Believe it or not, there’s no licence required to manage rental properties in New Zealand. No exam, no minimum experience, no governing body checking anyone’s work. You could hang a sign tomorrow morning and be collecting rent by the afternoon.
Try that with an electrician.
That gap is exactly why the industry has its fair share of cowboys, and why plenty of landlords have a story about a property manager who went quiet right when it mattered. Government proposals to introduce a registration scheme have come and gone over the past few years, and nothing is law yet. For now, standards come down to the individual business, not the industry.
Experience you can’t fake
Anyone can learn the paperwork. What takes longer is knowing what a leaking shower actually means, which tenant excuse needs a phone call, and when “it’ll sort itself out” is true and when it very much isn’t.
Between our team, we’ve got over 60 years of combined experience. Not much surprises us anymore, and that’s the whole point.
Where your rent actually goes
Compliance is where the industry’s lack of rules shows up the most. There’s no legal requirement for a property manager to hold your rent in a Trust Account rather than the business’s everyday one. No one making sure it’s reconciled properly. No one checking it lands in your account on time.
