KEY POINTS:
The Government's plan to publish Tenancy Tribunal rulings in a website has naturally annoyed at least one private company that has made its business to build a database that landlords can use to avoid bad tenants.
Geoff King, managing director of Tenancy Information NZ, might find his fears unfounded. The Government is likely to feel some heat from its own supporters when it announces it will put out information that may amount to a housing blacklist. Mr King will also find a continuing demand from landlords for a tenancy register somewhat more thorough than the names of those who have been taken to the tribunal.
Ordinarily it would be unfair of the Government to start a service that a private business has been providing perfectly well, but rulings of the Tenancy Tribunal should be as readily available as decisions of any court of law. Tenants who trash property they have been entrusted with, or property owners who do not treat tenants reasonably, deserve to be exposed.
Take the case reported yesterday, of the Nelson landlord who evicted a tenant for keeping two large dogs on the property without permission. In the 90-day period of notice, rent ceased, walls and ceilings were punctured, graffiti written through the interior and the dogs were left behind. The only effective sanction against that sort of behaviour is to ensure it will become known.
The need for robust regulation of the rental housing market is becoming steadily greater with the escalation of real estate prices in recent years. The average home now costs about seven times the average income, which puts mortgages out of the reach of the modestly paid and consigns many young people to paying rent for many years while they struggle to save a house deposit.
Some will paint those young people as the victims of a tenancy register but they are not necessarily. They are more likely to be beneficiaries of it. Any blacklist that alerts landlords to bad tenants, and tenants to unreasonable landlords, can only be good for those who meet their commitments. The information might create two distinct markets, one for fair landlords and reliable tenants and another for the unscrupulous on both sides, who should appear on their respective blacklists and deserve each other.
The hard part, as always, is to write the rules fairly. In our reports of the Government's intention yesterday, a Tenants Protection Association spokeswoman said power already lies with the landlords, while at least one landlord argued that they were disadvantaged by the law. Both are correct. The providers of housing, like the providers of jobs, usually have the advantage in the absence of laws protecting those needing shelter and work.
The laws should be, and are, balanced more heavily on the side of employees, who cannot be dismissed without exhaustive warnings and opportunities to improve, and tenants who cannot be evicted as readily as landlords might like. But if the law is too one-sided it risks discouraging people from employing others or providing houses for rent. The latter risk is particularly acute because no less an authority than the country's monetary regulator, the Reserve Bank, believes it would be no bad thing for the economy. Governor Alan Bollard loses no opportunity to warn that real estate prices will not rise indefinitely and investors in second or rental homes should be alert to their exposure.
An online record of Tenancy Tribunal cases would do a great deal of good and Housing Minister Clayton Cosgrove should launch the website without delay.
