A tenant has been awarded almost $5000 after failures by the landlord to maintain the property. Photo / 123rf
A mother and daughter living in a home set to be demolished faced health issues due to holes in the floor that let draughts into the house, and also injured the girl when she fell through one of the holes.
The landlord has admitted that because the property was going to be demolished, it impacted their repair and maintenance decisions.
According to a recent Tenancy Tribunal ruling, the tenant, who has name suppression, dealt with multiple problems with the property which the landlord failed to address.
Now, the landlord has been ordered to pay the tenant almost $5000 in damages and compensation.
Crystal Realty Limited, trading as Harcourts Mount Roskill, was managing the property on behalf of the owners, NNDS Limited, when the tenant raised concerns.
Company records show Nick Kochhar has a 33% stake in NNDS, alongside Siddharth Malhotra and Deepak Bhatnagar, who own equal shares.
Kochhar also holds 50% of Crystal Realty alongside director Virendra Kumar Verma who holds the other half of the company.
The Harcourts website lists both men as team members at the Roskill branch. Neither wanted to comment when contacted by NZME.
According to the decision, the owners told the tribunal they initially set out to demolish the house in April 2024 as part of a 29 freehold residential redevelopment. The property’s address was also suppressed.
However, as the market moved, things changed, and they decided to push the development out by two to three years.
The tenant was living at the property under a 12-month fixed tenancy but stayed on after the redevelopment plans were postponed, and the issues with the home continued.
The tenant told the tribunal the landlord failed to investigate and repair multiple defects she raised within a reasonable time.
The tenant claimed there were holes in the kitchen floor, one of which her daughter fell through and hurt herself on at least one occasion. She raised the issue in July 2023, three months after commencing the tenancy.
She said the holes let in draughts which sparked health problems for the pair.
The landlord replaced the floorboards in September 2023, but the tenant said the kitchen was still draughty, as the lino had not been replaced.
She told the landlord about the lino issue in October 2024, and the matter was fully resolved in July 2025.
However, there were other problems in the kitchen over the same two-year period.
She also told the landlord in July 2023 that the oven wasn’t heating properly.
It was replaced with a second-hand model in September of that year, but she found there were issues with the replacement, as its door was faulty.
The oven was replaced again in September 2025.
Meanwhile, the heat pump wasn’t working at the start of the tenancy. The home was heated by a wood pellet burner, which started developing issues in May 2024.
The tenant was told by a chimney sweep that it needed to be replaced and then informed the landlord.
She said she used the pellet burner one more time, but it did not work well and was not heating.
The tribunal accepted the landlord knew the heating deficit had to be addressed by May 2025 but didn’t take steps to fix it.
The tenant had to use oil column-filled heaters, which caused a $100 hike in her monthly power bill.
By June 2025, she chose to be cold rather than incur more costs as she couldn’t afford to heat the house. A new heat pump was not installed until August 2025.
There were also faulty power points in the lounge, kitchen and a bedroom, and it took the landlord more than a month to arrange an electrician to address the issue.
The landlord told the tribunal that because the property was set to be demolished, it impacted their repair and maintenance decisions.
They said there was never an intention to breach their legal obligations to the tenant, but accepted that, at times, repair and maintenance issues took longer than they should have to address.
They often weighed up “what had to be done versus what the tenant would like to have done for cosmetic reasons or reasons that went beyond the owner’s legal obligations”, the decision stated.
The tribunal dismissed the tenant’s claims relating to a broken kitchen door, hallway floor covering issues, a leaking roof and a failure by the landlord to meet Healthy Homes Standards.
However, claims relating to the landlord’s failure to maintain the heating, the holes in the flooring, the electrical sockets and the ovens were upheld.
They were ordered to pay the tenant $4972, which included a $100 compensation for a power rebate.