Extension For Healthy Homes Compliance Statement Requirement

Sharon Cullwick, NZ Property Investors’ Federation (NZPIF) Executive Officer, welcomes the Government’s extension of the deadline requiring landlords to provide Healthy Homes Compliance Statements. The original date was the 1st July 2020 and this date has been extended until the 1st of December 2020.

“However,” Cullwick says “landlords are still facing serious challenges. Although the date to provide these Statements has been extended, there has been no extension of the final date of 1 July 2024 for rental properties to be fully compliant under the Healthy Homes Standards”.

The Healthy Homes Standards became law on 1st July 2019 and set minimum requirements for heating, insulation, draft stopping, moisture ingress and drainage, and ventilation to which landlords must adhere.

The Healthy Homes Compliance Statement was the second phase of this and requires landlords to provide tenants with Statements of Compliance. These must include details about if and how their rental properties comply, or will comply, with the Healthy Homes Standards.

However, COVID-19 prevented landlords from accessing their properties during the lockdown levels 4 and 3 as well as in some cases during level 2 where properties had tenants with underlying health conditions. There is also currently a critical lack of tradespeople to assess properties in advance of even the 1st December 2020 deadline.

It is very helpful that the deadline for landlords providing Compliance Statements has been extended, but the 1 July 2024 date by which all properties must be compliant remains. Also, private landlords must ensure their rental properties comply with the Healthy Homes Standards within 90 days of any new or renewed tenancy from 1 July 2021, as this remains unchanged.

“The NZPIF feels that the Government has only done half the job by extending the 1 July 2020 deadline. The 1 July 2024 deadline by which all properties owned by private landlords must be fully compliant should also be extended”, says Cullwick.

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