Renters report mould and cold in homes signed off as Healthy Homes compliant

A survey of more than 3,000 New Zealand renters has put numbers behind a complaint tenants have been making for years, that a signed Healthy Homes certificate is no guarantee a rental is actually warm and dry. The Aotearoa Renters’ Survey 2026, run by ActionStation and Renters United, found 42.7 per cent of respondents who had been shown evidence or told by their landlord or property manager that their home met the standards were still living with mould, damp or draughts. A further 18.7 per cent of all respondents said their home was outright not up to standard.

The part of the report that has drawn the most attention is a table that puts those answers against the name of the company managing the property. Of the 3,310 people who took the survey, 1,163 gave the name of their property manager or landlord, and 473 of them named one of ten large management firms. The report lists the companies in the order of how many renters named them rather than ranking them. The highest share of renters reporting mould, cold or draughts was Bayleys on 63.2 per cent, followed by Quinovic on 58.8 per cent, Crockers on 53.8 per cent and Barfoot & Thompson on 52.6 per cent. LJ Hooker and Oxygen both sat at 50 per cent, while Harcourts, Ray White, Wolfbrook and Property Brokers came in between 40.7 and 33.8 per cent. The report spells Wolfbrook as Woolfbrook.

Those percentages rest on small groups of people. Only 30 respondents named Bayleys, 33 named Quinovic and 23 named Crockers, so a handful of answers moves the figure a long way. The two companies with the largest samples were Barfoot & Thompson with 97 renters and Harcourts with 94. The survey was also open to anyone who chose to fill it in rather than being a random sample of tenants. It is a picture of what renters who wanted to speak up are experiencing, not a compliance audit of any company’s portfolio. The legal duty also sits mainly with the owner. Under section 45 of the Residential Tenancies Act the landlord must comply with the healthy homes standards, and because the Act treats an agent as a landlord a property manager can be taken to the Tenancy Tribunal too. But it is the owner who pays for insulation, heating or ventilation work. A manager can advise, press for the work and in the end resign the management, but it cannot make an owner spend the money.

The report was released on 15 August and the company breakdown was reported by RNZ Checkpoint on 25 August. Renters United president Luke Somervell told RNZ the sector has nothing sitting behind it. “There’s no regulation. There’s no register. There’s no oversight or any ways to pull property managers up for dodgy practices,” he said. He argued a tougher standard would sort the good operators from the bad. “If we can raise the bar, then the people who are doing the right thing will benefit. And the people who are the crooks and the cowboys, they will get pushed out of the market.”

Jessica Keltie, a Healthy Homes advisor on the Kāpiti Coast, told RNZ she had seen property managers let “quite revolting” problems slide, describing one tenant whose bathroom “literally folded up around her because it was so damp and disgusting”. In her experience many agents did not know what the standards actually required of them.

RNZ approached all ten companies named in the report. Most said they would support regulation in some form, and several said they would go further than the government has proposed. No response from Bayleys was published. Quinovic chief executive Parrish Wong said he was disappointed by the finding about his company. “We take any suggestion that a property managed by Quinovic may not be compliant seriously,” he said. Quinovic already uses an independent Healthy Homes certifier, which Wong said should be compulsory. “We’re not experts, we’re not builders, we look after properties. So you want to get an expert in there.” Property Brokers said it walked away from managing 168 properties whose owners would not do the work needed before last year’s compliance deadline, and would prefer regulation focused on how a house actually performs rather than on ticking a checklist. Ray White and Harcourts said they had put extra money into training staff because no formal standard exists.

That gap is the heart of the argument. Healthy Homes rules came into force on 1 July 2019 and every rental had to comply by 1 July 2025, covering heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture and draught stopping. But the only obligations on a landlord or property manager are to include a signed compliance statement in the tenancy agreement and to keep records showing how they met the standards. No qualification is needed to carry out the assessment or sign the statement. If a tenant thinks the certificate is wrong, the burden falls on them to prove it at the Tenancy Tribunal.

Change is on the way, slowly. The government’s Residential Property Managers Registration Bill would create a public register, minimum education requirements, a requirement to hold client money in separate accounts, and a disciplinary tribunal. Private landlords, Kāinga Ora and community housing providers would sit outside it, and it would not change how Healthy Homes compliance is certified. “These changes have been informed by discussions with landlords and tenant advocates, and industry bodies for the sector, and this feedback has helped shape a balanced approach that responds to sector needs while keeping regulatory costs low,” Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka told RNZ. The bill is still being drafted and will not be finished before the end of this parliamentary term, which leaves it to the next government. A similar bill was scrapped in 2024.

Property managers now handle a large share of the rental market. The report notes the number counted in the census rose 53 per cent in the decade to 2023, and just over half the survey respondents renting privately were dealing with a manager rather than an owner. The cost side of the survey is just as blunt. Of those who answered, 78.4 per cent estimated spending 30 per cent or more of their weekly income on rent and 11.5 per cent put it at 80 per cent or more. Almost a quarter, 24.9 per cent, said they had experienced discrimination from a landlord or property manager, most often over being a solo parent or having young children. And 91.4 per cent had either never used a 14-day notice, the main tool a tenant has for forcing repairs, or had never heard of one.

Read the full survey findings or the release from ActionStation and Renters United.

Do you rent through a property management company, and does your place match the certificate it came with? Tell us in the comments below.

This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂