Pet Rules, Tribunal Decisions and What Comes Next

 The framework-setting decision

The tenants live in the middle floor of a three-level building, with another tenant above and a basement below. It is a two-bedroom dwelling with a large outdoor deck. The property is not fully fenced and has a communal area at the rear.

The tenant requested permission to keep a dog, which was rejected by the property manager in writing with reference to “the aforementioned issues”. The adjudicator found this response deficient.

The tenant appealed, and the operations manager provided fuller reasons:

• The premises are not suitable due to lack of secure outdoor space and containment
• Increased nuisance or disturbance to other residents due to noise transmission through shared walls and ceilings
• Risk of damage to the deck from toileting and activity
• Safety risks to the dog due to lack of secure exercise space and elevated deck access

The adjudicator accepted that these written reasons met the requirement to provide clear refusal reasons, and then assessed whether they were reasonable.

In doing so, he first considered Parliament’s intention:

“The pet consent rules are an intentional move away from blanket ‘no pet’ policies and are intended to enable tenants to have pets, while enabling a landlord to decline consent – but only where it is reasonable to do so.”

He then set out key principles for assessing pet requests:

• Landlords must consider requests in good faith, with fairness and without bias
• Each request must be assessed on the specific premises and the specific pet
• Grounds must be more than hypothetical or generalised concerns
• Landlords must consider whether conditions could address concerns, including those suggested by tenants
• Minor changes to make premises suitable for a pet may need to be considered
• Clear written reasons are required, and failure may itself be relevant to legality

Of the reasons given, the adjudicator found the barking concern was purely theoretical and therefore unreasonable. The other concerns were considered potentially valid but could be mitigated through conditions, including a pet bond and minor modifications at the tenant’s expense.

The refusal was not upheld.

The key point is that it is not enough to identify concerns. Landlords must also consider whether those concerns can realistically be managed through conditions before refusing consent.

Would you like to know more about this case? Read the Tribunal decisions here. 

 This case is worth paying attention to because the tenants applied for consent, were refused – and then adopted a dog anyway, committing an unlawful act. According to the Tribunal, a landlord must consider a request even when pet is already at the premises. “Nothing in the pet consent rules prohibits a request for consent being made in these circumstances.” 

I found this surprising because getting a pet without consent is clearly stated to be an unlawful act in the legislation, but the Act is silent on what happens if consent is requested after the pet has been acquired. I had assumed this would automatically mean the pet wasn’t allowed, but the Tribunal has ruled otherwise. 

Later in the decision the adjudicator notes the following: 

“In making this decision, I note that the Tenants have breached the Residential Tenancies Act by adopting the dog without permission from the Landlord. That is an unlawful act, for which the Landlord could have sought exemplary damages. 

Because these rules are new, the Landlord has decided not to bring a claim against the Tenants. That decision is consistent with the Landlord’s balanced and sensible approach to this matter from the outset. 

But the Tenants’ breach of that law is nonetheless relevant to my assessment as to whether consent should be allowed. Given their conscious decision to keep the dog without consent, if there had been evidence that the Tenants had failed to comply with other obligations under the Residential Tenancies Act relevant to their ability to keep the dog or to properly maintain the premises while the dog was there, I would probably have declined consent. But all the evidence suggests that the Tenants are otherwise sensible and diligent tenants, who will comply with their obligations.” My highlighting. 

This creates a subtlety in the application of the law. A landlord would be quite entitled to seek exemplary damages in a case like this, and in some cases would be wise to do so, depending on the tenant. However, I think there is an implication in this wording that ‘sensible and diligent tenants’ who seem likely to comply with their obligations would be viewed sympathetically by future Tribunals. 

After getting the dog, the tenants applied for consent again, which was refused by the landlord. The tenants applied to the Tribunal for orders to keep the dog, which were granted. The adjudicator felt that the reasons given by the landlord, which were essentially that the premises were not suitable for “a” dog, were not reasonable. Note the wording – “a” dog. The Tribunal is clear in its view that landlords must consider “the” dog for which consent is being applied, not dogs in general. 

There is another element of X v Y which is worth noting. That is that while the landlord felt that the property was not suitable for a dog, the SPCA felt that it was suitable, and the adjudicator noted that the approval of the “premises and the Tenants by SPCA” was relevant to his assessment. (my underlining) 

“The SPCA has approved these premises as being suitable for this breed of dog and has approved the Tenants as owners of this dog. Although the SPCA approval is not decisive, it is relevant that a credible third party has assessed these premises as being suitable for the dog.” 

This decision reinforces the idea that landlords and property managers can no longer just say no to pets. The presumption on pets in rentals has changed to be one of permission unless there are good reasons for not having a pet. These reasons can’t be hypothetical, or personal preference, they must be solid, fact-based and unable to be mitigated. It’s also becoming clear these reasons are few and far between. 

Key lesson

A breach does not automatically prevent consent being granted. The Tribunal considers the broader tenancy context.

Would you like to know more about this case? Read the Tribunal decisions here. 

 This is another case where the tenant got a dog without the landlord’s consent – but it has a different outcome to X v Y. The tenant did not win, and the reasons are important. 

In this case, the tenant did not seek consent for a dog in the first instance, they got a dog which was then discovered when the landlord visited the property. The landlord issued a 14-day notice requiring the tenant to remove dog, and the tenant applied for consent to keep the dog which the landlord refused. The tenant then applied to the Tribunal for orders to keep the dog. 

In this case, the landlord’s reasons for refusal were key. At the hearing the landlord’s property manager advised that the Landlord was concerned that: 

1. “The Tenant is not generally a tidy tenant and is therefore likely to be an untidy dog owner. 

1. The premises are not suitable for a dog of this size. The garden is not large, and the hedge is not a barrier. 

1. The dog was not adequately restrained when the Landlord and property manager visited, which raised safety concerns.” 

The adjudicator noted that grounds for refusing a pet are relatively narrow but include “a tenant’s failure to comply with relevant Residential Tenancies Act obligations.” In his view, the tenant had already breached two obligations. First, moving the dog in without consent, though on its own that might not have been fatal, as we’ve seen in X v Y. 

The landlord’s evidence showed that the tenant did not keep the premises clean while the dog was there. The RTA requires that a tenant must keep the premises (including any lawn or garden area) reasonably clean and reasonably tidy. The adjudicator’s assessment, based on the Landlord’s evidence, was that the tenant did not do that. 

The adjudicator considered that the landlord’s refusal of consent was therefore reasonable, noting that the landlord had “genuine and evidence-based concerns about the Tenant’s compliance with her obligations under the Residential Tenancies Act relating to the dog.” 

The tenant’s application is dismissed, but – the adjudicator made no orders relating to the removal of the dog because “the landlord had not filed a claim seeking any orders”. The landlord will now have to file a separate claim for the removal of the dog. The lesson there is to file a claim for removal at the time of your other claim, as well, potentially, for a claim for exemplary damages – $750 for getting a pet without consent. 

Key lesson

Where landlords can show clear, documented issues, refusal is more likely to stand.

Would you like to know more about this case? Read the Tribunal decisions here. 

In G v B, the tenant applied for consent before bringing the dog to live in the premises. Big tick. The landlord refused consent, “due to risk of the dog creating noise and disturbing the downstairs tenant” mainly by noise transference through the floor. This case is also important reading, as it again sets the bar for how landlords should approach a pet consent request. 

The property was previously a family home, converted into two flats over two floors, and so had minimal soundproofing between the upper and lower flat. 

This case was relatively simple and given what we know from the other cases already decided, especially the first pet law case in a similar two home multi-level rental, was decided in favour of the tenant. The key statement from the decision is this: 

“Undoubtedly the dog will make some noise. All dogs do. But I am not satisfied that the Landlords had reasonable grounds for believing that this dog would make such noise that it was unsuitable for the premises. They had a generalised concern about noise, but that concern was not connected to evidence that this particular dog would create excessive noise, or to any other circumstance of the case sufficient to make the refusal of consent reasonable” My emphasis. 

What is clear from the cases so far is that landlords need to have more than a general concern about dogs in general. They need to have evidence-based concerns about the particular dog in the particular dwelling. It’s noteworthy that the adjudicator comments twice in his decision that the landlords didn’t try to find out more about the dog.  

Key lesson

Refusals must relate to the specific animal, not dogs in general.

Would you like to know more about this case? Read the Tribunal decisions here. 

A consistent direction is forming.

Pet consent is increasingly treated as the default position, with refusal requiring evidence-based justification. Conditions are becoming central to decision-making, and general objections are carrying less weight unless tied to specific facts.

NZPIF will continue to monitor developments as further decisions emerge.