They kept the bond and never did the work — is that legal in South Australia?

Your landlord claimed part of your bond for cleaning or repairs. Months later, nothing's been fixed and the carpet's never been cleaned. It feels like they just kept the money. Here's what South Australian law actually says about that — and why the moment that matters already passed.

That's a frustrating and common experience — and it's worth being straight about what South Australian tenancy law actually covers here, because it's narrower than people assume.

What the law actually says — and doesn't

We read sections 61, 62, 63 and 69 of the Residential Tenancies Act 1995 (SA) in full, and ran a whole-Act search for the words "spend", "spent" and "expend". None of them appear in connection with a bond claim. Section 63 — the provision dealing with repayment of bond — is procedural: it's about who can apply, how disputes are referred to SACAT, and the timeframes involved. It says nothing about what the landlord must then do with the money.

That's an uncomfortable answer, and it's one a lot of tenancy content avoids giving because it isn't satisfying. We'd rather tell you the honest position than a reassuring one that isn't actually in the legislation.

Why that's not the end of the story

The landlord not spending the money doesn't mean the claim was valid. Those are two separate questions, and the second one is where you actually have leverage.

At the end of your tenancy, section 69(3) requires you to give the premises back in reasonable condition and a reasonable state of cleanliness — no higher a standard than that. Section 69(4) says how that's judged:

So a bond claim has to be justified against that test — not against whatever figure feels round, and not against a standard higher than what you were given. Whether the landlord later actually fixes the carpet, paints the wall, or does nothing at all isn't part of that test either way. The honest position is: you can't force them to spend it, but you can absolutely contest whether they were entitled to take it in the first place.

The moment that matters is when the claim is made

This is the practical point that gets missed. Once a bond claim is agreed to, or goes unanswered past the response window, the money is paid out — and reopening that later is much harder than contesting it at the time. By the time you've noticed six months on that the work was never done, the window to dispute the claim itself has usually long since closed.

So the useful question isn't "did they do the work?" raised after the fact. It's "was the claim justified?" raised the moment you receive it.

Your inspection sheet is the evidence

The condition you received the property in is the benchmark under s.69(4) — and the document that records that is the signed inspection sheet your landlord was required to give you at move-in under regulation 4. If the place was already due for a clean or had existing marks on day one, that's part of what "reasonable wear and tear since that time" has to account for.

We cover that document in detail in Condition reports in South Australia: what your landlord must give you — read that alongside this one if you're disputing a claim now.

How to push back, step by step

The bottom line: you can't make a landlord spend your bond on the work they claimed it for — that's genuinely not in the Act. But you can, and should, contest whether they were entitled to claim it at all, and the time to do that is now, not after you've noticed nothing's been fixed.