Lease Court – Tenant asks if their rental is isolated and is evicted

A Christchurch tenant was evicted after asking the landlord if her apartment was isolated.

The Leasing Court has ruled that the termination notice was retaliatory and ordered the landlord to pay $ 300 in damages.

Elizabeth Richardson sent a text message to her landlord last month, asking if the Riccarton property she was renting was insulated and asked for a copy of the isolation statement.

His landlord agreed to come the next day.

But when Sara Brownie arrived, she instead served a notice of rescission to the tenant.

Brownie told the Leasing Court that the notice had nothing to do with Richardson’s earlier message, but was delivered because he wanted a family member to live in the home.

“His nephew returned to New Zealand from Sweden in March 2020 and his niece has been living in unsatisfactory accommodation for the past two years,” the court heard.

Brownie had not delivered the notice before due to Covid-19 restrictions on lease terminations, he said.

However, the referee, R. Armstrong, was not convinced.

“Even considering the Covid-19 restrictions, the timing of the notice immediately after the tenant’s text message is surprising,” the court’s decision said.

“The landlord said he was not concerned about the message because he was confident that it had complied with the relevant isolation regulations.

“Even if that’s true, the fact that a tenant starts to raise such issues can be a red flag to the landlord, indicating that the lease may become problematic.”

Armstrong asked why Brownie had not advised the tenant if he wanted the rent to be available to his niece, who had spent the past few years in “unsatisfactory” housing, instead of handing over the notice abruptly.

“The restriction on the delivery of a notice ended on June 26, 2020, and the notice was not delivered until July 16,” Armstrong said.

“If the owner was waiting for the restriction to end, why didn’t he serve the notice sooner?”

Ultimately, Armstrong viewed the termination notice as retaliation and had no effect.

“She did not give the tenant any indication that she intended to serve the notice and simply presented the notice to the tenant at a meeting she had arranged,” the adjudicator found.

“That tells me that the tenant’s text message likely caused the landlord some irritation at least.”

Brownie was also pinged for failing to post Richardson’s bail to the Bond Center within 23 business days of receiving it.

“The owner admits to receiving a $ 300 bond on March 25, 2019. He said he did not pay it to the Bond Center because he overlooked it,” the decision reads.

“She tried to pay it after receiving the tenant’s application, but the tenant did not sign the bond form.”

With this in mind, Armstrong found the landlord’s violation to be “at the lower end of the scale” and awarded the tenant $ 300 in exemplary damages.

In total, Brownie was ordered to pay the tenant $ 320.44 in exemplary damages and reimbursement of the filing fee.