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Residential Tenancies Act 1986

Tenancy agreements - Key money, bonds, and rents

23: Rent in advance

You could also call this:

“Landlords can only ask for up to two weeks' rent ahead of time and can't make you pay before your current rent is used up.”

Your landlord can’t ask you to pay rent more than two weeks ahead. They also can’t ask you to pay rent again before the time you’ve already paid for is finished.

If your landlord is also your boss and they usually take rent out of your pay, they can sometimes take rent for a longer time. This can happen if you’re getting paid for a longer time because of holidays or other special reasons. But the amount they take for rent should be the same percentage as usual.

Your landlord isn’t allowed to ask you to pay rent with a postdated cheque or any other type of postdated payment.

If your landlord breaks these rules, they’re doing something against the law. They might have to pay a fine. The amount they might have to pay is listed in Schedule 1B.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM95056.

Topics:
Housing and property > Renting
Money and consumer rights > Consumer protection
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Part 2 Tenancy agreements
Key money, bonds, and rents

23Rent in advance

  1. A landlord shall not require the payment of any rent—

  2. more than 2 weeks in advance; or
    1. before the expiry of the period for which rent has been paid already.

      1. Where, in the case of a service tenancy or of any other tenancy where the landlord is the employer of the tenant,—

      2. the landlord, by agreement with the tenant or pursuant to or in accordance with any enactment, regularly deducts from the tenant's pay for a standard pay period the amount of rent payable by the tenant for any standard rental period; and
        1. no such regular deduction is such as to constitute a contravention of subsection (1); and
          1. because of a forthcoming holiday period or for any other special reason, the landlord pays the tenant for a period longer than the standard pay period,—
              1. the landlord may, notwithstanding subsection (1), deduct from the amount so paid the amount of rent payable by the tenant for any period longer than the standard rental period so long as the proportion of pay so deducted on account of rent does not exceed the proportion of pay regularly deducted.

            1. A landlord shall not require any payment of rent to be made by postdated cheque or other similar postdated order.

            2. A landlord who contravenes this section—

            3. commits an unlawful act; and
              1. commits an infringement offence and is liable to a fine or an infringement fee specified in Schedule 1B.

                Compare
                • 1973 No 26 s 21
                • Residential Tenancies Act 1978–1981 ss 31, 39 (SA)
                Notes
                • Section 23(4): replaced, on , by section 18 of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2020 (2020 No 59).