The Healthy Homes Bill passed into law yesterday.

What this will mean for landlords remains vague.  In general, the idea is that rental property should be treated like other products for sale i.e. they have to meet minimum standards.

At this stage, the government is talking about standards for insulation, heating, ventilation, draught stopping, drainage, and moisture.  They expect the standards to become specific legislation over the next 18 months.

To assist landlords with upgrading their properties with better heating and insulation the government will make a grant of up to $3000 available.

If you own new, or recently built property it’s unlikely the new rules will affect you much, other than the actual compliance process, which we don’t know anything about yet.

What I mean by compliance process is how are houses going to be checked?  Is this something council officials will do, or a new Government department, or will private companies spring up to take advantage of this new opportunity for regular income?

It’s the last part that bugs me, the compliance costs.  My rental property is either recently built or well maintained, yet no doubt I will still incur the same compliance costs in regards to testing that the owner of a run-down property that hasn’t had money spent on it for years will incur.  That’s the thing I dislike about these types of blanket regulations. The people doing the right thing still have to pay, and in many cases, the people who haven’t been maintaining their property still won’t maintain them…

John Kenel, Assured