reverse.
Two consequences follow from the way the clause is built. An email address written in item 2 is not, alone, consent to be served by email: without a "yes" for email against the tenant in item 4, the second condition is missing. And a "yes" in item 4 is of no use if no email address appears in the relevant item, because there is then no stated address to send to.
The clause also settles two questions that come up often. A notice from the tenant to the lessor may be given to the lessor's agent. And where no separate address for service is stated for the tenant in item 2, the tenant's address for service is taken to be the address of the rented premises.
Changing an address, or withdrawing consent
People change email addresses during a tenancy, and some decide they would rather have paper. The agreement provides for both, and in each case the mechanism is a notice.
Under clause 48, a party may change their address for service or their electronic address only by giving notice of the new one to each other relevant party. Once that notice is given, the new address is treated as the address stated in the relevant item of the agreement. A casual mention in a phone call, or an email that simply arrives from a different account, is not what the clause describes.
Related readElectronic deeds under the Property Law Act 2023: what still needs inkConsent to electronic service can also be taken back. A party may withdraw consent to receiving notices by electronic communication, or to a specific electronic address, only by giving notice to each other relevant party that notices are no longer to be given to them electronically, or to that address.
Because clause 48 opens by saying that a notice under the agreement must be written, the change of address and the withdrawal are written steps too. For a managing party, the practical point is that the tenancy file needs to show the current position, not the position on the day the agreement was signed. A notice emailed to an address the tenant replaced by written notice months earlier has gone to an address that is no longer the one stated in the agreement.
The approved forms that travel by email
The same opening words of clause 48 carry a second requirement: if there is an approved form for a notice, the notice must be in that form. An email that says "please treat this as notice" does not become an approved form because the channel was agreed. The email is the envelope; the form is what it carries.
The RTA's page of forms for general tenancies lists them with their numbers and a line on what each is for. Four of them account for most emailed notices.
| RTA form | Given by | What the RTA says it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Entry notice (Form 9) | Lessor or agent | Giving notice to tenants about an entry. |
| Notice to remedy breach (Form 11) | Either side | Used where the tenants or the lessor or agent claim there has been a breach. |
| Notice to leave (Form 12) | Lessor or agent | Giving notice to the tenants to vacate the property. |
| Notice of intention to leave (Form 13) | Tenant | Telling the lessor or agent that the tenants wish to vacate. |
Source: Residential Tenancies Authority, "Forms for general tenancies".
The same page lists others that follow the same logic, among them the Notice of lessor's intention to sell premises (Form 10) and the Abandonment termination notice (Form 15). Rooming accommodation has its own series, which the RTA marks with an R: its fact sheet on counting time refers to the Notice to leave as "Form 12, Form R12".
Related readAgency records in Queensland: what to keep, how long, in what formThe forms are published as PDF files, and the RTA advises saving a form to a desktop or folder before opening and editing it, because some web browsers will not keep what was typed. A handful of RTA forms can be completed online through a "Start now" button, including the bond lodgement and the dispute resolution request, but those are forms lodged with the RTA. The four notices in the table go from one party to the other. Of the Notice to remedy breach, the RTA says plainly that the form should not be sent to the authority and that a copy should be kept.
When an emailed notice counts as received
A notice period cannot start until the notice has been received, so the moment of receipt is the hinge of the whole exercise. Clause 48 of the September 2025 agreement fixes it for each channel.
A notice left at an address for service is taken to have been received when it was left there. A notice sent by post is taken to have been received when it would have been delivered in the ordinary course of post. A notice sent by email is taken to have been received when the email enters the recipient's email server. A notice sent by facsimile is taken to have been received when the sender's machine produces a transmission report showing that all pages were successfully sent. For any other type of electronic communication, the time is the one stated in section 24 of the Electronic Transactions (Queensland) Act 2001.
Related readRent apps, payment fees and tenant data: the Queensland tenancy rulesThe email rule deserves a second reading. It does not ask when the tenant opened the message, read the attachment or replied. It asks when the email reached the recipient's server. The REIQ's 2022 article, discussing section 24 of the Electronic Transactions (Queensland) Act 2001, described the test in that Act as the time the communication becomes capable of being retrieved by the addressee at an electronic address the addressee has designated, and observed that for an email sent to the correct address this happens more or less at once.
Post is the opposite case. The RTA's fact sheet says the sender must allow time for the mail to arrive, that the first day counted is the day after the notice arrives at the address, and that Australia Post should be consulted for delivery times. The REIQ article referred to section 39A of the Acts Interpretation Act 1954 for the "ordinary course of post" rule and said Queensland case law had treated ordinary post as taking three to four business days. That gap of several days is the practical difference between the two channels.
Counting the period after an email
Once the time of receipt is known, the counting follows the RTA's fact sheet "Allowing time when serving notices" (version 3, September 2025). Its general principle is that the day the notice is served at the address or emailed is not counted, and the next action must not be taken until the day after the last day of the notice period. The fact sheet then treats hours, days, weeks and months separately.
Related readDelivering seller disclosure in Queensland: email, links and proofHours are counted to the hour. The RTA's own example is an emailed one: a property manager issues a 48-hour entry notice to the tenant by email at 2.00pm on 12 June, and must wait until 2.00pm on 14 June before entering.
Days are "clear days" between the day of serving and the day of the next action. In the RTA's example, a 7-day notice is served on 12 June. Counting starts on 13 June, the seventh day is 19 June, and the next action may be taken on 20 June. The fact sheet gives this example for a notice delivered by hand, and its general principle applies the same exclusion of the first day to a notice that is emailed.
- 12 JuneThe email enters the recipient's server. This day is not counted.
- 13 to 19 JuneThe seven clear days. The recipient has until midnight on 19 June.
- 20 JuneThe earliest day on which the next action may be taken.
Weeks are seven days each. A 4-week notice served on a Monday is counted from the Tuesday; its last day is a Monday four weeks later, and the next action may take place on the Tuesday.
Months are calendar months. The fact sheet defines a calendar month as a period starting at the beginning of any day of a month and ending immediately before the beginning of the corresponding day of the next month, or, where there is no corresponding day, at the end of the next month. Its first example is a notice of 2 months given on 20 December: counting begins on 21 December, the period ends immediately before midnight on 20 February, and action may be taken on 21 February. Its second shows the short month: 2 months' notice given on 30 December is counted from 31 December, and because there is no 30 February the period is treated as ending immediately before midnight on 28 February, with action from 1 March.
Midnight, weekends and public holidays
Two further rules in the fact sheet catch out senders who count correctly but act too early.
The first is the midnight rule. A notice expires at midnight, the RTA says, so the person must be allowed the entire 24 hours of the last day. Its illustration uses the Notice to leave: if the last day of a Notice to leave is 19 June, the tenant or resident must by law be allowed until midnight on that date to leave. A handover date written on the form is therefore the last full day of occupation, not a morning deadline.
The second concerns the calendar. If the notice period stated in the Act for a particular action ends on a weekend or public holiday, the fact sheet says, the end of the time period will be on the next business day.
Email makes the starting point precise, and that precision cuts both ways. A notice emailed late in the evening still has that calendar day as its day of service, and the day is still excluded. Nothing is gained by sending at one minute to midnight, and the sender who counts the day of sending as day one will always be a day short.
The fact sheet closes its guidance with a sentence that is as much about conduct as about arithmetic: if a dispute is likely to arise, it is better to err on the side of caution, for instance by phoning ahead as well as serving the notice.
The email is not the notice
The agreement requires a notice to be written and, where an approved form exists, to be in that form. Agreeing to email changes how the form travels. It does not replace the form with a line of text in a message.
Text messages, fax and apps
Item 4 of the September 2025 agreement lists three electronic channels: email, text message and facsimile. Text message therefore stands on the same footing as email in one respect: it is available only where a mobile number is stated for the party and item 4 says "yes" to text message for that party.
It differs in another. Clause 48 gives email and facsimile their own receipt rules, and sends every other type of electronic communication to section 24 of the Electronic Transactions (Queensland) Act 2001. The RTA's fact sheet reflects this, treating a text message as a way of serving a notice where it has been agreed, with receipt worked out under that section.
The requirement of an approved form does not fall away for a text message. Where a notice has an approved form, the notice must be in it, and a short message saying that an inspection will take place on Thursday is not an Entry notice (Form 9). What a text message can do without difficulty is the thing the RTA suggests when a dispute is likely: tell the other person, by a second route, that a notice has been served.
Apps and portals are a different matter. Tenant apps can carry maintenance requests, messages and documents. Neither Form 18a nor the RTA's fact sheet, as read for this guide, mentions them. The agreement's electronic route is built on an electronic address stated in items 1 to 3 and a channel ticked in item 4, and item 4 offers email, text message and facsimile. A message posted inside an app is not one of those three. A notification from an app that reaches the tenant as an email to the address in item 2, with the approved form attached, is an email for the purposes of the clause; the app is then simply the software that sent it.
What each side keeps
A receipt rule that turns on a server, not on a person reading a message, places the weight on records. The REIQ's 2022 article set out four habits for those who rely on service by email or post: keep dispatch records for posted notices, send emails to the designated address spelled correctly, request read receipts when relying on email, and keep the other party's details monitored and up to date.
Those habits map onto the conditions of clause 48. The signed agreement shows the address in items 1 to 3 and the "yes" in item 4. Any later written notice changing an address, or withdrawing consent, shows whether those entries still stand. The sent email, with its time stamp, the address it went to and the attached form, shows what was sent and when. A read receipt or a reply is not required by the clause, but it removes the argument about whether the message arrived.
A tenant sending a Notice of intention to leave (Form 13) or a Notice to remedy breach (Form 11) by email is in the same position as an agency sending a Notice to leave. The conditions apply in the other direction: the lessor's or agent's email address must be stated in item 1 or 3, and item 4 must show "yes" for email against that party. The agreement allows a tenant's notice for the lessor to be given to the agent, which in a managed tenancy is usually the address used.
An emailed notice is judged on three records: the agreement that allowed the channel, the form that was attached, and the time the message left.
When receipt is disputed
Disagreements about service rarely arrive alone. They come attached to something else: an entry the tenant says was not notified, a breach notice the lessor says was ignored, a notice to leave the tenant says was never seen.
The RTA's page on breaches of the agreement describes the first formal step. If the property manager or owner and the tenant cannot agree about a breach, either may apply to the RTA for dispute resolution assistance. The request is made on the Dispute resolution request (Form 16), which the RTA describes as the form used to advise it that there is a dispute and to request assistance in resolving it. It is one of the forms that can be started online.
The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) is the next forum. The RTA's breach page gives the clearest example of how a service question reaches it. If a Notice to leave has been issued and the tenant does not leave, the property manager or owner can apply to QCAT for a termination order and a warrant of possession within 14 days of the notice's expiry. The same page says either side can apply to QCAT to end a tenancy for repeated breaches, where a Notice to remedy breach has been issued twice for the same breach and remedied each time, a third breach occurs within 12 months and the problem is of a serious nature.
In each of those applications, the notice is the foundation. Whether it was given by a permitted channel, in the approved form, and with the full period allowed are the questions the documents described above are kept to answer. How a tribunal weighs them in a given case depends on the evidence before it, and this guide does not predict an outcome. What can be said in general terms is that the test for an email set by the agreement is a narrow and checkable one: whether the email entered the recipient's server at an address the agreement allowed. A person who says a message was never opened is answering a different question from the one the clause asks.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
