Landlord to repay $4588 bond but didn’t misrepresent premises: Tenancy Tribunal
Monday, 20 July 2026
A tenant who did not inspect a Wellington property in person will get her bond back after she decided it wasn’t suitable, but she was not given a false representation of the place by the property manager, the Tenancy Tribunal has ruled.
Tribunal member R Morgan ordered Tommy’s Property Management, working for Gurmeet Singh Sandhu, to repay Anna Caldwell her $4588 bond “immediately”.
Caldwell had also applied for early release from the fixed-term tenancy and compensation on the basis the landlord had misrepresented the premises.
She had not inspected the townhouse in a block of 13 on Gordon Place, Newtown, or its location ‒ a mixture of residential and commercial/industrial type premises ‒ before signing the tenancy agreement. She had claimed she was too busy for in-person inspections and had relied on the property manager to be her “eyes and ears”, Morgan said.
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During a video inspection she had asked the property manager about the neighbours, and he had replied they were “nice’, and said there were a number of medical professionals as it was near a hospital. Having asked about parking, she was shown an area on the drive where she could park.
Caldwell told the tribunal that the property manager didn’t say it was in a completely industrial area which was not suitable for her to raise her son.
After the moving company told Caldwell about concerns with the area, she looked at the address on Google Earth and decided it was not suitable, and she would not be moving in.
The property manager said he accommodated Caldwell’s request for a video inspection but preferred viewings in-person, and he had answered her questions and shown her what he considered relevant. The ad included a link to Google Maps, with the mix of industrial/commercial/residential evident from the satellite view, and he said he had no concerns about the neighbourhood.
Morgan said: “If the surrounds are so important to Ms Caldwell, she should have specifically asked the property manager to show her the neighbourhood during the video inspection. More prudently, she could have viewed the premises and or neighbourhood for herself.”
The property manager’s comments about the neighbours were a statement of opinion, Morgan said, not a false statement of fact.
The landlord had agreed to release Caldwell from the tenancy by the date of the tribunal hearing, and Morgan dismissed the application for misrepresentation.