Smart Rental Bonds has started in Parramatta and the rules say nothing about your visa

Moving house in Sydney normally means finding a second bond before you get the first one back. For a family renting in Harris Park at the local median, that is close to $3,000 sitting in two places at once, for however long it takes the old landlord to sign off.

Since 10 August 2026, renters in three parts of New South Wales have been able to move the bond itself instead. The fee is $25.

The scheme is called Smart Rental Bonds, and the three areas are the Parramatta, Penrith and Central Coast local government areas. Parramatta covers Harris Park, Westmead, Wentworthville and Granville, which between them hold one of the densest concentrations of Indian-Australian renters in the country.

The question this masthead set out to answer is whether a temporary visa holder can use it. The answer, on the published rules, is that nothing stops them.

What the eligibility rules actually say

There are eight requirements, published by NSW Fair Trading. A renter must be moving between two rental homes in New South Wales. They must use Rental Bonds Online, and have an existing bond linked to a Rental Bonds Online account, and tell the landlord or agent about that account. The new property must have the same tenants as the current one. They must be vacating the old property within four weeks of entering the new one. They must be over 18. They must be a natural person rather than a company. And they must pay the $25 fee plus any additional money needed for the new bond.

There is no residency test. There is no citizenship test. There is no visa condition. The word visa appears on the scheme’s pages only in the site navigation and in the list of accepted payment cards.

The exclusions are equally specific and equally silent on immigration status. You cannot use it if a claim is already in progress on the bond, if share-house members are moving to different houses, if the transfer is not completed within four weeks of moving in, if you have a RentStart bond loan with money owing to Homes NSW, if you owe the government money from a previous transfer, if the bond is a retail bond, if any tenant is on the scheme’s disqualification register, or if the new home is outside an approved local government area during the rollout.

The Rental Bonds Online account itself carries no residency requirement either. To open one you need an email address, a mobile number able to receive text messages, internet access, a way to pay by card or BPAY, and bank account details with an Australian financial institution.

That last item is the only practical barrier a temporary visa holder is likely to hit, and it is not an immigration test. It is a banking one, needed so the refund has somewhere to go.

[Unverified] The instrument that legally sets these rules is the Residential Tenancies Amendment (Smart Rental Bonds Scheme) Regulation 2026, and it could not be read. Fair Trading names it but its own link points to an unrelated parliamentary paper, and the NSW legislation website blocked every attempt to retrieve it. The published eligibility material is detailed enough to read as a plain-English rendering of the regulation, including its disqualification and review provisions, so the risk of a hidden clause is low. But the accurate statement is that the published rules say nothing about visa status, not that the regulation contains no such test. Renters who want certainty should ask Rental Bonds Online support directly on 1800 990 724.

The three areas, and the postcodes that trip people up

The scheme is defined by local government area. Fair Trading’s own wording is that a transfer is blocked if the new home “is not in an approved Local Government Area during the rollout”.

For convenience it also publishes a postcode list, and this is where confusion starts, because postcodes and council boundaries do not match. Postcode 2114 spans Parramatta and Ryde. Postcode 2765 spans Penrith, Blacktown and The Hills.

The published list runs to 41 postcodes. Parramatta covers 2114 to 2153, including 2150 Parramatta and Harris Park, 2145 Westmead, 2142 Granville and 2141 Lidcombe and Berala. Penrith covers eleven postcodes including 2750 and 2747. The Central Coast covers twelve, from 2250 Gosford to 2263.

The government chose these three because, in its own words, they include some of the state’s highest rates of daily bond lodgement. Statewide availability is promised by the end of the year.

How the money works

The $25 is an application fee, paid by the renter, and specifically by the principal tenant. It is charged every time a bond is transferred, not once. Only one transfer can be in progress at a time.

If the new bond is larger than the old one, the renter pays the difference plus the fee. Fair Trading’s worked example is a $2,000 bond moving to a $2,400 property, so $425 upfront. If the new bond is smaller, only the amount required moves across and the surplus stays with the old bond until any claims are settled, then is refunded.

Claims are where the scheme changes the risk. If the old landlord makes an agreed claim after the bond has already moved, the government pays it, and Revenue NSW then invoices the principal tenant, payable within 28 days, with recovery action if it is not. So the renter keeps the liability but no longer has to fund it twice at the same time.

Two details deserve more attention than they have had. There is a Smart Rental Bonds disqualification register, which is not public, and disqualification lasts until the grounds lapse or five years, extendable to ten in exceptional circumstances, with review rights. And landlords and agents are not told when a tenant has transferred a bond, with Fair Trading noting that tenants are not required to disclose how they intend to pay a bond. For anyone worried that using the scheme might mark them out in a competitive market, that is the reassurance.

Victoria got there first, and it publishes in Hindi

Six weeks before New South Wales, on 1 July 2026, Victoria launched its Portable Rental Bond Scheme through the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority.

It charges the same $25 application fee. It works the same way, requiring the previous bond to be unclaimed and held with the authority, the same renters on both bonds, both properties in Victoria, and agreement from all renters to the terms. Its eligibility rules also say nothing about visa status or residency.

One difference is worth naming. Victoria publishes its scheme material in ten community languages, including Hindi and Punjabi. New South Wales does not.

Queensland has nothing comparable, despite the loose way its arrangement is sometimes described. A Queensland bond can move to a new address only where the property manager or owner agrees and there is no change to the bond amount or the property manager or owner. That is the same landlord and the same money, which is not portability.

[Unverified] Whether South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory or the Northern Territory operates an equivalent scheme was not established, and no claim is made either way.

Eight years from the law to the launch

The power to do this has existed since 2018. Section 186A of the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 is titled “Regulations may establish rental bond roll-over scheme”, and the Tenants’ Union of NSW says it proposed and secured that reform.

Nothing was built. Anoulack Chanthivong, the Minister for Better Regulation and Fair Trading, made the point in July 2026: “The Liberals promised this scheme in 2018 and never delivered it.”

Labor committed to it at the 2023 election and put $6.6 million toward the build. The original deadline was late 2025 and it was missed. In January 2026 the ABC reported the delay, with NSW Rental Commissioner Trina Jones explaining that the department was retrofitting the existing Rental Bonds Online system to enable the portable scheme, and Chanthivong saying contracts left by the former government meant the technology build could not progress until early 2025. Greens spokesperson Jenny Leong was blunter, saying announcements are not delivery. The system launched a year later than expected.

The numbers behind it

Rental Bonds Online is the official system, holding bonds on behalf of the NSW Rental Bond Board. The most recent audited figures, for 30 June 2024, record 968,350 bonds held with a value of $2.08 billion, 323,026 new bonds lodged that year and 316,200 refunded.

The Minister’s public figure is larger and more recent. Speaking to the ABC he described “close to a million bonds and $2.3 billion worth of renters’ money”, and the Tenants’ Union uses the same $2.3 billion. No Rental Bond Board annual report has been published for 2024-25, so that figure is ministerial rather than audited, and the article says so.

Around 330,000 households move each year in New South Wales, a figure used by both the government and the Tenants’ Union, and consistent with the audited lodgement count. Median tenure remains below two years. More than two million people in the state rent.

The government’s saving claim is up to $4,000 each time a renter moves. Premier Chris Minns described the alternative as “finding another $3,000 or $4,000”.

Who supports it, and who says the fee is wrong

John Engeler, chief executive of Shelter NSW, put the case for the scheme in terms of who it changes things for. Speaking to the ABC on launch day he said that at $25, most reasonable people would say that is a lot less of an impediment than $2,500 or an average four-week bond. He added: “Let’s not worry about the cents. We’re talking about big dollars.” Shelter NSW is the state’s peak housing body, and Engeler has led it since early 2020. These quotes come from a single outlet’s launch day coverage.

The Tenants’ Union of NSW supports the scheme and opposes the fee. Its position, published on 23 March 2026 before the launch, is that renters should not be charged to move their own money. Chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said “a $25 fee on people who are already stretched thin is the wrong call”, and that renters “should not be charged again just to move their own money from one tenancy to the next”.

The organisation called for the transfer to be made fee-free before launch, describing the charge as a disproportionate burden on lower income renters, and noting that for a renter of a $400 a week apartment the fee is about 1.5 per cent of the bond while higher income renters pay a much smaller share. It asked, as a minimum, for a waiver for people on pensions and income support. The fee stands.

The government’s answer is that the application fee helps cover the administrative costs of running the scheme.

What to do if you are moving

If you are renting in one of the three areas and planning a move, three things decide whether this is available to you.

Your existing bond must already be in Rental Bonds Online and linked to your account. If your bond was lodged on paper, or your agent holds it outside the system, this does not apply to you. About 86 per cent of bonds were lodged online in 2023-24, so most people are covered, but not everyone.

The same tenants must be on both leases. A share house splitting up cannot use it, and neither can a couple where one person is moving on.

And the timing is tight. You must vacate the old property within four weeks of entering the new one, and complete the transfer within four weeks of moving in.

On the visa question, the honest position is this. Nothing in the published rules excludes a temporary visa holder, and this masthead checked every relevant page for such a test rather than assuming one way or the other. If a Fair Trading officer tells you otherwise, ask them which rule they are relying on, and tell us what they say.

Sources

Every date, figure and quotation in this article is drawn from the sources below. They are listed so you can check the record yourself.

• NSW Government, "Smart Rental Bonds"
• NSW Government, "Smart Rental Bonds important information"
• NSW Government, "Smart Rental Bonds eligible postcodes"
• NSW Government, "Smart Rental Bonds is here"
• ABC News, "NSW portable rental bond system is live"
• NSW Fair Trading, "Changes to rental laws"
• NSW Legislation, "Residential Tenancies Act 2010 No 42, section 186A"
• NSW Government, "Rental Bonds Online for tenants"
• Tenants' Union of NSW, "Smart Rental Bonds, are portable bonds finally here"
• NSW Rental Bond Board, "Annual report 2023-24"
• ABC News, "NSW portable rental bond scheme delayed"
• NSW Government, "Minister for Better Regulation and Fair Trading"
• Shelter NSW, "John Engeler, CEO"
• Consumer Affairs Victoria, "Portable rental bonds are now here"
• Victorian Government, "Transfer of bond guidelines issued by the Secretary"
• Victorian Government, "Portable bonds"
• Residential Tenancies Authority Queensland, "Transferring a bond"