Tenants & Tenancies
How to deal with an abandoned rental property
Sometimes when a tenant gets into rent arrears, they decide the best thing to do it to get out of town as quickly as possible.
Often, this means that they have left many of their precious belongings behind, such as dirty clothes, broken fridges, car parts and boxes of personal documents. As tempting as it is to dump the whole lot, is this how it should be handled?
Judy Morgan gives her views…
How to rent to immigrant tenants
Renting to someone from another country and a different culture can be confusing and frustrating sometimes, but it needn’t be that way. This article covers a few of the areas that you should be aware of where expectations may differ from your average NZ-born tenant. Be prepared to be a little more flexible and patient and you may get a great tenant you won’t want to leave.
7 Ways To Resolve Tenancy Tribunal Disputes Faster
Handling a dispute with a tenant isn’t right up there on my list of favourite things to do. I’ve had some weird and wacky ones and some who were trying to take the piss but mostly disputes arise because the tenant (or the landlord) didn’t understand the way a tenancy is supposed to work. Here’s 7 ways you can try to resolve a tenancy dispute faster.
Parent guarantors for teenage tenants
In this article about a teenage tenant, Glenn Morris explains how having a parent act as Guarantor can save your bacon if anything goes wrong. The Residential Tenancies Act allows for a parent Guarantor in the recent amendments. The best way to achieve this is to add the parent in your tenancy agreement as a tenant. The DBH accepts this and it offers clear evidence of intention at the start of the tenancy.
Are you being cheated out of rent at mediation?
I have discovered after several years that not all mediators are equal. Some mediators have continued to base their decisions for years on beliefs that run contrary to the RTA despite evidence showing them the error of their ways. Glenn Morris explains how rent arrears relate to rent periods when it comes to the tenancy mediation.
How to find a missing tenant’s new address
Sometimes finding where a runaway tenant has gone to can be really hard. If they’re not willing to pay rent arrears and don’t want to be found, you’ll need to go through the tenancy tribunal – collections department process.
However, you can’t start this without an address to serve the court documents to. Here’s some suggestions for avoiding the problem in the first place or dealing with it if you do get caught out.
