Published tribunal order
Tenancy Tribunal case 5304161 — Tenancy dispute at 68 Salisbury, Street, Ashhurst 4810
Decided 9 Sept 2025 · Published 9 Sept 2025 · Application 5304161
- Healthy homes
Party names are redacted in the official published order.
Order
- The Tribunal orders suppression of the parties’ details.
- The landlord is to pay the tenant $2,528.00 immediately being compensation of $2,500.00 and reimbursement of the filing fee of $28.00.
- The rent for the property shall continue at $450.00 per week until the rent payment due on 15 October 2025 when it shall return to $550.00 per week.
- This Order settles any claim by either party arising out of the tenancy and neither party shall be entitled to bring any further claim against the other in relation to the tenancy to the date of this order.
Reasons
- Both parties attended the hearing.
- The parties agreed on the terms of this order during the hearing. The parties could have been referred to mediation so that their agreement could be recorded in a mediated order. In that event, the order and the parties’ names would not have been published. Referral to mediation would have postponed the resolution of this dispute and would have involved both parties in the cost of further time spent at a mediation conference.
- The Tribunal is satisfied that the parties have been able to come to this agreement of their own free will, that it is fair on the evidence which it has heard and that it is a satisfactory outcome for both parties.
- As the parties reached agreement by consent at the hearing and there are no matters of public interest in this order, it is appropriate that the parties’ names are suppressed.
- I record that having had discussions with the owner, the tenant confirmed that she was not seeking a work order for the installation of a heat pump and would be leaving the property as the owner intends to put it on the market. The landlord’s claim
- The landlord had applied for termination of the tenancy under section 59 RTA. Having discussed the requirements of that section, the landlord agreed that its application be withdrawn.
- At the hearing I indicated that I would set out a brief summary in the law in relation to that section and why, on the evidence before the Tribunal, the landlord’s claim would have failed.
- Under section 59 RTA, if the premises become uninhabitable (other than because of a breach by the tenant), the tenant may give notice to terminate the tenancy, or the landlord may do so if the uninhabitability is not their fault.
- Because the landlord has caused the uninhabitability by failing to comply with the Healthy Homes Standard in relation to heating, the landlord cannot rely on section 59 RTA to terminate the tenancy or require the tenant to leave. This is because of the legal principle that a landlord cannot benefit from their own breach.
- The term “uninhabitable” is not defined in the RTA. The Tribunal has determined that uninhabitable is synonymous with untenantable, a term often used in a clause in commercial leases similar to the provisions in section 59 RTA.
- In DFC NZ Ltd v Samson Corporation Ltd (1994) ANZ ConvR 216 the Court of Appeal confirmed untenantable to mean “nothing more nor less than able to be used and enjoyed by the tenant". The Court went on to state that untenantable involved some degree of permanence and that something which was merely transitory or temporary would not make a building untenantable.
- On the evidence before the Tribunal, it is unlikely that the property was uninhabitable as defined above. The tenant was prepared to continue living in the property with temporary heating sources that fixed the issue of the property being cold, even if it did not meet the Healthy Homes’ heating standard. In other words, the issue could be ameliorated and was temporary because the landlord could easily fix the issue by installing a qualifying heat pump.