Interruption to quiet enjoyment
Question from Lisa updated on 11th November 2011:
Our expert Jeff Montgomery responded:
Landlords have an obligation to ensure the premises are maintained in a reasonable state of repair and comply with all the relevant health, safety, and building regulations. They also have a responsibility to ensure that they do not interfere with the tenant’s quiet enjoyment of the premises. You may like to contact your local council to find out whether your landlord is breaching any of the relevant health, safety, and building regulations.
Tenancy agreements (and all of the terms and conditions of that agreement) should be in writing, however, a verbal agreement may still be enforceable. If the terms of your tenancy agreement included adding a deck and a fence, then you could ask the landlord to fulfil their obligations. If you consider your landlord has breached the terms of your tenancy agreement or has breached their obligations in relation to the state of the premises, you can give your landlord 14 days’ notice to carry out the necessary work to fix the problem.
If the landlord interferes with your quiet enjoyment of the premises, you could also include this on the notice to remedy. If the landlord does not comply with the notice, you could apply to the Tenancy Tribunal to have the matter resolved. Please note that you need to comply with specific rules when serving notice on the landlord. For example, service time needs to be allowed for delivering the notice to the landlord before the 14 days notice period can start.
To find out about these requirements please visit the Department’s website (http://www.dbh.govt.nz/tenancy-az-s). A template for a 14 days’ notice can also be downloaded from the Department’s website (www.dbh.govt.nz). To discuss your situation further, or for information about a landlords obligations, you can visit the Department’s website (as noted above), or call 0800 TENANCY (0800 836 262).
The Department of Building and Housing provides information and guidance on building law and compliance, services including weathertight homes, and advice for tenants and landlords.
