Tenant punished after taking off with the gate, garden shed and more from her rental

A renter is $22,000 poorer after a tribunal fined her for trashing the property and taking off several pieces of it.

The woman took the carport, garden shed, gate, curtains and portions of a fence during her tenancy, a tribunal heard.

The New Zealand renter “abandoned” the house in March 2024, and at the time was behind on the rental payments.

The NZ Tenancy Tribunal was told she made off with several key chattels.

She was fined $NZ25,370.22 ($AU22,936) by adjudicator Nicholas Blake, who ruled the landlord did not have to prove that the tenant took the items – only that the events occurred during the tenancy.

Tenants are not liable for another person causing damage in the rental if they did not give that person consent to enter. However, the tribunal found there was no evidence that the good were taken by anyone other than the renter.

“The tenancy did not end when (tenant’s name) abandoned the premises,” Blake wrote in his published decision.

The tribunal listed the missing items as several-hundred-dollars worth of curtains, plus “the garden shed, the entry gate, the carport, and most of the fence at the front of the property”.

The carport’s metal legs were cut to enable the theft.

Also gone when the landlord inspected the home were individual fence palings, which had been peeled off with enough force to cause damage.

As such, the landlord requested total replacement, but the tribunal ordered the tenant to pay the landlord one third of the fence’s cost.

Of the fine imposed, $NZ12,880 ($AU11,644) was for rental arrears.

The landlord’s name was suppressed by the tribunal, but the tenant’s was not. Nine has elected not to name the tenant.