What was the outcome of Tenancy Tribunal case 4486300?

The tribunal order states: The landlord’s remaining claim relating to the garage is dismissed.

How much money was awarded in case 4486300?

Verified claim lines are listed on this page.

Where can I read the official tribunal order for case 4486300?

The official Ministry of Justice published order is available at https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/TTV2/PDF/13474574-Tenancy_Tribunal_Order.pdf.

What was the outcome of Tenancy Tribunal case 4486300?

The tribunal order states: The landlord’s remaining claim relating to the garage is dismissed.

How much money was awarded in case 4486300?

Verified claim lines are listed on this page.

Where can I read the official tribunal order for case 4486300?

The official Ministry of Justice published order is available at https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/TTV2/PDF/13474574-Tenancy_Tribunal_Order.pdf.

28B Ngatai Road, Otumoetai, Tauranga 3110 Tenancy Tribunal Case 4486300 — Leaks

Order

The landlord’s remaining claim relating to the garage is dismissed.
No further order is made in relation to the garage issue.
All claims before the Tribunal having now been determined, the proceeding is concluded.

Reasons

Both parties attended the hearing. Both had the assistance of interpreters.
This matter has had a lengthy procedural history. The landlord’s original application was filed in 2023. At the hearing before Adjudicator Lee, an amended order dated 14 June 2023 recorded that the Tribunal did not have jurisdiction to hear the landlord’s application for compensation relating to the garage and the landlord’s goods stored inside the garage or outside.
That conclusion was reached because the garage was found not to form part of the rented premises under the tenancy agreement, and because the landlord had used and stored items in that area herself.
No rehearing was sought, and no appeal was filed against that determination.
The point was repeated in later orders of 28 September 2023 and 5 December 2023, including when the proceeding was directed to be heard de novo before a different adjudicator.
Those orders made clear that the prior jurisdiction ruling stood and that any garage claim did not form part of the claim before the Tribunal.
When the matter came before me in 2024, I was alive to that history and expressly noted that I had not yet determined whether I had jurisdiction to hear and determine the garage issue. I nevertheless continued to engage with the matter in a practical way because the parties indicated they had reached a working agreement to resolve the dispute, and because the tenants sought time to complete reinstatement works.
Orders made on 8 May 2024 adjourned the garage aspect to allow that process to continue, including on the basis that the parties were still implementing their agreement and that the tenants wished to be allowed to complete the work without interruption.
All other claims have now been adjudicated. The only remaining matter is the garage issue. The threshold difficulty remains jurisdiction.
I am satisfied the 14 June 2023 order of Adjudicator Lee finally determined that the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to determine the landlord’s compensation claim relating to the garage pursuant to s 77 of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986.
That order was not disturbed by rehearing or appeal.
The later de novo order did not reopen that point, rather, it expressly preserved it.
Against that background, strictly speaking, the Tribunal cannot finally determine a compensatory garage claim as though that jurisdictional ruling had never been made.
Even if I am wrong about that, and even if I were able to determine the issue on the evidence that has since accumulated while the parties attempted resolution, I would not make any award in the landlord’s favour on the garage issue. I set out my reasons below:
I accept that the tenants initially interfered with the structure without authority. The tenant, Hernan Cruzado, candidly acknowledged that he modified the garage without the landlord’s permission and accepted responsibility for that initial error. Ordinarily, that would have exposed the tenants to an obligation to restore the structure on a like-for-like basis, and I was prepared during the course of the hearings to approach the matter on the footing that, by undertaking that work, the tenants had effectively brought the dispute into the tenancy relationship in a practical sense, even if the original garage itself did not form part of the rented premises.
However, the evidence does not support the landlord’s contention that the tenants simply failed to reinstate the garage, nor does it support any claim for a cost of reinstatement to a consented garage.
The evidence that I accept is that the original structure was, in substance, an enclosed or partially enclosed carport attached to the house, with a bare earth floor. The structure had a working toilet, installed by the Tenant. There was not evidence as to whether the Tenant obtained consent for the toilet installation.
The tenants’ witness, who had been familiar with the property from the start of the tenancy described it this way and I accept his evidence.
Any lawful conversion into something more substantial – a two-storey garage for example – would have required further work and, depending on what was proposed, consent.
The landlord’s later insistence that this was always a fully realised garage does not sit comfortably with the evidence as a whole. I did not regard the landlord’s evidence on that point as objective or consistently reliable.
At several points her evidence appeared overstated. For example, when I referred to the original structure as an enclosed carport with a dirt floor, she corrected me. She insisted it was more than that, and that she had obtained consent for it to become a two-storey garage; how could it become a two-storey garage if it was not already something more than a carport, she argued.
That submission does not assist her. At the start of the tenancy, the structure was still only an enclosed carport. It had a dirt floor, water-damaged cladding, and a toilet that was not meant to be there. I have seen photographs of the garage at the start of the tenancy.
Whatever future works may have been contemplated by the Landlord, it had not yet become a garage. Yet, that is what she referred to it as being, and so those she spoke to and obtained quotes from thought that it had been a consented garage before the tenants fully dismantled it in 2025.
I do not accept her evidence as establishing an objective baseline that everything the tenants purchased or installed was removed and unused either.
The tenants’ evidence that they expended very substantial time and money on demolition, materials and labour in the attempted reinstatement process is supported in part by the chronology and supporting documentation they filed. I accept that they undertook substantial work and incurred real cost. I have seen photographs of the work in process and the materials used.
More importantly, I am satisfied the reinstatement process broke down because of the landlord’s own interference.
Throughout the construction period, the landlord did not simply observe the reinstatement works, she intervened in them. I have established that there was an agreed project plan under which a concrete floor was to be laid first and the walls then completed, with works progressing through site clearance, footings, levelling, timber, steel mesh and formwork. (I note that the Tenant was not required to lay a concrete foundation.)
Just prior to the concrete pour, the landlord had caused the site to be altered by lifting the mesh, introducing plumbing for a toilet within the structure, and adding posts which enlarged its dimensions. That account is materially supported by Mr Marc Meder, a building professional onsite, who records repeated owner-made alterations and ‘site interference’ which hindered progress and converted reinstatement into new works which did not comply with the Building Code. I therefore find that the landlord’s own interventions materially affected the course, scope and completion of the project all because the landlord had her sites on bigger plans.
The tenant, Hernan Cruzado, was left in the position of trying to complete reinstatement while also being expected to undertake completely new works. The tenant exhibited a message in which the landlord said words to the effect that she had “started build by myself,” and that an inspector had said the tenants’ work had to be demolished, an opinion that I gather was based on her describing the foundations and timber framework as a garage installation, and not a carport.
The evidence around the later concrete and footing works points the same way. The evidence from the contractor who was spoken to at hearing was that the work as then presented to him was not adequate for the installation proposed, that he had to redo it, and that he enlarged the structure and installed toilet-related work at the landlord’s request. Critically, when asked whether his view would have changed had he been told that the original structure was in truth a closed-in carport rather than the more elaborate structure described to him, he confirmed that the landlord had not told him that. He said, if he had known it was a carport that would have changed his view materially.
That affects the weight of his evidence. His involvement does not establish that the tenants had failed to rebuild a lawful garage. Rather, it tends to show that by that stage the project had moved well beyond like-for-like reinstatement and into a different build altogether, driven at least in part by the landlord’s requirements.
The photographs are also consistent with the project being an unfinished and evolving structure, not a completed carport (“garage”) restored to a settled plan. They show framing, bare ground, footings, mesh and concrete preparation, and later alterations associated with plumbing and changed dimensions. Taken together with the documentary evidence, they support the tenants’ position that the project was interrupted and materially changed by the Landlord.
I therefore find that, whatever initial responsibility the tenants bore for unauthorised demolition or alteration, the landlord thereafter repudiated or materially frustrated the parties’ reinstatement arrangement by physically interfering with the work, changing the scope, engaging others on a misleading factual premise, and insisting on additions that went beyond restoration of the original structure.
Once that occurred, the tenants were justified in ceasing work. They were not required to continue participating in a project that had ceased to be a like-for-like reinstatement and had become a potentially non-compliant new build.
I add that the Tribunal cannot require the tenants to deliver a structure different from the one the law would permit or require on a like-for-like basis. On the evidence before me, the original structure was at most a carport or enclosed carport with a bare earth floor.
If the landlord wished to commission something more substantial, including a larger or enclosed two-storey garage or a structure containing sanitary facilities, that was a matter for her, together with whatever consenting or code obligations might arise. The tenants were not obliged, through this proceeding, to deliver that outcome.
Accordingly, whether because the Tribunal lacks jurisdiction by reason of the standing 14 June 2023 order (s 77), or because the landlord has in any event failed on the merits to establish an entitlement to compensation or further reinstatement relief, no order is made in the landlord’s favour on the garage issue.
The remaining garage issue is dismissed.
For the avoidance of doubt, this concludes all claims remaining before the Tribunal in these proceedings. No further order is made in relation to the garage.

Tenancy Tribunal case 4486300 — Leaks at 28B Ngatai Road, Otumoetai, Tauranga 3110

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Tenancy Tribunal case 4486300 — Leaks at 28B Ngatai Road, Otumoetai, Tauranga 3110

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Order

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Claims & awards

Order

Reasons

Topics & place

Residential Tenancies Act sections

Key findings

Frequently asked questions