National will reinstate no-cause evictions, says regulations hurting landlords and driving up rental prices

National Party leader Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mike Scott

National says if elected, it will allow landlords to once again evict tenants without cause, alongside scrapping a range of other regulations it argues have decreased rental supply and pushed up prices.

Labour, meanwhile, has hit back, with Housing Minister Megan Woods saying the law change better balanced the rights of renters and landlords and National’s approach would only make it easier for families renting to be “shown the door”.

National Party housing spokesman Chris Bishop said if elected, they would reverse Labour’s removal of no-cause terminations, and the provisions which see fixed-term tenancies roll into periodic tenancies in most cases. Both were introduced in 2020 under the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act.

This follows previous National commitments to restore interest deductibility for rental properties and restore the bright-line test - the period in which someone can sell a residential property without paying any tax on gains - to two years, down from 10 years under Labour.

Bishop said removing no-cause terminations and the rollover of fixed-term tenancies into periodic tenancies may have been well-intentioned but had “backfired badly, discouraging landlords from offering their properties up for rent”.

“Some landlords have simply decided that the risks are too great and have exited the rental market altogether, decreasing supply and putting upward pressure on rents.”

Bishop said in Queenstown, about a quarter of properties were estimated to be empty, while hundreds of people were living in cars, in tents or on couches.

He said landlords who might have offered a short-term tenancy have decided it is too difficult, while others are now reluctant to “take a chance” on tenants with poor rental histories, due to the difficulty of ending the tenancy if it didn’t work out.

Bishop said rents had risen by an average of $175 a week since 2017 as a result and demand for social housing and emergency housing had greatly increased.

Woods, meanwhile, hit back strongly, saying National’s “callous policy will send a shiver down the spine of renters right across New Zealand”.

She said there was no reason to change the law as it currently balanced landlords’ rights with the need for renters to “feel they have some degree of security in their rental accommodation”.

The rights of landlords were protected to terminate a tenancy under a range of justifiable reasons, she said, including where a tenant has engaged in anti-social or illegal behaviour or is at least three weeks in rent arrears.

“But it’s only fair for a tenant to know why their tenancy is ending and have the opportunity to dispute it.

“We know there are plenty of great landlords offering excellent rental accommodation to tenants.

“We also know that there are hundreds of thousands of people living in rental accommodation who need the kind of secure tenure we have delivered under the Residential Tenancies Act.”

Woods said the real reason behind rental inflation was a “housing crisis that was decades in the making and is still being fixed”.

“It needs more housing to meet demand, and only then will rents be more affordable.”

Woods said more than 200,000 new houses had been consented since October 2017.

Woods also took aim at Bishop’s comments about the social housing waiting list, saying during National’s previous nine years in government, it ended up with 1500 fewer state homes than it started with, while under Labour, nearly 12,000 had been built.