Hawke's Bay tenants reaching new lows

Hawke's Bay property managers say they're dealing with everything from broken windows and holes in walls - to graffiti and dog faeces.

Harcourts Napier business development manager Andrew Williams said the company's worst incident came in the middle of last year.

"The worst thing that we had was where a guy obviously owed the Mob some money and they came in and they threw something through one of the main windows and got dog s*** basically and wrote expletives all over the walls of the place, tipped it upside down and disappeared," Mr Williams said.

"They didn't actually trash the place as such, but just tipped it upside down."

The then-tenant was summoned to the Tenancy Tribunal, however, when they didn't turn up an order for examination was issued through the Ministry of Justice - whereby monies could be claimed back from the person's benefit, wages or salary.

"We often have to get them actually physically arrested to do that so there's a warrant put out for their arrest because they won't turn up."

However, the most common issues with tenants were rent arrears and minor damage - which was usually caused by friends, partners or associates of the tenants, Mr Williams said.

The company's rental team had an extensive entry inspection process which occurred prior to moving into the property, along with strict background checks - designed to vet out any potential troublemakers.

A minimum of two to three background checks were carried out and written references weren't accepted, he said.

"After that, we then also do a comprehensive credit check as well which is linked to five websites - the Ministry of Justice, the DIA [Department of Internal Affairs], Baycorp, the Tenancy Tribunal, the TINZ [Tenancy Information NZ] site."

Harcourts did not take on any tenants who had been through the Tenancy Tribunal court, or those with a bad credit history, he said.

"We inspect every three months and it's non-negotiable.

"It's something that we do and also it allows us to get inside the tenancy plus also to get alongside the tenant as well, and hopefully build that relationship with the tenant so we're not getting that situation of damage.

"It's just eliminating the risk, basically."

Quinovic Hastings principal Ross Davidson said the worst properties he had seen were ones they had taken over.

"We had one tenant in there, she owed about $3000 in rent.

"We managed to get her out and take her to court and get all the money back for the owner."

Mr Davidson said the Akina property was filled with rubbish and damage when they took it over two years ago.

"That was probably one of the worst ones, there were a few holes in the walls."

Property managers tried to avoid any similar instances occurring in properties they were looking after through strict vetting and inspection processes, he said.

"The majority of tenants are good tenants."