Subject Line: Confirmation of multiple legal dwellings
Dear [First Name]
[Lead in comment ref address/property details]
You may already be aware that the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill No 2 which passed in August 2019, brought with it a significant change to the Tenancy Tribunal’s view-of, and dealings with any multi-unit site. More especially, those properties without a separate title for each.
For the many landlords who have extra dwellings on their properties, this can pose very challenging questions; and, as we want to make no presumptions in this regard, we, please simply highlight to all prospective landlords who seek to rent more than 1 property on a single site, that they must please check to have:
1. A Resource Consent, if they needed one for the second dwelling?
2. A Building consent and, that this Building Consent was signed-off; and
3. The building consent was for permanent habitation of both units, not some lesser form of habitation (e.g., sleepouts).
4. A CCC issued, or, equivalent (as this dwelling was erected prior to 1993), or perhaps it had an acceptance certificate issued if it couldn’t get a CCC.
The above would likely all have been included within LIM Report if you purchased, as-is.
It being our legal understanding that if the above cannot be established, then a landlord is not unfortunately legally permitted to rent both, separately. Rather, you can have one tenancy that covers ‘the whole’; or an owner would be legally permitted to reside in one, and rent the other (under a Lodger’s Agreement, for example).
I do acknowledge that this e-mail may be asking questions that you do not immediately have the answer to; or which you may find unnecessarily technical. And there is no question that this is part of a wider issue currently raising difficulty for property managers, as we are increasingly required not to rely simply on the information given by clients.
However, it is the firm view of our legal counsel that the Tenancy Tribunal will now assign this responsibility of evidence directly onto property managers. And, so, I trust you will also appreciate our diligence.
