Tales from the Tenancy Tribunal: ‘I’m not the tenant’

Monday, 6 January 2025

2024 at the Tenancy Tribunal featured a large number of landlords seeking to get rent arrears paid, in the time-honoured fashion.

The Tenancy Tribunal is a court that specialises in disputes between tenants and landlords. It’s faster than going to a normal court and a lot cheaper - for an application of $20, and without the need for a lawyer - you can apply online to have your case heard.

Rent arrears - usually landlords chasing up unpaid rent - is the most common form of case heard, comprising almost 62% of all applications in the last figures. The rulings often include damage, and frequently feature properties left in a state that could be described as somewhat less than pristine.

And abandonment of tenancy pops up in them a lot.

One of the more ingenious defences heard in the court this year was from a tenant who claimed he was, actually, not the tenant.

Rent arrears, damages, and abandonment of tenancy are frequent themes heard in the tenancy tribunal. The names of those who win these cases are usually suppressed.

The landlord in the case - who was granted name suppression - applied for rent arrears, compensation and refund of the bond, following the end of the tenancy of a young man.While the tenant had originally, by the sounds of it, entered the tenancy with his father, his father had left, leaving his son to pay for a while at least.

When the landlord came to getting what he felt he was owed, he was greeted with the following argument: “the tenant says that he is not the tenant.” It was fairly soon deduced on the bench that he, in fact, was the tenant.

Not only did the man have to pay $7,740 in rent arrears, he was also forced to stump up with the fees for his rubbish to be taken to the dump - $741.65. Damage was also found to have been done during the tenancy - two large holes in a bedroom wall and that done when a car “slid into the side of the house”.

A landlord must prove that damage to the premises occurred during the tenancy and is more than ‘fair wear and tear’. If this is established, to avoid liability, the tenant must prove they did not carelessly or intentionally cause or permit the damage. The tenant did not prove this, and had his bill added to by the sum of $1,082.00, for a total of $8,983.65 to pay the landlord “immediately”.

A case where the landlord claimed for damage but was not successful, because he’d not only fixed the damage but upgraded it, was heard as well this year.

The landlord in the case claimed the cost of replacing three kitchen benches with stainless steel tops. According to the judge, the kitchen was very dated and had Formica benches when the tenants moved in. The tenants painted one of the benches and applied removable sticky tiles over the other two benches.

Justin Driver and Hannah Foster at their Papanui house that they bought in 2022. They say not being able to go traveling because of Covid helped their chances of buying a house.

Though the adjudicator thought it unlikely the landlord agreed with the changes, he also reasoned that any claim for compensation had to take betterment and depreciation into account.

“The landlord should be returned to the position they would have been in had the tenants not breached their obligations and should not be better or worse off. In calculating depreciation I have to consider the age and condition of the items at the start of the tenancy, and their likely useful lifespan. The yellow Formica looked original – probably from the 1970s or 1980s - and was already worn in places when the tenancy started.

“I find that replacing the Formica with stainless steel was a significant improvement and the tenants are not required to pay for that. This claim is dismissed.”

In this case, the tenants also won for a shower that just wasn’t fixed properly from shortly after they moved in, in June 2023 to the day they moved out.

“The shower was smelly, slow to drain and squelched water up through the tiles laid over the top of the metal shower tray. One of the tenants slipped on the tiles and fell. The shower was eventually repaired on 9 August 2024 although the bathroom still had a hole in the wall and in the lino at the end of the tenancy … the landlord said the shower could still be used so there was no loss,” the adjudicator wrote.

Coackroach infestations are not a surprising phenomenon when rubbish is not disposed of.

But he was more persuaded by the tenants’ evidence: “The photos show an unsightly repair, and the shower looks old, unsanitary, and unsafe. Whether or not the tenants used the shower is irrelevant to the claim because they were paying rent for a proper shower, and I am persuaded they had less than that. I find there was a loss of amenity from June 2023 to the day they moved out, which is close to 61 weeks. I allow compensation in the amount of $50 a week.”

In a different case where the tenant was found to be squarely responsible, the premises had already been abandoned by the tenant and his friends had to be evicted from it. Rubbish and unwanted items were left behind, carpet was stained, and other carpet had been left outside and ruined; curtains and a venetian blind were missing, keys were missing and a keypad had been installed without the landlord’s consent.

On top of all that, garden work was needed to remove large and invasive weeds and reinstate the garden beds which were overgrown.

A total of $17,633.58 was payable to the landlord.

And a further case, this time in Henderson, showed damage that appeared to be at the lower end of the scale, but left a bigger problem - a cockroach infestation.

Various things needed to be replaced and fixed - the stopper for the kitchen sink, for example, while numerous doors and walls had been damaged. But perhaps of most note was that there was so much rubbish that needed to be removed the pest removers also had to be called in to address a cockroach infestation.

An award to the landlord of almost $7000 was made.