What has to be in a NZ tenancy agreement now?

A tenancy agreement must be in writing, and over the last several years it has accumulated required contents well beyond names, address, rent and bond. The two with real preparation behind them: an insulation statement disclosing what insulation the property has, where and in what condition, and a signed Healthy Homes compliance statement setting out specifically how the property meets each of the five standards. Both must describe the actual property, not a hopeful version of it.

The other required pieces

Agreements also carry the parties' details and contact addresses, the tenancy's term and its type, rent and bond amounts and how rent is paid, and any specific responsibilities agreed. Tenancy Services publishes a current agreement template, and using it is the simple way to keep up with requirements as they change; the details are maintained at tenancy.govt.nz.

Where agreements go wrong later

• A compliance statement copied from the last tenancy without re-checking the property.
• Insulation described from memory rather than from the installer's statement.
• Side arrangements agreed verbally and remembered differently by each party, if it matters, it goes in writing.
• The signed agreement itself filed nowhere findable, it is the tenancy's foundation document and gets asked for at every dispute.

The pattern behind all four: the agreement is downstream of the property's records. Landlords with the compliance file in order produce accurate statements in minutes, and the agreement becomes the easy part.