Pets allowed and no rent rise this year. Rentals are more than money-makers

READER REPORT: I decided to go back to university, and my parents offered for me to live with them, so I could afford to work part-time while I studied.

I own a two-bedroom flat in Upper Hutt and charge $530 a week for rent.

I’ve been a landlord for two and a half years. I started renting my home to a family member’s childhood friend, so I was confident that they’d respect the home. After they decided to move cities, my property manager organised another tenant, and she’s been there for the past year. There wasn’t any downtime between tenants, and things haven’t changed drastically for me since entering the market.

I made sure I had my mortgage split into several different loans when I first bought my home, and have always paid more than I needed to so that if the interest rates increased (which they did) I would be able to mitigate the effect it’d have on my repayments.

After one year, the initial rent was raised by $30 a week to $500 and increased by another $30 for the new tenant. This year I opted to not increase rent. It’s hard out there and everyone is struggling. I’ve made smart choices in my loans to manage increases in mortgage repayments so that my tenant isn’t affected. I’d rather pay a little more out of my pocket and keep a good tenant happy.

The only challenge that I’ve faced as a landlord has been paying tax on my mortgage interest. The changes in tax on interest hurt landlords like me and mum and dad investors who have mortgages, and completely missed landlords with multiple mortgage-free properties (there are a lot of them out there).

I make sure any issues that my tenant raises with my property manager are acted on as soon as they’re brought to my attention. My tenant is looking after my property, the least I can do is make sure that she’s respected and that the house she’s paying to live in is up to a good standard.

My tenants are also allowed to have pets, my current one has two dogs. I have a dog myself and I don’t think that it’s fair to completely cut out animal-owning tenants.

In Wellington specifically there are too many landlords who only see their rental properties as money-makers, and not shelter and security for tenants. Sure, there are some bad tenants out there, but in my opinion, there are far worse landlords.