Any experience of renting laws?
Discussion
Heres an interesting question for you:
Theres a house myself and some mates are looking at renting as a flat for next year - so we put in an 'application to rent' through the agents who are renting it out, along with their requested previous ladlord references, etc etc.
Had a call back from the agent, who says he's checked out our references etc and is quite happy with all that, and he's been in touch with the owner (via her daughter, as the owner is in China) who is happy to have a fixed term lease (what we want) instead of the short-term originally suggested. But heres the catch: the owner wants to increase rent from $400pw to $500pw, which would mean 100 each instead of 80, a 25% increase.
Now I would have thought that under the fair trading act etc, they would have to provide it at the advertised price, especially when we've put in an application from that ad. We could just let it go and find somewhere else, but we really like this place and would like to get it if we can.
So...anybody have an experience of similiar situations, or know useful bits of law which I can quote at the agent? I've done a little bit of investigating myself, and also had a chat with Tenancy Services, who said they shouldn't be able to increase it but didn't really give me concrete reasons why, basically just the suggestion that an application at the advertised price can be treated as a binding verbal agreement.
Problem is I also don't want them getting all arsey and making up some reason to not let us rent it, and then just re-listing at the higher price.
Any ideas?
Theres a house myself and some mates are looking at renting as a flat for next year - so we put in an 'application to rent' through the agents who are renting it out, along with their requested previous ladlord references, etc etc.
Had a call back from the agent, who says he's checked out our references etc and is quite happy with all that, and he's been in touch with the owner (via her daughter, as the owner is in China) who is happy to have a fixed term lease (what we want) instead of the short-term originally suggested. But heres the catch: the owner wants to increase rent from $400pw to $500pw, which would mean 100 each instead of 80, a 25% increase.
Now I would have thought that under the fair trading act etc, they would have to provide it at the advertised price, especially when we've put in an application from that ad. We could just let it go and find somewhere else, but we really like this place and would like to get it if we can.
So...anybody have an experience of similiar situations, or know useful bits of law which I can quote at the agent? I've done a little bit of investigating myself, and also had a chat with Tenancy Services, who said they shouldn't be able to increase it but didn't really give me concrete reasons why, basically just the suggestion that an application at the advertised price can be treated as a binding verbal agreement.
Problem is I also don't want them getting all arsey and making up some reason to not let us rent it, and then just re-listing at the higher price.
Any ideas?
I have some more general experience of this.
A conventional contract must have 3 elements: Offer, Acceptance & Consideration. In this case however it is not really an 'offer' but an 'offer to treat' (try Goooooogling that as it is a well established principle).
I'm unaware of any specific exception that applies to the Residential Tenancies Act www.dbh.govt.nz/residential-tenancies-act but it might be worth a look here.
I suspect it will come down to your negotiation skills. If anything a fixed term tenancy should be at a lower rate because the landlord is mitigating the costs & risks of having to re-let for the period of the tenancy.
I'd go back, in writing, with that (polite) argument. Also keeping in mind that, I presume, it is harder to get tenants at this time of the year as last-year students have left and next years first-year students have not arrived yet ?¿?
Good luck
A conventional contract must have 3 elements: Offer, Acceptance & Consideration. In this case however it is not really an 'offer' but an 'offer to treat' (try Goooooogling that as it is a well established principle).
I'm unaware of any specific exception that applies to the Residential Tenancies Act www.dbh.govt.nz/residential-tenancies-act but it might be worth a look here.
I suspect it will come down to your negotiation skills. If anything a fixed term tenancy should be at a lower rate because the landlord is mitigating the costs & risks of having to re-let for the period of the tenancy.
I'd go back, in writing, with that (polite) argument. Also keeping in mind that, I presume, it is harder to get tenants at this time of the year as last-year students have left and next years first-year students have not arrived yet ?¿?
Good luck
Yeah usualy short term is the one you want as you can get out of it easily and the landlord cant, fixed term is far better for the landlord.
He's prolly trying it on as theres more tenants than he was expecting? Just tell him $400 or stuff it, usualy you negotiate down from the advertised price, from what I've seen Kiwi's (landlords/sellers) tend to see $$$ signs before much else.
He's prolly trying it on as theres more tenants than he was expecting? Just tell him $400 or stuff it, usualy you negotiate down from the advertised price, from what I've seen Kiwi's (landlords/sellers) tend to see $$$ signs before much else.
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