And so it begins. Property Manager Regulation is on its way!

Kia ora e hoa,

We’ve had another big month here at Renters United! We’ve started work on our next campaign for Property Manager Regulation and we published our open letter to Trade Me. Read on to see how it went, and how you can get involved!

Property Manager Regulation

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have released their discussion document for Property Manager Regulation. We’ve been working to create a campaign for the stronger regulation of property managers in response to HUD’s discussion document.

We’ll be calling for:

• The regulation of all property managers, including private landlords that manage their own properties.
• A better disputes and disciplinary tribunal that upholds the rights of tenants, and empowers them to access their rights instead of creating unnecessary barriers.
• Tenants to be represented on the body that manages regulation and the body that manages disputes
• And much more…

How can you get involved? – Make a submission in 10 minutes or less

We’ve read through the discussion document and created a quick submit for you so making a submission is super easy. All you have to do is select the sentences you agree with and the rest is done for you!

If you have some more time we’ll be sending out a longer form submission builder on the 5th of April, alongside our full draft submission so you can provide feedback before we send it off to HUD.

How can you get involved? – Talk about it

Talk to your flatmates, your friends, your co-workers. The more people we get making submissions the more we can get stronger regulation of property managers to uphold your rights as tenants and their responsibilities and property managers. We will have social media posts going out to share, and you can send the quick submit links to people which will only take them a couple of minutes!

This is an opportunity for action on property management and upholding your renters rights. We have the chance for some wins for renters here so make a submission, get the people in your life to make a submission and share the mahi we are doing. 

A recap: our open letter to Trade Me

Saskia (Branch Convenor) along with the Tāmaki-makaurau members saw the number of illegal properties being listed on Trade Me increasing and decided to take action. We drafted an open letter demanding Trade Me make considerable improvements and after a month of emails back and forth we had 11 other organisations supporting the open letter including Child Poverty Action Group, the Manawatu Tenants Union, and New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations.

“Trade Me claims on their website that 40,000 would-be tenants view their rental listings each day. For this reason, Trade Me ought to support the visibility of the Healthy Homes Standards and encourage compliance with the Residential Tenancies Act on their platform. Trade Me must consider their ethical responsibilities when it comes to the safety and well-being of would-be tenants. Now is the time to act.”

Last week we released the open letter. It was covered by the Herald, Stuff and the Dominion Post, 1News, Newstalk ZB, and Radio 1. We’re super happy with the reception of our letter and are excitedly looking forward to their full response soon.

If you want to read the open letter it’s available in full here alongside the press release.

What questions do you have?

We want our newsletters to be a place you come to hear what we’re doing, but also a place you can get information about your rights and responsibilities as tenants.

That’s why we want to hear from you! If you have a question that you want answered let us know! If we don’t know the answer we’ll make sure that we ask someone who does.

In solidarity,
Renters United

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