Any concerns about New RTA Bill?

[Laurie]

Here is a response to a couple of questions I posed to Maryan Street MP - Bill initiator .... about tenants liability under the proposed bill regarding property damage.
_________________________________
From: Laurie Lowther [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, 30 November 2006 9:27 a.m.
To: Maryan Street
Subject: RTA Bill

Maryan,

I am concerned about your recommendation to limit tenants liability for
damage to a property to a maximum of 4 weeks rent in certain
circumstances.

I can see the tenant having a party at a property with a guest causing
substantial damage to the property whereupon, the liability for such
damage will not be borne by the tenant, yet the tenant surely should
take responsibility for the property and the quality of the people that
enter the property and their actions.

I could see that upon any such damage, the tenant simply says 'that it
happened at the party and I do not know who made the damage' ...... who
would pay in this scenario?

It could open up the concept of 'trashing' parties

_________________________________

Dear Laurie

Thanks for your email.

There is a need to limit tenants' liability for damage they did not
cause, in my view and in the view of the judge who presided over the
case that precipitated my bill.

In the end, the Minister has come to a good compromise I think - there
is some liability, but only up to 4 weeks' rent. What has also been
added in is that tenants are only NOT liable for actual damages if they
did not cause it themselves, AND took all reasonable steps to prevent it
from happening. So they will have to take responsibility for their
guests' behaviour.

I hope this addresses the concerns you have about trashing parties.
Culpable parties are not being let off the hook at all.

Kind regards,
Maryan Street MP.

[Glenn]

What is that silly womans email address.
I will send her the pictures of the trashed flat I had recently and a copy of the tribunal order.
I got $5000 awarded against the tenant and he claimed in tribunal that he was not there.
Funny that bearing in mind the party occured the night before the scheduled mediation and the tenants dogs were still at the property when it was discovered.
He claimed he was out of town until two hours after the case in tribunal but he was taking furniture out of the flat before the case and turned up two hours after the tribunal case with a trailer to take the rest away.

[srv]

So who is going to foot the bill for the rest of the damage if its over 4 weeks rent? The landlord? Or would the landlords insurance cover it?

[drelly]

I thought that this was thrown out?

[Laurie]

Email address for Maryan Street

[email protected]

I must admit.. it all sounds like PC crap to me... let everyone off their personal responsibility etc by limiting their liability.....

Imagine the scenario where you are a tenant and you can throw a 'trashing party' .... basically great fun .. plenty of booze and basically smash everything.. windows / doors / walls / kitchen / shower glass... everything. Of course as the tenant, you could not stop various friends partaking in the trashing and the party was just a friday birthday party and of course you cant remember the names of the guests, but the invitation did say 'quiet get together'!.... I'm sure as a tenant you could be found by the TT to have done as much as you could to mitigate any damage and were not repsonsible for any such damage yourself... therefore limiting any liability to 4 weeks rent... say $330 / wk = $1320 which you pay back weekly at $20 per week over the next 66 weeks..

The shortfall... say damage approx 45k ( reline the walls, new light fittings / bathroom fittings / kitchen cupboards / windows / paint / carpet./... therefore shortfall of $43680........hmmmmmmm

QUESTION IS?????? Will this be covered by insurance?
and my broker says.... no chance unless you have the tenant extension insurance which has a number of conditions in it that may make your claim invalid anyway.

Lessons?..... I'd say... dont buy crap property that attracts crap tenants.... work the higher end.

Cheers.... everyone... and by the way... email your friendly MP [email protected] if you feel the need to vent frustrations.

[srv]

insurance?

Really? Insurance won't cover that? What's the point in having it then....

[Glenn]

I have written to Maryan Street enclosing the photos of my recently trashed flat. Enclosed was the tribunal order for $5000 and a copy of the tenants criminal record that sort of ended up in my hands.
Just to avoid any suggestions that I choose a tenant poorly or should I say carelessly I have also added a picture of the tenant, his application form and the Baycorp credit report all of which indicated that he was likely to be a reasonable tenant.
I also visited his previous tenancy and signed him up there for the new flat.
What I did not know was he used two other "also known as" AKA names. One of these other names had a real bad credit record. Nor did I know about his violent criminal tendancies.
In the fullnes of time I met his mother and she is a very nice decent lady. I believe he had been brought up fine but had turned bad. People like this know how to act the nice person when asking for credit or what ever.
In court he claimed he was not at the party that smashed his flat. Funny that his stuff was not damaged and it occured the day before the scheduled mediation. He had a perfect rent payment record until I had given him a 90 day notice to terminate on account of having a dog on the site which was not permitted in the tenancy agreement. He then stopped paying and this led to the initial tribunal case.
Under our beloved MP's scheme of arrangement he would be liable for $720 and not $5000. In the tribunal the level of proof is not the same as the district court so all a tenant would need to say was "I was not there" and the landlord would not be able to disprove it. Even if a landlord had seen a tenant smashing up a flat if a tenant disputed this then it would likely not go in the landlord favour because it would be one persons word against the other.
I pointed out in the letter to Maryan that we had put the next tenants rent up to try and recover the loss.
This is what will happen. Most tenants rents will go up to cover the bad ones.
Decent landlords will get out of the market once they have one bad experience like this and leave it to the hardened landlords who carry a base ball bat with them when visiting flats.
I see that Maryan is on HNZ board. Well I wonder how she would manage if she had rental flats of her own.
I wonder if she has ever cleaned up a flat after an event like this. It sure is easy to be an expert at our business when you are far removed from the coal face where we get our hands dirty.

[whitt]

Have emailed voicing my concearns too.

suggest all others do to.

[Keys]

I too am appalled.

I have written this to her and CC'd to the Christchurch Press:

> In the end, the Minister has come to a good compromise I think - there
> is some liability, but only up to 4 weeks' rent. What has also been
> added in is that tenants are only NOT liable for actual damages if they
> did not cause it themselves, AND took all reasonable steps to prevent it
> from happening. So they will have to take responsibility for their
> guests' behaviour.

Maryan Street.

I am concerned at your attitude to the huge investment which has taken
place in property in this country.

I refer you to your reply to an e-mail. Partially copied above for your
convenience and the link to the whole e-mail below.

http://www.propertytalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8737

When, not if, rogue tenants trash properties how do you suggest Land
Lords go about retrieving the cost of repair? Is it fair that those who
do not cause the damage (the tenant) have to pay? I suggest by your
answer that it is not. Is it fair that the Land Lord has to pay? I also
suggest not. While both the Land Lord and tenant each did not
(supposedly) cause the damage it seems fair that the tenant, by inviting
the damage causing person onto the property, should shoulder the
responsibility for payment.

Pursuant to the Official Information Act 1982:

1) Please supply me with the amount outstanding by tenants to Housing
Corp which has been awarded by the Tenancy Tribunal due to damage.
Please specifically exclude any rent owing

2) Please supply me with the Governments strategy for enforcement of
civil claims. Those strategies being the ones which actually work.

Keys

[whitt]

Ok here is an update.

Hope you all don't mind i followed up all the talk here with action.
I contacted APIA and they are suppoting us in our claim this bill is ridiculous. In fact Andrew King has been very active on these topics and is fantastic.
Here is the story in which made the NZ Herald newspaper today.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/8/story.cfm?c_id=8&objectid=10413948

I wonder who the Nelson Landlord was?

If you object to bill make your voice known to either your local property association or the bill initiator in the first post of this thread.

[Perry]

Socialism, like most major dogmas, is a de facto religion.
The sort where the perpetrator does not reap what they
sow, but gains absolution and moves on to greater
tenancy misdeeds. Bah! Humbug!

Such is what the word is on the street, anyway.

Most (only most) PIs recognise that we are the architects
of our own gloom or glory, forging our own terrestrial destiny
on our personal merits & efforts, rather than being a 'victim,'
ever-apportioning the blame everywhere except where
it belongs.

Bah! Humbug, again!

[Glenn]

I wonder who the Nelson Landlord was?

I have sent off an email to Anne asking if she wants a copy of the letter I sent that silly Street woman and the pictures of the smashed up flat.
I notice that Propertytalk has removed the pictures from the gallery. Far to offensive and disturbing for most normal people to look at.

[Perry]

I notice that Propertytalk has removed the pictures from the gallery.
Far too offensive and disturbing for most normal people to look at.

You're joking, Glenn?

Come on, mods, is this for real?

Or is there some other explanation?

[BusyLizzy]

I have sent something to other mods earlier this evening to see what's going on. My guess is that it's sitting somewhere waiting to be 'approved'. By memory, pics don't just appear automatically - they need to be approved (but I stand to be corrected). And if that's the case, I don't have the rights to do so!

Stay tuned.... I'm trying to get someone on to it!

[Glenn]

You're joking, Glenn?

Come on, mods, is this for real?

Or is there some other explanation?

Just had another look in case I got it wrong.
The pictures were there originally but not now.
I acutually never had a complete story on PT because I was waiting for the court hearing and so forth.
I am not willing to put on PT all the data I sent of to Street because I had the tenants picture and his criminal record.
The picutures did not come out very good because they were on a contact sheet and rather small. Not too sure why I did this. Think it was to make the file a bit smaller.
So if the community is brave and silly enough to look at this sort of "trash" then yes can upload again along with a copy of the tribunal orders. There were two of them. One to gain possession and one re the claim.

Again I encourage everyone to go to the parliment web site and look at Streets file and see what she claims to have done. Everyone in New Zealand needs to know what sort of person is entrusted to run our country and the likes of HNZ.
No wonder some parts of the government is in such a mess and getting worse.