Government officials are looking at the "pattern of decisions" by the Tenancy Tribunal on the enforceability of "no smoking inside" clauses in tenancy agreements.
They are also considering whether Tenancy Services’ public guidance on the issue needs to be reviewed.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) was responding to the Otago Daily Times’ questions on the issue in the wake of criticism by the New Zealand Property Investors Federation (NZPIF) and Real Estate Institute of New Zealand last week of inconsistent decisions by tribunal adjudicators on the clauses.
However, NZPIF vice-president Peter Lewis said clauses banning smoking and pets inside had been upheld by the tribunal since the Residential Tenancies Act came into force in 1986, and the failure of some adjudicators to follow that precedent in the past year or so was "weird".
Even the guidance for landlords on the MBIE’s own Tenancy Services website appeared to back the NZPIF’s stance, Mr Lewis said.
The NZPIF’s requests to meet the tribunal’s principal adjudicator had been refused.
"No-one’s prepared to sit down with us and discuss ways to rectify this so that everybody knows the rules of the business."
The NZPIF raised the matter with Associate Minister of Housing Barbara Edmonds last month, but nothing had come of it, he said.
A spokesperson for Ms Edmonds told the ODT the tribunal was an independent judicial body, and it was not appropriate for the minister to "direct or comment on what a judicial officer does".
The latest tribunal decision to raise eyebrows in the rental industry is an unsuccessful application by the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust to terminate the tenancy of a woman who breached the no-smoking-inside clause in her tenancy agreement, despite being repeatedly asked to stop smoking inside her apartment.
The MBIE spokesperson said landlords could appeal tribunal decisions to the district court.
Alternatively, if they wanted certainty about a clause in a new tenancy agreement, they could apply to the tribunal for a declaration that it was acceptable under the Act.
Mr Lewis said that was impractical, and if every landlord did that, the tribunal would be "clogged up" by tens of thousands of such applications each year.
