Healthy Homes Tribunal Report: 952 Cases From New Zealand's First Year of Mandatory Compliance

Executive summary

On 1 July 2025, the final Healthy Homes Standards deadline passed. From that day every private rental in New Zealand had to comply with the five key areas - heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture ingress and drainage, and draught stopping. This report analyses compliance disputes at the Tenancy Tribunal over the year since.

We reviewed the 11,747 Tenancy Tribunal decisions published in the twelve months from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, identifying 952 cases in which Healthy Homes compliance or a related habitability issue was disputed - roughly one in every twelve published Tribunal decisions.

Five findings

1. A Healthy Homes dispute reached the Tribunal roughly four times per working day. There were 952 substantive cases in twelve months - about 80 per month, peaking at 106 in February 2026. One in twelve published Tribunal decisions in the first compliance year involved the standards or a related habitability failure.

2. Damp and mould were the most common dispute - and the hardest for tenants to win. Moisture and mould featured in 543 cases - 57% of the year's disputes. But it was the only standard where landlords won more often than tenants (33% vs 31%).

3. Tribunal-ordered payouts topped $1.15 million - with one landlord ordered to pay $61,140. In the 442 cases where the Tribunal itemised an amount specifically against a Healthy Homes or habitability issue, awards totalled $1,153,391. A median of $1,500 - with 52 cases over $5,000 and 18 over $10,000. The year's two largest cases were MBIE enforcement actions, not tenant claims.

4. It's a coin flip: tenants won 36% of decided cases, landlords 35%, and 29% split both ways. Neither side can assume the Tribunal will rule in their favour. Across hundreds of decisions - the decisive factor was not who owned the house but who had the evidence.

5. Paperwork loses more cases than broken heaters. Where the required Healthy Homes compliance statement was missing or wrong, tenants won 41% of cases outright and landlords only 21% - the most lopsided category in the dataset, and the most avoidable. Some tenants signed agreements that told them nothing about whether their home met the standards at all.

Why this report exists

The Healthy Homes Standards were introduced in 2019 with a series of rolling deadlines. Until last year, a rental property's obligations depended on when the tenancy started. That ended on 1 July 2025. There is no longer a compliance timetable - all private rentals must comply.

This report uses the Ministry of Justice's public register of Tribunal orders: real disputes, real findings, actual dollar amounts - decided by independent adjudicators.

A note on what “952 cases” means: keyword searches of Tribunal decisions are mostly noise. The words “rangehood” or “mould” appear constantly in routine end-of-tenancy cleaning disputes that have nothing to do with HHS compliance. We classified all 1,712 keyword-matched decisions against a written rubric and kept only those where a Healthy Homes standard or related habitability defect was actually claimed, defended or ruled on. The full method is at the end of this report.

The headline numbers

Volume was steady throughout the year - roughly 80 substantive cases per month, dropping over the January holidays and peaking at 106 in February 2026.

A further 86 cases saw a Healthy Homes issue raised but never determined - likely withdrawn, settled, or ruled out on technical grounds - a reminder that Tribunal decisions are just the tip of a much larger volume of disputes resolved (or abandoned) before a hearing.

Where the cases came from

The Tribunal publishes a property's town or city in about two-thirds of decisions. In the others the location is suppressed alongside a party's identity. Of the 630 substantive cases where a location was published:

Of the 630 cases where the Tribunal published a location, 1 July 2025 – 30 June 2026.

Auckland 246

Christchurch 65

Wellington 47

Lower Hutt 21

Hamilton 20

Dunedin 18

Tauranga 9

Papakura 9

Napier 8

Remaining outcome columns are cases raised but not determined. Locations are as recorded by the Tribunal. Smaller centres - Nelson, Rotorua, Waiheke Island, Timaru, Taupō, Pukekohe, Palmerston North, Gisborne, Porirua and others - each saw a handful of cases.

The spread broadly tracks rental stock with Auckland supplying just over a third of located cases and more than $328,000 of the year's itemised awards. Because a third of locations are suppressed, these figures understate every centre's true count - they are floors, not totals.

What's actually failing: the five standards ranked

A case can involve more than one standard, so these overlap. Ranked by how often each standard was genuinely in dispute:

Of 952 substantive cases, 1 July 2025 – 30 June 2026. Cases can involve more than one standard.

Moisture & mould 543

Heating 327

Ventilation 318

Draught stopping 316

Compliance statement 251

Insulation 218

Win rates based on cases where that standard's dispute was determined. The moisture & mould category spans the formal moisture ingress and drainage standard plus damp and mould habitability disputes decided under the landlord's repair obligations.

Share of determined cases. Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Tenant won Mixed result Landlord won

All standards 36% 29% 35%

Moisture & mould 31% 35% 33%

Heating 38% 34% 28%

Ventilation 34% 37% 29%

Draught stopping 36% 38% 25%

Compliance statement 41% 38% 21%

Insulation 34% 38% 28%

Three patterns stand out.

Damp is the defining issue of the first compliance year. Moisture issues (leaks, rising damp, failed drainage, mould, etc.) appear in 57% of all substantive cases - and it produces the year's most human stories on both sides. In one Manukau case, a family with an eight-month-old baby spent a winter cleaning black mould off walls before a professional report declared the house unsafe to remain in; the Tribunal awarding them more than $4,700 in rent rebates after the landlord failed to investigate the cause for two months (5388924). In a contrasting case, a landlord was accused of letting mould endanger a pregnant tenant. The landlord produced a professional mould analysis showing the property ventilated to standard - and won, with the Tribunal finding the mould reflected how the home was being ventilated day-to-day (5318182). Similar complaints but opposite outcomes: the difference being the evidence.

Heating is the standard tenants win most often. The heating standard is unforgiving. A qualifying fixed heater either exists, works and complies - or it doesn't. Adjudicators treated a broken heat pump as urgent: in one Gore case, a 13-day delay repairing the only heat pump, in winter, with sick children in the house, cost the landlord compensation even though the heat pump was eventually replaced (5338648). A boarding-house operator was ordered to pay $20,000 in exemplary damages for ten rooms with no working heater at all (5243594).

The “paperwork standard” is the most lopsided. Every tenancy agreement must include a signed statement of the property's Healthy Homes compliance - it is how a tenant is supposed to know what they're renting is up to standard. Cases where that statement was missing or wrong produced the highest tenant win rate in the dataset. Adjudicators had little sympathy for “I didn't know”: the requirements having been law since 2019 and being printed on the standard tenancy agreement form that landlords themselves sign (5214474).

Ventilation: the standard that decides mould disputes

Ventilation was substantively disputed in 318 cases - one in three of the year's Healthy Homes cases. Ventilation cases carried nearly half - $530,000 - of the year's itemised awards.

The data shows that ventilation is almost never disputed alone. Only 21 of the 318 were ventilation-only disputes; 215 (over two-thirds) were argued alongside moisture and mould. That reflects how these cases actually unfold: the complaints are the symptoms of damp - condensation, mould on walls and curtains, musty rooms - and ventilation is how the Tribunal explains it. The Tribunal's working logic is that whether a home can move moist air outside determines what disputes are “tenant lifestyle” or “landlord breach.”

The recurring ventilation fact patterns in the decisions:

• Extractor fans or rangehoods that don't vent outside. The standard requires external venting. In one Christchurch case this single defect - a bathroom fan not externally vented - contributed to a compensation award alongside $2,000 for missing underfloor insulation, with the adjudicator noting the landlord “was let down by her contractor” but was liable regardless (5323359). A rangehood that never vented outside, in an unconsented unit with no opening windows, formed part of a failure-to-maintain finding with exemplary damages (5266551).
• Ventilation was required before the tenancy started. A Manukau property that failed multiple standards at once - including kitchen and bathroom extraction installed only after the tenancy began, seven months past the deadline - cost its landlord $3,600 in exemplary damages even though the work was completed within a fortnight of the tenants moving in (5495689).
• Windows that don't open - painted or screwed shut, broken latches and sashes. These surface in both the ventilation and draught columns and are cheap to fix and expensive to litigate.
• The “who's responsible for the mould” contest. Where a home had compliant extraction and a professional assessment, tribunals were willing to attribute mould to how the premises was ventilated day-to-day and dismiss the tenants claim (5318182). Where extraction was absent or defective, the same mould became the landlord's breach.

The practical reading cuts both ways. For a landlord: working, compliant, externally-vented extraction is the evidential foundation for defending the most common claim in the dataset. For a tenant living with mould, the first question worth asking is the same one the Tribunal asks: where do the bathroom and kitchen fans actually vent, and do they work? Failure for landlords to comply changes the mould conversation completely.

The money: what breaches cost

The $1.15 million figure is deliberately conservative: it counts only amounts the Tribunal itemised against the Healthy Homes or habitability issue. Many orders bundle awards across issues (rent arrears, bond, other breaches), and we excluded any amounts which couldn't be attributed without guesswork. The true cost of these disputes is likely substantially higher.

What the distribution looks like:

• The typical award is modest but not trivial: a median $1,500 and a mean $2,611. Most are compensation for “loss of amenity” - a percentage rent rebate for the period a household lived with the defect. Adjudicators calculate based on rent: 20–50% rebates for serious, prolonged defects are common - rising to 80% where a home was barely habitable (5388924).
• The tail is long. Fifty-two cases exceeded $5,000 and eighteen exceeded $10,000. The largest awards combine multiple standards, a long duration, and ignored complaints. $18,743 where a tenant proved sustained failures spanning ceiling mould, bedroom leaks, draughty window framing, a non-compliant bathroom fan and missing Healthy Homes documentation (5317222). $15,880 where landlords failed to provide Healthy Homes information and left water ingress unaddressed (5208833). $15,000 for mould from moisture ingress and shower leaks, reinstated on rehearing (5287255).
• Exemplary damages are the penalty with teeth. Awarded in 303 cases, they require an intentional breach - and adjudicators increasingly infer intent from the calendar. Renting out a non-compliant property months after the universal deadline is, in the Tribunal's more recent words, conduct where “Parliament has signalled that compliance is a matter of public importance” (5495689, paraphrased). The scale runs from token ($100–$375 for statement omissions) to severe.
• The regulator has entered the arena. The two largest cases of the year were not tenant applications but Chief Executive (MBIE) enforcement actions, using audit powers, improvement notices and restraining orders: $61,140 in penalties plus a three-year restraining order against one multi-tenancy landlord (4612609), and $44,450 against a boarding house - $20,000 of it for heating breaches alone - with a two-year restraining order (5243594). For tenants who never file a claim, MBIE's boarding-house audit programme is becoming the enforcement route. For portfolio landlords - the regulator is now a bigger litigation risk than any single tenant.

Who wins and why: evidence decides

Reading hundreds of these decisions, the pattern is not that good landlords win and bad landlords lose, or that sympathetic tenants win and difficult tenants lose. It is that the documented party wins. The Tribunal decides on evidence, and the burden falls on whoever asserts.

The winning side on either side typically produced:

• A professional report. The single most decisive document in the dataset. Landlords who tabled a current Healthy Homes assessment repeatedly had claims dismissed (5318182, 5415953, 5095748); tenants who commissioned their own assessments or mould and moisture reports repeatedly won, and usually recovered the report's cost on top (5239422, 5226136, 5388924). One adjudicator noted it is “good practice to have a new healthy homes assessment completed every two years”; a three-year-old report failed to save a landlord whose drainage had visibly deteriorated since (5226136).
• A paper trail. The legal test for repairs is whether the landlord acted “within a reasonable time” of being told. Dated, written complaints start the timer for tenants; dated responses and contractor invoices stop it for landlords (5222913, 5225033). Where the record was one person's memory against another's, the party carrying the burden of proof lost the he-said-she-said (5332639).
• Photographs and timing evidence. Entry photographs, in-tenancy photos of defects, and work completed inside statutory windows decided case after case (5415953).

The losing side typically:

• had no assessment, no statement, and no records (5214474, 5407976);
• relied on assumptions - “the subfloor is exempt”, “I thought the deadline was 2026” - that a professional report later contradicted (5323359, 5095748);
• didn't respond to complaints: the Tribunal treats a complaint followed by months of inaction as a breach, regardless of eventual repair (5388924, 4895420);
• or, for tenants, raised issues for the first time at the end of a tenancy with nothing in writing to show the landlord ever knew (5225033, 5095748).

Ultimately documentation wins - and the data suggests both sides are learning. Tenant-commissioned assessments, moisture meters and laboratory mould reports appear throughout the year's decisions - as do landlord compliance files. The parties relying on memory are the ones paying out.

What the first year suggests

For renters: the standards are enforceable, and enforcement works - but only in writing. Report defects in writing and keep records; take photographs; and if a dispute is coming, consider a professional assessment. Check the tenancy agreement for the Healthy Homes compliance statement - its absence a breach which the Tribunal penalises. And note the median award is $1,500, not a windfall: the Tribunal compensates documented loss, it doesn't punish on vibes - except where breaches are intentional, where exemplary damages of up to $7,200 per breach apply.

For landlords and property managers: the first year's cases reward preparation over reaction. A current professional Healthy Homes assessment, a signed compliance statement on every agreement, fast written responses to complaints, and invoices for everything - those files win cases, and their absence loses them. Renting out a known non-compliant property after 1 July 2025 is now the territory of exemplary damages and MBIE enforcement.

For policymakers and the sector: at ~80 Tribunal cases a month with a near-even split of outcomes, the standards are functioning as a genuinely contested compliance regime rather than a dead letter - but the dominance of moisture and mould disputes, five years after the standards were written, suggests the hardest problem in New Zealand's rental stock is still its oldest one: damp homes, and disagreement over who must fix them.

Method

Source. The Ministry of Justice's public Tenancy Tribunal order register. We collected every order published between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026 matching Healthy Homes-related terms (the phrase “healthy homes” plus standard-related and symptom terms: heating/heater/heat pump, insulation, ventilation/extractor/exhaust fan/rangehood, draught, mould, damp, moisture, condensation): 1,749 records, 1,712 unique cases, out of 11,747 published decisions.

Classification. Many keyword matches are incidental (e.g. rangehood cleaning line items in bond disputes) - so each order's full text was classified against a written rubric distinguishing substantive Healthy Homes/habitability disputes from incidental mentions, and extracting the standards in dispute, the outcome of the Healthy Homes issue specifically, and any award the Tribunal itemised against that issue. Classification was performed with a large language model, calibrated against 50 randomly-sampled cases labelled by hand (100% agreement on the substantive/incidental call) and verified on a further 24 unseen cases (23 of 24 agreed, with all 12 outcome checks and all 12 award-attribution checks exact). Case citations in this report were additionally verified against the original order texts.

Conservatism. Award figures include only amounts attributable to the Healthy Homes/habitability issue without guesswork; bundled or un-itemised awards are excluded, so money figures are floors, not totals. Borderline categories (general repair claims not tied to a standard; habitability raised only as a defence) were excluded. Outcomes are classified for the Healthy Homes issue, not the whole case - a landlord can “win” the HHS issue while losing on rent arrears, and vice versa.

Limitations. Only published orders are searchable (some are suppressed or unpublished); the window is defined by publication date; and Tribunal cases are the visible tip of compliance disputes - most never reach a hearing. Case numbers cited are Tribunal application numbers, verifiable on the Ministry of Justice's public search. In line with Tribunal suppression practice, this report names no parties and no addresses.