Tenancy Advisory

12/10/2026

For the past year, AI has done a lot of free work for me.
Drafting, summarising, tidying up my thinking.
I thought it was a great deal.
Turns out it’s been taking notes the whole time,
and I’ve been the unpaid intern.

Every video I post teaches the bots a little more about how I think. One day someone will skip my call and ask ChatGPT what Sarina would say.
I just hope it remembers to add the eyebrow raise.

Here’s the hard truth. If your expertise can be copied for free, someone will copy it for free.
The internet has never paid people for ideas. It pays whoever owns the relationship, the accountability and the result.
Everything else ends up as training data.

So I’m going to keep getting better, faster than the snapshot can keep up. Whether that makes me a circus act is still being decided.

Property managers, your tools are learning from you too. If you don’t know who owns what you know, it probably isn’t you.

11/10/2026

08/10/2026

Property managers: Don’t make surrender the price of cooperation.
You don’t need someone to admit they’re wrong. You need them to participate in what happens next.

Sarina Gibbon sat down with Sarah Moon, family lawyer and director of Clean Break | Relationship Property Lawyers, for practical insights into navigating tough conversations.

Sarah’s suggestion: you can influence people without telling them they’re wrong.

We know. Some of you have spent years perfecting “as per my previous email”. It’s practically a family heirloom.
But winning the argument and getting the repair done are two separate jobs, and only one of them gets the plumber through the door.

Being right is not always useful. Take a moment if you need to.

The full conversation is now available to subscribers of The Practice and Chambers, Tenancy Advisory’s training subscription. Link in bio.

Landlords

05/10/2026

5 questions to ask before the Court of Appeal decides.

The tenant in While v Moffitt is asking the Court of Appeal to order a refund of all the rent he paid. We don’t know how the Court will rule. We do know there’s time to prepare.

Five questions to ask about every property on your rent roll:
1. Has anything been added, converted or built since the original house?
2. Is every space we let as living space approved for living in?
3. Does the council file match what’s on the ground?
4. Could the owner produce the paperwork tomorrow?
5. Does the owner already know about the gap?

Any property where the answers give you pause goes on the list for a records check and a conversation with the owner.

Not sure how to start that conversation? Sign up to the Tenancy Advisory newsletter and you’ll get our owner letter template.
It explains to your owners what’s happening in this case and what you can do together about it. Link in bio.

General information only, not legal advice.

25/09/2026

“But they had somewhere to live” has been holding the Tenancy Tribunal back from ordering full rent refunds for unlawful premises. But maybe not for much longer.

One tenant paid $113,825 for a unit that lacked the required consent for a second dwelling. He received a $4,000 refund and now has permission to take questions about the rent-refund rules to the Court of Appeal. No full refund has been ordered. The legal argument is still very much

So before you tell an owner they won’t have to repay it all, check what’s holding that assurance up. “Surely” is doing quite a lot of unpaid legal work in this industry.

You don’t need to predict the judgment. You do need to explain the uncertainty, identify what needs checking and recommend a sensible next step. That is advice worth paying for.

Swipe through. Then read the full article before your next owner conversation. Link in bio.

12/09/2026

Choose Your Own Adventure ia no fun if there are not that many adventures to choose from 🤡🧠

Just satin’ 😏

07/09/2026

The property manager’s greatest advantage is not neutrality.
It is emotional freedom.

A tenant is dealing with their home: their security, routine and everyday life.
An owner is dealing with an investment that may represent years of work, sacrifice and future planning.
Both have every reason to feel strongly.

But the property manager has something neither party has: enough distance to see the situation clearly.
That distance is literally your business asset.

When you are the least emotional person in the room, you can:
* translate concern into practical next steps
* distinguish facts from assumptions
* give people certainty about what happens next
* communicate without escalating the temperature
* protect the owner’s asset while treating the tenant’s home with proper respect

The best property managers do not try to remove emotion from tenancy matters. They recognise it, account for it, and make sure it does not drive the outcome.
You feel?

31/08/2026

POV: you're running a property management business on a template agreement that was built for someone else's software.

Your PMA anchors every fee you charge and every instruction you act on.

If the authority provisions are vague, it’s just a matter of time before you have an issue.

I've written about the shortcomings I keep seeing in New Zealand management agreements, and what a stronger commercial foundation looks like in practice.

Click here to read my blog: https://www.tenancyadvisory.co.nz/blog

24/08/2026

Trust account interest isn't a problem.

Until a landlord finds out you've been keeping it and your agreement doesn't say you can.

Or your agreement doesn’t say anything at all about it.

The agencies that handle this well are simply disclosing their position upfront, in writing, before anyone signed anything.

That's it.

If your agreement says one thing and your practice does another, the gap isn't a legal problem… yet.

But it will be, and it will arrive at the worst possible moment.

Disclosure before the relationship starts protects you more reliably than anything you do after it goes sideways.

Send us a DM and we can talk through it.

18/08/2026

No separate meter does not automatically mean no recovery.

Our first Tenancy Advisory Practice Note is now available exclusively to TA Training & Advisory subscribers.

It tackles the awkward shared-utilities question: when can you pass on power, water or other utility costs to a tenant where there is no separate meter?
The short version: Yes as long as your evidence is solid.

This note gives you the Tribunal context, a 60-second triage tool, practical onboarding steps, and the conversations to have with owners before an unclear billing arrangement becomes a dispute.
Available now for TA Training & Advisory subscribers. To sign up, head to the link in our bio.

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