Too many times, the presence of negligent owners adds to the housing crisis. This is what some tenants have experienced in the city of Nelson, New Zealand, after moving, just 10 days after ending their previous rental contract, to a new house without having seen it because “she looked beautiful in the ad”. However, they soon discovered that all that glittered was not gold.
“I cried the first day,” said Dominic Hurdle, one of the tenants, according to the media. . “No one told us that the house was too leaning. The neighbors said they had seen hundreds of people pass by before us. I apologized to my son because I knew we had no escape,” he said. During the first months in the new rented house suffered leaks, mold, cracks in the walls and drafts so strong that “you could feel the wind blowing through the windows,” they said.
A Healthy Homes inspection conducted just two weeks after they moved in found gutters in poor condition, a lack of soil moisture barriers and poor drainage. Furthermore, subsequent inspections by Nelson City Council determined that The house had suffered “structural damage” due to the movement of the ground in the area, which had left it “significantly uneven.”
Now, the Tenancy Court has imposed a fine on the owner considering that The response was “too little” and came “too late”. Even after three inspections found “significant problems” at the home, The Rent Shop, representing owner Colin Barrow, failed to bring it up to standard during a 16-month lease, the court ruled.
In this way, he ordered the landlord to pay the tenants Lisa-Maree and Dominic Hurdle $6,527 for violating Healthy Homes regulations and for failing to maintain the property. Hurdle stated that they had looked for accommodation for months before signing a 12-month lease in March 2024 for this home.
The court stated that “no immediate remedial action was taken.” In November of last year, only some work had been carried out, four months after the legal deadline. Additionally, he stated that the inspection photos should have prompted “immediate action,” adding that the problems “should have been evident” by The Rent Shop when it took over management, even if the new decor “may have hidden some underlying problems.”
While the court recognized the geotechnical difficulties of the land, it ruled that the home “was not delivered or maintained in a reasonable state of repair.” The owner had “sufficient time to act before the July deadline,” so the failure to comply was “intentional.”
