24-03-2009

President's March report

Revision of the RTA Amendment Bill (No 2)

Earlier this month I met with the Minister of Housing, the RT Hon Phil Heatley about the revision of the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) Amendment Bill (No 2). Vice President Andrew King and Thomas Chin, our political lobbyist, joined me for this discussion. The Minister has withdrawn the original RTA Amendment Bill (No 2) from Parliament’s Order Paper in order to develop a revised bill. He is confining the revision to five key areas.

the extent of tenant reliability for damage to the premises.
use of experienced advocates in Tenancy Tribunal hearings.
charging of letting fees by licensed real estate agents.
status of a tenancy when a sole tenant dies and assaults committed by tenants’ guests or associates.

We appreciated the opportunity to put forward the views of members on these five matters and we were asked to outline these in a written document. Later in March, the Department of Building and Housing organised a consultation meeting with representatives of REINZ, IPMA, Tenant Protection Association, Housing NZ, the Principal Tenancy Adjudicator and representatives of the NZPIF and 2 affiliated PIAs. The five issues were extensively discussed, with the views of all parties being listened to and noted. The revised Bill is expected to be presented to the Minister’s office in May, then fast tracked through the parliamentary process. During the parliamentary select committee stage, there will be a further opportunity for key stakeholders and the general public to have their say on the entire content of the bill and recommend any further changes.

The amendment of the RTA is seeking to address all the issues raised during a review of the Act in 2004, to which five hundred and seventy four written submissions were received and around 350 people attended public meetings on the review. The review identified five primary issues:

Insufficient compliance, enforcement and dispute resolution
Lack of knowledge about landlord and tenant rights and obligations
Mixed capability to manage property and tenants
Variable standards of rental housing
Lack of stable tenure for longer term tenants.

Review of the regulation of property managers.

Members, who use property managers, have been very interested in the progress of the review of the regulation of property managers being conducted by a team from the Ministry of Justice. We organised a series of public meetings during the first week in March at which members of the Review Team gave a very good idea of the type of information about the relationships between property managers and property owners. they were aiming to gather. The problems with some property managers have been identified as:

being unprofessional.
not knowing what they were required to do.
not collecting rent or paying money.
not inspecting properties properly.

Basically the team has been wanting to know is there a problem, if there is what is it and how serious is this problem. It has been very important that as many of our members as possible have been able to have their say. A second survey of members was organized by Andrew King. We aimed to get as many replies as possible by Monday March 16^th, the close-off date for submissions. However the survey has remained open and we will use the additional replies when preparing for the select committee hearings we will attend in the future.

The NZPIF has completed a considerable amount of research into the review and have come to the following conclusions:

That property management and property sales activities are totally unrelated and should be handled separately.
All property managers should be treated equally.
Improved property management education would provide the most cost effective solutions to problems identified in the NZPIF survey.
Compulsory Trust Accounts, 3 monthly audits of Trust Accounts and disciplinary hearings are expensive and do not address the identified problems.
A minimum educational standard for property managers should be established and be made compulsory

CHRANZ Workshop.

Centre for Housing Research New Zealand (CHRANZ) held a workshop on housing for people 65 years and older this month. Their research is concerned with the patterns of housing demand likely to be evident among people 65 years and older between 2010 and 2050. The workshop was another initiative directed to improving New Zealand’s ability to plan for and respond to the changing housing demands of older people over the next forty years by:

Identifying the key factors current and emerging that are likely to impact on the housing needs of older peoples and their patterns of consumption.
Providing scenarios of housing demand among older people.
Setting out a plan for future research that will provide a more robust evidential base of knowledge for responding to the changing housing demands of older people.

I attended this as a representative of NZPIF and it was a useful addition to the information we had gained from last year’s presentation on research into the trends to 2051 undertaken by the Department of Building and Housing. To read the Department’s Fact Sheet on Older Renters go to https://waikato.nzpif.org.nz/news/view/53727.

Martin Evans, President.

Tags: federation reports