A troubling report inferring bidding wars for rentals has
prompted us to consider one of the moral dilemmas of being a landlord – How much is too much to charge tenants? While the Ministry of
Business, Innovation, and Employment has clarified there is nothing in the Residential Tenancies Act which ‘precludes the tenant from indicating
what they would be willing to pay for a rental property’, to overtly solicit what is effectively a tender to rent is at the very least crass, if not
morally decrepit.
The moral of a landlord is not always straightforward. We have as much a social responsibility to our tenants as we do a fiscal responsibility to ourselves,
our families, and our lenders. The fact that the former features more prominently in the public discourse shouldn’t invalidate the latter which is
more private and, understandably, less newsworthy. The trouble is fulfilling one obligation can sometimes come at the price of the other. Take rent
arrears as an example, while many landlords would be more than happy to work with valued tenants to manage existing arrears, banks are unlikely to
give out a free-pass just because your tenant is late on rent. Bringing it all back to how much rent to charge, how do we make a decision that
we can be comfortable with? Most landlords would have, at one time or another, been a tenant. While we can empathise with the day-to-day struggles
of renting and understand the tenants’ desires to secure homes for as little rent as possible, we do have to charge a level of rent that reflects our
accountability to our future and our lender(s). Ultimately the decision will rest somewhere in between these considerations and where...
