Final Deadline Approaching: Ensure Your Rental Property Meets Healthy Homes Standards by 1st July 2025!
Final Deadline Approaching: Ensure Your Rental Property Meets Healthy Homes Standards by 1st July 2025!
The clock is ticking for private landlords in New Zealand to ensure their rental properties comply with the Healthy Homes Standards. By 1st July 2025, all private rental properties must meet these legal requirements, which were introduced on 1st July 2019 to improve the quality of housing for tenants. These standards cover heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture ingress and drainage, and draught stopping, ensuring homes are warm, dry, and healthy to live in.
Why Compliance Matters
Meeting the Healthy Homes Standards isn’t just about adhering to the law—it’s about creating a better living environment for tenants while reducing long-term property maintenance costs. Warm, dry homes are less prone to issues like mold and dampness, which can lead to costly repairs over time.
Landlords are legally responsible for ensuring their properties meet these standards and remain compliant. The Healthy Homes Standards Toolkit for Landlords provides essential resources like checklists and guides to help you stay on track. You can access it here.
Key Areas Of Compliance
1. Heating
The heating standard requires landlords to install fixed heating solutions that can directly warm the main living room. Portable heaters won’t suffice. Acceptable options include:
- Heat pumps
- Wood burners
- Pellet burners
- Flued gas heaters
- Electric heaters with thermostats (in specific cases)
Each heater must have a minimum capacity of 1.5kW, but the actual size needed depends on the room's dimensions and heat loss factors. If you’re unsure about what heating solution is right for your property, Christchurch Electrical's specalist division, The Heat Pump People are able to provide expert advice and affordable, compliant heating solutions.
2. Ventilation
Proper ventilation is critical for maintaining a dry home that’s easier to heat and less prone to damage. The ventilation standard requires:
- Openable windows, doors, or skylights in all liveable rooms (covering at least 5% of the floor area).
- Windows or doors that can stay fixed in an open position when required.
- Extractor fans vented to the outside in kitchens and bathrooms or continuous mechanical ventilation systems that meet the standard.
Christchurch Electrical offers installation services for extractor fans and other ventilation systems to ensure your property meets these requirements.
Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late!
With just a few months left until the 1st July 2025 deadline, now is the time to act! Delaying compliance could lead to penalties and unhappy tenants—something no landlord wants. Christchurch Electrical specialises in bringing properties up to heating and ventilation standards quickly and efficiently.
Christchurch Electrical offer expert advice on heating solutions tailored to your property as well as installation of compliant extractor fans and ventilation systems with affordable pricing with guaranteed quality. Let us help you meet the Healthy Homes Standards before the final deadline! Call us today at 03 366 1718 to schedule a consultation or installation service or use our contact form.
Ensure your rental property is compliant—and give your tenants the warm, dry home they deserve!
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