Evicted residents turn home into rathole

If it was me personally I wouldn't worry about the agents to look after the place look what good that did for the owners. If you can't do your homework thats what happens. The law is on your side, but if you're not checking your property regularly enough what does that tell you. You are allowed to check and do maintenance checks with the right amount of notice, as long as you give your tenant enough time to let you check on the place. If you're not looking after the tenants then you can't be doing a good job. Goes both ways. If you're too busy to check, you're not worth having the property. It will just cost you more money. Putting your trust in people these days its a different story from the 70's and 80's. People just don't have the time an decency, they're not taught this, life is too fast for ordinary niceness, $ costs, time costs. Moral of the story think smart work smart trust your gut.

It is impossible to help some people. I know these people and one of my best friends used to live with them. I grew very concerned with the way things were going and got him out of there. Years of drug use and mental health issues have eroded any sort of reasonableness in their behavior and the 3 teenage girls are heading in the same direction as their parents. The girls have been taught to hate men by their mother who is has had a history of being abused and the father does the best he can with very limited resources and also has his own mental health issues. I think it is unfair to pass judgment without knowing all the facts from both sides.

This is digusting how this sort of thing could be let to happen. However, I think that these people NEED to be helped and NEED to get help. I think that they need to be given classes or the sort and I think that where ever they rent they should have some one who regularly inspects the house to make sure that it is neat and tidy.

Yuck! I had some boarders once, that I'm sure given time would have made a fair attempt at doing the same to my own house. Disgusting scumbags.

Landlords should be able to throw out using dirty low life using people immediately with police enforcemnt and the tennants should be held accountable and made to work to repay the damages and filth left behind via a court system with their names on the front page of the paper. Landlords need more power to evict tennants within 24 hours who do not pay.

Perhaps a contributing factor is absentee landlords. The impersonal nature of the rental 'home' property market when unknown landlords may be perceived as just in it for a property investment. Any tenant, even the scumbags, might have more respect for the owner and the property if they felt that a landlord, a real person, had some interest in them and the place that is used as 'home'. There needs to be more social responsibility in housing / property investment.

I agree with #2 and #11, these people shouldn't be allowed to rent again. Housing NZ especially seem to have very leniant rules in relation to who they rent their places to. It makes it much more difficult for people like my husband and I when we try to rent a place - not to mention hideously expensive, with WEEKS of bond, rent in advance and letting fees!

What's worse is that the proposed changes to Tenancy law will further restrict what a landlord could do in such circumstances. With the proposed changes, a tenant could totally trash the house and be limited in liability to a maximum of four weeks rent.

Yeah, the laws in New Zealand with regard to renters are too much in favour of the tenant. It is really not worth the heartache to own a rental and then to be stuck with some terrible tenants who wreck the property and do not pay and in the end appear to have the right by law to do this. Wet bus ticket laws which are utterly stupid. Not all tenants are bad but it only takes one set to put you off for life. I also despise the property managers who get good money to manage a property and do little to protect your property and who put any Tom, Dick or Harry in. Bring back laws which give equal footing to both but at the same time recognise that it is the landlord who often has the most to lose from the malicious actions of a tenant.

They should be charged with wilful damage as they are rental they are not owners of the property. These people should be ordered by the courts to clean up the mess as part of community service. The law needs to get tough on bad tenants and give landlords more rights. They should also be publicly named and shamed so that no landlord in the country should have to risk having them live in any of their properties.