The two rulings that allowed tenants to keep pets despite explicit agreements that they wouldn’t, in both cases.
In the first case, a woman moved in to a property in Palmerston North. Landlord says the tenancy agreement “specifically excluded pets”.
She moved her guinea pigs in, the landlord tired to force her to remove her pets, but the tenancy tribunal let her keep them.
Why?
Because even though there was a written contract, the law doesn't ban them.
In the second case, tenants in an overcrowded flat got a dog.
The landlord tried to kick them for the overcrowding, and because they’d signed an agreement barring animals.
The Tenancy Tribunal said no.
Why?
The dog wasn’t a big enough problem to the landlord to justify the tenants’ distress at losing their dog.
Now I'm sure at least some of these tenants and their advocates think this is great, but this will probably backfire.
If you listened to talkback today, you’ll know this is freaking landlords out. They want to know that if there is an agreement that is reasonable it will be upheld, and saying no to pets is reasonable because there are other properties that will take pets.
Houses are expensive. That is a lot of money tied up in that investment, and fixing the damage of a pet costs a lot.
We had a dog in a house of ours back when we weren’t living in Auckland, and we didn’t know it was there until we saw the paint scratched off the back of the front door.
And now, we can probably blame it for the fleas.
That's the lighter end of the kind of damage a pet can do.
Not every landlord is going to freak out about this, heaps of landlords have bought houses specifically for renting and will be fine with a good tenant having a pet. But I reckon there will be plenty of people who thought about turning the holiday home over for a short term rental or putting their own house up for rent while they take a job up somewhere else —like we did— who will just not do it.
Because they don’t want pets in their home, and they now can’t be sure that any agreement will hold.
Because the signal this is sending is that anyone who takes the house can bring in a pet, even if they promise not to.
And when we have a rental shortage, every house pulled off the market makes it worse.
So for any good this is doing on an individual level, it’s doing much more harm.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
5 comments:
Absolutely appalling decisions. I see you can appeal to District Court - a likely minimum $1100 fee. But this is absurd and if nothing else let's have the names of these adjudicators/investigators and they can at least answer to the Court of Public Opinion. What idiots - is there no sanctity of contract? And as Heather has pointed out, it will certainly have unintended consequences.
Many hve an idealised notion of tenants. They judge them as themselves. Landlords can provide a very different story. That the tenant can be held liable is a farce. Hours wasted with the Tribunal and chances are the tenant has vanished and/or is penniless and noone enforces even if they notor they pay back at adribble which ceases.Many tenants simply cannot identify dirt, damage, unreasonable behaviour because to them it is normal life. ivory tower politicians respond far too readily to lobby groups.
It is part of the idea that landlords provide capital and housing but thereafter give up their rights. It is also part of the belief that tenants are the universal good guys and landlords are bad. And of course if you are rich enough to own a property that you can rent out you are too rich and deserve to be reduced to the lowest common denominator.
Then of course there are professional tenants who know the rules and totally game the system.
There is no way I would own an investment property.
this reminds me of adults signing student loan agreements and wasting 4 years on useless degrees in arts/journalism/sociology etc. & then asking for student loan forgiveness. of course, no one can be expected to read & understand contracts as the education standards have been dumbed down so much.
Tenants believe all contracts are meant to be broken. They will sneak in pets and lie about them, sneak in extra people and lie about them, let both visitors and pets damage your house knowing they have all the power and rights to walk away scott free. LLs should start keying the tenants cars for every time they damage the house.
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