Tenants will soon have to pay out of their own pockets to cover their landlord’s insurance excess if damage to their rental properties was the result of their own carelessness.
The measure is included in a bill introduced by Building Minister Nick Smith as the Government’s promised response to a Court of Appeal decision last year which ruled a tenant did not have to pay damage after leaving a pot of oil on the stove and causing a fire.
The same bill will give landlords easier access to their properties to do a meth test, and allows tenants to immediately end a tenancy if contamination was at unsafe levels – but not if there was only low-level contamination.
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