What was Tenancy Tribunal case 5441708 about?

The tribunal order states: Neither party has applied for suppression and no suppression orders apply to this

How much money was awarded in case 5441708?

Compensation: $1,500.00 awarded to tenant; Filing Fee: $28.00 awarded to tenant; Property Damage: $1,500.00 awarded to tenant

What type of tenancy dispute was case 5441708?

The primary dispute was Property damage.

Where can I read the official tribunal order for case 5441708?

The official Ministry of Justice published order is available at https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/TTV2/PDF/13816402-Tribunal_Order.pdf.

What was Tenancy Tribunal case 5441708 about?

The tribunal order states: Neither party has applied for suppression and no suppression orders apply to this

How much money was awarded in case 5441708?

Compensation: $1,500.00 awarded to tenant; Filing Fee: $28.00 awarded to tenant; Property Damage: $1,500.00 awarded to tenant

What type of tenancy dispute was case 5441708?

The primary dispute was Property damage.

Where can I read the official tribunal order for case 5441708?

The official Ministry of Justice published order is available at https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/TTV2/PDF/13816402-Tribunal_Order.pdf.

Unit/Flat 66, 666B Great South Road, Ellerslie, Auckland Tenancy Tribunal Case 5441708 — Property damage

Claims and awards in Tenancy Tribunal application 5441708 — net $3,028.00 NZD. Amounts reconciled from the published order (claims sum and net total). Verify on MoJ.
Claim	Tenant	Reason
Compensation	$1,500.00	Compensation
General damages	$1,500.00	General damages
Filing fee reimbursement	$28.00	Filing fee reimbursement
Net award	$3,028.00
Total payable by Landlord to Tenant	$3,028.00

Claims and awards in Tenancy Tribunal application 5441708 — net $3,028.00 NZD. Amounts reconciled from the published order (claims sum and net total). Verify on MoJ.
Claim	Tenant	Reason
Compensation	$1,500.00	Compensation
General damages	$1,500.00	General damages
Filing fee reimbursement	$28.00	Filing fee reimbursement
Net award	$3,028.00
Total payable by Landlord to Tenant	$3,028.00

Order

Neither party has applied for suppression and no suppression orders apply to this Order.
The tenant’s claim that the landlord breached section 38(2) of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 is upheld.
Lei Zhou, Residential Re Limited must pay Garry Edward Venman and Sarah Jane Aldridge $3,028.00 immediately, calculated as shown in the table below:
The tenant’s claim for costs, apart from the filing fee which has been ordered, is dismissed.

Reasons

The first hearing for this matter took place via video / telephone conference on 15 May 2026. A second hearing took place on 19 June 2026 via video / telephone conference. Both tenants attended the first hearing and one of the tenants, Mr Venman, attended the second hearing for the tenant. Representatives of the landlord’s agent attended both hearings for the landlord.
The tenant’s substantive claims were heard at the first hearing. The purpose of the second hearing was to hear the parties’ views on whether the agent of the landlord should be liable (jointly with the landlord or otherwise) if the tenant was successful in their claims.
I have found that section 16A(5) of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 (RTA) applies. Therefore, the agent is jointly liable with the landlord. Reference in this Order to ‘landlord’ is to Mr Zhou and the agent.
The tenant claims that the landlord breached section 38(2) of the RTA by permitting interference with the tenant’s quiet enjoyment of the premises. The tenant is seeking compensation and costs relating to the landlord being granted an adjournment.
The tenant had sought an order that the fixed term tenancy be ended early in accordance with section 66(1) of the RTA. However, by the time of the hearing the tenancy had ended on 15 April 2026 and the application under section 66 of the RTA was superfluous. Relevant legal considerations:
With any claim before the Tenancy Tribunal, the Tribunal applies the usual civil law standards and expectations. That means that it is for the party bringing the application to establish their claims “on the balance of probabilities”. That means that the party bringing their claim must establish that what they are claiming is more likely than not. This is referred to as the “burden of proof”. Independent witnesses, corroborating documents and photographs are an important part of discharging this burden.
As noted by the District Court in Kaipo v Clarke & McCarthy (DC) TT233/02, in practical terms this means that: ... [L]ike anyone who brings an application before a Tribunal or Court, it is incumbent upon the applicant to provide the evidence necessary to prove the case. If the applicant fails to do that, then their application will be dismissed whether it has merit or not because it is up to the applicant to provide the necessary evidence. It is not up to the other parties, and it is certainly not up to the Tribunal to extract evidence.
I do not need to be completely certain, but I need to be more certain than uncertain. In deciding any particular claim, I must consider all the evidence presented (including oral evidence during the hearing). I must weigh this evidence to decide what is more likely. Did the landlord breach section 38(2) of the RTA?
A summary of the relevant background is as follows: a. The parties entered into the tenancy agreement on 28 March 2025 (the “Tenancy Agreement”. The Tenancy Agreements states that the landlord is “Residential RE Ltd – Bayleys RPM on behalf of Lei Zhou”. b. The tenant has not met the landlord or had any dealings with him. Rent was paid directly to the agent’s bank account and all queries were dealt with via the agent. c. The tenancy ended on 15 April 2026. The tenant’s evidence:
The tenant says that from 20 July 2025 until the end of the tenancy there were several visits to the premises by persons describing themselves as bailiffs or debt collectors looking for Mr Zhou and/or his wife. The tenant said there was also a visit from a property valuer presumably instructed by a creditor of Mr Zhou. It appears from the tenant’s evidence than no fewer than 4 of these incidents occurred while the tenant was at home.
The tenant said that in addition to visits while they were at home, the neighbours told them that when they were out, they saw people (presumably debt collectors) knocking on the door and looking in the windows of the premises. The tenant says that on one occasion they received a text message from a debt collector who had found their telephone number from a package left on the front door of the premises
On the first visit, a person describing himself as a “bailiff” was just about to start taping off or sealing the premises in what appears to have been an attempt to repossess the premises.
The tenant said that the visits from the debt collectors were frightening. The tenant said that on some occasions it took some explanation to convince the debt collectors that they were not harbouring the landlord inside the premises.
The tenant said that they first raised the issue with the agent on 31 July 2025 via a telephone call. The tenant has provided evidence in the form of email correspondence from early December 2025 to March 2026 which shows that the agent was aware of the issue. The correspondence shows that the tenant told the landlord that the tenant considered it amounted to a breach of their quiet enjoyment of the premises and that they found it distressing.
The tenant said they were unhappy with the agent’s response. The tenant was particularly unhappy with a response from the agent on 19 December 2025, where a senior manager for the agent said that: The matter relating to the owner is private. It is important that no speculation is made regarding the owner’s personal circumstances. On several occasions, [name] has instructed the owner and their solicitor to redirect any enquiries accordingly.
The agent went on to refer to the Privacy Act 2020 and that the owner’s personal information could not be disclosed without authority and that “no further response will be provided in relation to speculative matters ...”
The tenant said they understood from that email that they were not to contact the agent about the issue further. The landlord’s evidence:
The agent said that they told the tenant to refer the debt collectors to them. The agent said that when contacted by the debt collectors they would take their details and pass them on to Mr Zhou.
The landlord said that they were not aware that the debt collectors continued to visit the premises after December 2025. The law:
Section 38 of the RTA provides: (1) The tenant shall be entitled to have quiet enjoyment of the premises without interruption by the landlord or any person claiming by, through, or under the landlord or having superior title to that of the landlord. (2) The landlord shall not cause or permit any interference with the reasonable peace, comfort, or privacy of the tenant in the use of the premises by the tenant.
As it was not the landlord who directly caused the interference with the tenant’s quiet enjoyment of the premises, there are two questions to be asked: a. Was there an interference with the tenant’s reasonable peace, comfort or privacy in the use of the premises by the tenant? b. If so, did the landlord permit that interference?
Whether the test in a. above is satisfied requires an objective assessment of the true nature and significance of the interference in the particular circumstances. 1
I find that the continuous visits by the debt collectors / bailiffs / property valuer to the premises amounted to an interference of the tenant’s reasonable peace, comfort or privacy in the use of the premises.
The phrase ‘permit” has been interpreted as “to turn a blind eye to the obvious” or “not taking reasonable steps to prevent”. 2
In Investment Bureau Ltd v Baker [2016] NZTT 4009290, the tenant claimed the landlord had permitted a breach of their quiet enjoyment of the premises because the landlord’s adult daughter would turn up drunk to the premises in the early hours of the morning. The Tribunal accepted that the landlord had told his daughter not to go to the premises, suggested the tenants obtain a trespass order against his daughter and provided them with the necessary information to obtain such an order. The Tribunal went on to say: Thus, it cannot be said that [the landlord] turned a blind eye to the obvious or did not take reasonable steps to prevent the interference.
In this case the landlord did take some steps. The agent told the tenant to refer all queries from debt collectors to them. However, this is not the same as allowing the tenant to provide the debt collectors with Mr Zhou’s actual contact details. A debt collector / bailiff is more likely to be appeased if he is provided with the contact information of the person(s) he is seeking than with the contact details of the person’s agent.
I consider the most logical step the landlord could have done to prevent the visit by the debts collectors was to advise the tenant and the debt collectors of Mr Zhou’s physical address. If the landlord had done so, the tenant would have been able to deal with the visits by providing those searching for Mr Zhou with his correct contact information.
The landlord could have: a. Given Mr Zhou’s contact details to the tenant and authorised them to provide them to visiting debt collectors; b. Written to the larger debt collection agencies providing them with the Mr Zhou’s contact details;
Provided a letter on agency letterhead for the tenant to pin to the door of the premises when they were not home saying that Mr Zhou did not reside at the premises and that Mr Zhou’s contact details could be obtained from the agent. 1 See Marino & Ors v Wellington City Council (DC, Wellington, CIV-2013-085-660, 23 September 2013.) 2 Hughes v Housing New Zealand (DC, Porirua, 4 December 2006); Housing New Zealand v Salt (DC, Auckland, 12 September 2008.)
I accept that the agent could not have provided this information to the tenant without obtaining Mr Zhou’s authority to do so. However, the agent could have told Mr Zhou that unless he did so they would have to cease acting.
I find that by failing to take this action the landlord did not take reasonable steps to prevent the interference with the tenant’s reasonable peace, comfort, or privacy of the tenant in the use of the premises by the tenant and therefore has breached section 38(2) of the RTA. Remedies:
I accept that the tenant was distressed by the frequent visits by debt collectors. One of the tenants said she was frightened and fearful that a debt collector would turn up when she was home alone. In the correspondence with the landlord during the tenancy, the tenant refers to the anxiety being caused by the visits.
The tenant clarified at the first hearing that they are seeking compensation in the form of loss of amenity. The tenant is seeking a reduction in rent of 25% of rent from 20 July 2025 to 03 September 2025 and 50% from 4 September 2025 onwards.
Awarding compensation for loss of enjoyment and stress is not an exact science. For this reason, it is useful to consider other cases with similar factual backgrounds. I am not aware of other cases with similar facts to this one. However, I have found the following cases which were decided under section 45(1)(e) of the RTA helpful in determining the level of compensation. That section places an obligation on landlords to: ... take all reasonable steps to ensure that none of the landlord’s other tenants causes or permits any interference with the reasonable peace, comfort, or privacy of the tenant in the use of the premises.
In Maria Cavanagh v Kainga Ora [2022] NZDC 7003, Ms Cavanagh was living in a Kāinga Ora complex. For a period of 10 months, she was regularly disturbed by family violence in another tenancy. The behaviour was not directed to Ms Cavanagh. The District Court found that it did interfere with her quiet enjoyment of the premises and that the landlord permitted it. The tenant was awarded $1,000.00 in compensation.
In Tenant v Kainga Ora [2024] NZTT 4821977, the tenant was harassed by a neighbouring tenant. The harassment included abuse and threats and one of the landlord’s other tenant’s defecating outside the tenant’s front door. The Adjudicator described the tenant as being “... terrified by their neighbours, to the extent she was fearful of leaving her house.” In that case, the tenant was awarded $3,000 in compensation and $3,000 in general damages.
In Cameron v Phil Cottingham And Jenny Cottingham As The Trustees For The Prema Charitable Trust [2025] NZTT 5034888, the tenant’s neighbour had been convicted in the District Court of intimidation of the tenant within the meaning of section 21(1)(d) of the Summary Offences Act 1981. The intimidation occurred during the tenancy and the Tribunal found that the tenant had been subjected to a campaign of harassment by the neighbouring tenant. The Tribunal further found that the landlord’s failure to act amounted to permitting the tenant’s neighbour to breach the tenant’s quiet enjoyment. The tenant was awarded $3,000 in compensation and $3,000 in general damages.
I am not persuaded that the level of compensation sought by the tenant is appropriate. Having considered the sums ordered in the above cases, I consider that $1,500.00 to be appropriate compensation for the tenant’s stress.
General damages are compensation for failure to obtain mental satisfaction from the agreement. I award a further sum of $1,500.00 in general damages.

Who is liable?

The tenant has not met or spoken to the landlord. All aspects of the tenancy were dealt with by the agent: the agent signed the agreement on the landlord’s behalf, rent was paid into the agent’s bank account; all queries and complaints were sent to the agent.
During the first hearing, the landlord advised that the landlord was residing outside of New Zealand for a significant part of the tenancy.
Section 16A of the RTA provides that where a landlord is outside of New Zealand for more than 21 consecutive days, the landlord must ensure they have an agent in New Zealand. Subsection (2) provides that if the landlord does not already have an agent, then the landlord must appoint one before departing from New Zealand. Subsection (5) provides that “... an agent appointed under this section has, as against the tenant, all the rights and obligations of the landlord.”
The agent says it should not be liable because it did not know Mr Zhou had moved overseas until the tenancy had ended.
The tenant says the agent was aware Mr Zhou had moved overseas because they were told early on during the tenancy.
The agent further says it should not be liable because it cannot control it’s the financial affairs of the landlords for whom they act and because it could not disclose Mr Zhou’s personal information without Mr Zhou’s permission to do so. As set out above, if Mr Zhou had not been willing for the agent to provide his contact details to the tenant, the agent could have ceased acting.
The obligation under section 16A is for the landlord to ensure they have an agent in place before going overseas for more than 21 days. Section 16A does not require the landlord to obtain the agent’s permission that they are acting as an agent under section 16A.
I find that section 16A(5) of the RTA does apply and the agent and the landlord are jointly liable.
Even if I had accepted the agent’s arguments that section 16A(5) did not apply because they did not know that Mr Zhou was residing overseas, it is likely that I would have found them jointly liable by way of definition. Section 2 of the RTA provides that ‘landlord’: ... in relation to any residential premises that are the subject of a tenancy agreement, means the grantor of a tenancy of the premises under the agreement; and, where appropriate, includes— (a) a prospective landlord; and (b) a former landlord; and (c) a lawful successor in title of a landlord to the premises; and (d) the personal representative of a deceased landlord; and (e) an agent of a landlord [emphasis added]
In the District Court decision of Abdulla Moussa Ragab Hamouda v Gralin Property Management (Auckland Central) Limited [2024] NZDC 16642, Judge Clark referred to the definition of landlord in section 2 above and held: ... the RTA expressly stipulates an agent is the “landlord” for all obligations which are owed under the RTA. If follows that this must include a property manager.
Judge Clark went on to say: What this means is a property manager must meet the obligations which are imposed by the RTA on a landlord, as if it was a landlord. Where liability is imposed on a property manager (as agent) the property manager may be entitled to seek compensation from the owner under general agency law or by way of contract, but that is an issue between the property manager and the owner and not something which can be resolved in the tenancy jurisdiction.

Should costs be awarded?

The hearing for this matter was originally scheduled to take place on 13 May 2026. On 11 May 2026, an Order was issued granting the landlord their request for an adjournment.
The tenant says that this resulted in them incurring additional costs. Specifically, the tenant says they both had to take a further day off work to attend the hearing.
The Tribunal’s power to award costs is limited. Section 102(d) of the RTA provides that the Tribunal may award costs: (a) where, in the opinion of the Tribunal, the proceedings are frivolous or vexatious or ought not to have been brought: (b) where any of the parties was represented by counsel: (c) where, in the opinion of the Tribunal, the matter in dispute ought reasonably to have been settled before the Tenancy Mediator but that the party against whom the order is to be made refused, without reasonable excuse, to take part in proceedings before a Tenancy Mediator or acted in any such proceedings in a contemptuous or improper manner: (d) where any applicant to the Tribunal, after receiving notice of the hearing, fails to attend the hearing without good cause.
The Tribunal does not have power to award costs in these circumstances. Even it did, it appears the landlord may not be responsible for the late notice. The landlord says it made the application on 13 April 2026 by email shortly after the Notice of Hearing was issued. For some reason, that email was not uploaded to the file and the application for an adjournment did not come to the attention of the adjudicator until 08 May 2026. Filing fee and suppression:
The tenant has substantially succeeded with the claim. For this reason, I must order reimbursement of the filing fee.

Tenancy Tribunal case 5441708 — Property damage at Unit/Flat 66, 666B Great South Road, Ellerslie, Auckland

At a glance

Tenancy Tribunal case 5441708 — Property damage at Unit/Flat 66, 666B Great South Road, Ellerslie, Auckland

At a glance

Award balance

Claims & awards

Order

Reasons

Who is liable?

Should costs be awarded?

Topics & place

Residential Tenancies Act sections

Key findings

Property management

Frequently asked questions

Award balance

Claims & awards

Order

Reasons

Who is liable?

Should costs be awarded?

Topics & place

Residential Tenancies Act sections

Key findings

Property management

Frequently asked questions