Updates to the Healthy Homes Standards: Is your rental property impacted?

Changes to several healthy homes standards came into effect on 12 May 2022. The standards with updates are: heating, ventilation, and moisture ingress & drainage.

 The changes apply to properties that have a healthy homes compliance deadline on or after 12 May 2022. If your rental property already meets the existing standards, you don’t need to do any extra work to comply with the changes.

What are the Healthy Homes Standards?

The healthy homes standards set out specific and minimum standards to provide healthier, safer, lower maintenance properties for owners, and make it easier for tenants to keep their homes warm and dry. Rental property owners that don’t meet their obligations under the healthy homes standards are in breach of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986.

Below we’ve provided a brief overview of what’s been updated.

HEATING

New formula to assess whether heating is sufficient

For several types of properties, a new formula to assess whether heating is sufficient has been applied. This includes:

• Properties built to the 2008 building code.

• Certain apartments which are a part of a residential building of at least three storeys and have six or more commercial or residential units.

• Properties where the insulation and glazing has been installed throughout, so that it now meets or exceeds the 2009 insulation and glazing standards.

Whatever type of property you own, you can head to Tenancy Services Heating Assessment Tool to find out whether the heating in your home meets the standard.

Qualified Specialists

• Rental property owners can now use certain qualified specialists to determine whether the heating in their home meets the standards.

Geothermal Heating

• Some properties can now meet the heating standard using geothermal heating (this applies mainly to properties in Rotorua).

Living area heating “top up” allowance increased

• If your heating was installed prior to 1 July 2019, the amount that you can “top up” existing heating in the main living area to meet the standard (for example, with a fixed electric heater) has increased. The trigger point at which you need to “top up” has also been relaxed.

Exemptions

• If the property is part of a building (for example, an apartment) and the property owner does not own the entire building, the heating standard now includes clarification of where the property owner might be exempt from meeting certain requirements.

VENTILATION

The ventilation standard now allows properties with certain “continuous mechanical ventilation” in kitchens and bathrooms to meet the ventilation standard. Recirculating systems (products like HRV and DVS systems), or fans that do not extract to the outdoors are not suitable to meet the ventilation standard.

MOISTURE INGRESS & DRAINAGE

The update includes a clarification that landlords are not required to install alternative moisture barriers, where installation of a polythene barrier isn’t reasonably practicable in the subfloor area.

When do the new standards need to be met by?

If any of the heating standard updates apply to your rental property, you have until 23 February 2023 to make your property compliant. Compliance with updates to the other healthy homes standards must still occur within 90 days of any new, or renewed, tenancy.

What to do next:

Visit this Tenancy Services webpage which provides full details of the updates.

For in-depth information on each of the Healthy Homes Standards and compliance, head to https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/healthy-homes/.