When extreme weather knocks, what’s our response?

We are seeing the impacts of extreme weather events with alarming regularity around the world. New Zealand is no exception. At Quinovic Property Management, we’ve been responding to more and more extreme weather-related issues affecting both our property owners and our tenants.

The Quinovic way

While every situation needs to be carefully assessed on a case-by-case basis, we provide guidance for our property managers to take into account when considering how to manage both the human and physical impacts of extreme weather events.

Our response to these unexpected and difficult events is primarily focused on supporting our tenants and owners through what can be a very stressful situation. We are also mindful of our obligations to insurers and other regulatory bodies and we help to guide our tenants and owners through this.

Key Considerations

1. If a property is uninhabitable (you may hear it referred to as ‘red stickered’), the landlord is legally entitled to give the tenant seven days’ notice. A tenant can give the landlord two days’ notice and the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2010 states that rent will abate.
2. In the event a tenant believes that the extent of damage means that they should not pay rent, it is fair to expect they would also want to move out. In this instance, it would be fairly considered that the tenant would then give two days’ notice and their rent would stop after two days.
3. However, if a tenant wants their rent to stop because damage makes a house uninhabitable, but they do not give two days’ notice, we would then give them seven days’ notice and their rent would stop after seven days, not two.
4. A more complex situation is when a tenant wants to stay on in the property,  but does not want to pay rent due to damage to the property. This is when our team will likely need to have an empathetic but difficult conversation with the tenant.
5. These conversations can be difficult with owners too. If a tenant vacates the property, owners obviously still need to cover their ownership costs, but without the proceeds of rent.
6. The stress of repairs is also an issue for landlords. We always recommend that our property managers make prompt contact with insurance companies as soon as they are alerted to a weather event in order to get the’ claim ball’ rolling.
7. Having strong existing relationships with local tradies certainly comes in handy following an extreme weather event. Their services are in high demand and often become bottlenecked. Ensuring we can get the right people onsite quickly to assess damage means that our tenants’ homes can be repaired more quickly and in many cases we are able to mitigate further property damage, inconvenience to tenants and cost to landlords.

Quinovic’s response to the Nelson floods

In August 2022, a state of emergency was declared in Nelson and Marlborough. Hundreds of people were evacuated due to landslides and flooding, with some rivers having their biggest floods in recorded history. Initially, 570 properties were reported as being damaged with 150 properties red stickered, indicating they were uninhabitable.

Juliet Robinson, Quinovic Nelson owner, was at the coal face of this extreme weather disaster and says that the Quinovic team was a key point of contact for property owners.

“A large proportion of our clients live offshore or outside of Nelson,” says Juliet. “They were seeing the utter devastation shown on TV and across other media and were feeling really helpless. We became their ears and eyes, reporting back to them about what was happening to their properties and the surrounding neighbourhood.”

“We also reviewed maps for high damage areas and made contact with every tenant in these locations to check on them.”

Another example of Quinovic ‘s response to the flooding situation was a tenant who was about to move out as the owner was returning from overseas.

“The road was completely shut off so the tenant could not get their contents out of the house,” explains Juliet. “But the owner had arrived back from overseas and was ready to move into their home. We liaised with the Council, the furniture movers, the tenants and the owner to coordinate the tenants’ move out, and we helped the owner find temporary accommodation until the tenants were able to vacate.”

“We had a tenant move out of a large country property around the time of the floods,” says Juliet. “We knew the owner was not moving down for another four months. This would usually be too short-term for a tenant but given the state of emergency we thought it was worthwhile contacting the owner to see if they would consider taking on a short-term tenancy to provide housing for an evacuated tenant. The owner was happy to help and someone who could really use the help following the floods was given refuge.”

What the Act says

While the Quinovic way is to aim to work with tenants to help them find alternative accommodation after an extreme weather event, there is currently no legal obligation to do so. We would like to see this changed.

The current legislation, the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2010, states:

59A^[1] Termination where breach renders premises uninhabitable

(1) This section applies if, as a result of a breach of the tenancy agreement (whether for a fixed-term tenancy or a periodic tenancy) by a party, the premises are destroyed or are so seriously damaged as to be uninhabitable.

(2)If the tenant is not in breach, the rent abates.

(3)The party who is not in breach may give notice to the other party terminating the tenancy.

(4)When a landlord gives notice of termination under this section, the period of notice is not less than 7 days.

(5)When a tenant gives notice of termination under this section, the period of notice is not less than 2 days.

(6)This section does not apply in relation to damage that is contamination by a contaminant if regulations prescribe a relevant method of testing for, and a relevant maximum inhabitable level of, that contaminant (but see section 59B).

^[1] Section 59A: inserted, on 1 October 2010, by section 41 of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2010 (2010 No 95).

Section 59A(6): inserted, on 30 January 2021, by section 34 of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2019 (2019 No 37).