When your landlord can enter: notice periods, inspections and your right to privacy

How much notice is required

• Routine inspection — at least 48 hours, and no more than 14 days in advance, 8am–7pm
• Necessary repairs or maintenance — at least 24 hours, 8am–7pm
• Smoke alarm or Healthy Homes work — at least 24 hours, 8am–7pm
• Meth testing — at least 48 hours (24 hours for a boarding house room), 8am–7pm
• Meth decontamination work — at least 24 hours, 8am–7pm
• Showing prospective tenants or buyers — your permission required, notice is not enough
• Non-urgent or cosmetic work — by mutual agreement
• Genuine emergency — none, any time
• You give permission at the time — none, any time

Boarding houses run 8am–6pm rather than 8am–7pm.

How often can a landlord inspect?

No more than once every four weeks. That is a maximum, not a schedule — most professionally managed properties are inspected quarterly. The notice window is two-sided: at least 48 hours before, and not more than 14 days before. A notice sent three weeks ahead is not valid notice. You don’t have to be home. If you’d prefer to be, say so and ask to agree a time. If you won’t be there, you can leave a note listing anything you want checked.

Can they come in when I’m not there?

Yes, with valid notice. That is lawful. What is not lawful is entering without valid notice, or treating a single agreed visit as standing permission. Each visit is its own access event with its own notice requirement. Agreeing to a plumber on Tuesday is not agreeing to the owner, a valuer and a photographer on Wednesday.

Viewings and sales: permission, not notice

Showing the property to prospective tenants or buyers requires your permission. Notice alone is not sufficient, nor can a landlord let a valuer, photographer or agent in without it. You cannot unreasonably withhold permission — but you can set the terms. Nominating specific days and time windows, requiring the manager to be present, requiring reasonable notice of each viewing, and excluding open homes are all normal, reasonable conditions. Put the agreed schedule in writing and have both parties sign it — that document prevents almost every dispute that arises during a sale.

Photographs

A landlord can photograph the condition of the property. They should not be photographing your personal belongings. If an inspection report comes back with photographs of your possessions, raise it in writing — MBIE’s own guidance directs landlords to avoid this.

What information you actually have to provide

A landlord can ask for what’s reasonably needed to assess and manage the tenancy: identity, contact details, references, and enough to assess affordability. Under the Privacy Act 2020, personal information must be collected for a lawful purpose connected to the agency’s functions, and only what is necessary for that purpose. You are entitled to ask why any piece of information is needed and how it will be stored. More detail: what a landlord can and can’t ask on a rental application.

If your landlord isn’t following the rules

• Log every incident — date, time, what happened, who was present, any photos or messages.
• Raise it in writing, naming the specific rule. “You entered on 14 August without the 48 hours’ notice required for an inspection” lands very differently from “please stop coming round.” Most of these stop here.
• Contact Tenancy Services for free, impartial guidance if it continues.
• Apply to the Tenancy Tribunal. It can make a compliance order and award compensation and exemplary damages for a breach of quiet enjoyment. Repeated entry without notice can amount to harassment.

Your written log is the evidence. Start it the first time, not the fourth.

Frequently asked questions