What a landlord has to get right when renovating a rental bathroom

A rental bathroom renovation has four rules on top of an owner-occupier's. The extractor fan must meet the healthy homes ventilation standard (120mm or 25 litres per second, vented outside), because from 1 July 2025 all private rentals must comply at all times. Entry for the work needs at least 24 hours' notice and happens between 8am and 7pm under section 48 of the Residential Tenancies Act. Consent is decided the same way as any bathroom, so a like-for-like retile is exempt. And the records matter more, because a tenant can request compliance information and you have 21 days to hand it over; the penalty for a landlord who does not meet the standards is up to $7,200.

Which healthy homes standard applies to a bathroom?

The ventilation standard. Tenancy Services states the rule in one sentence: any room with a shower or bath must have an extractor fan that ventilates to the outside of the house and is in good working order. For a fan installed after 1 July 2019, the minimum is a diameter of 120mm including the ducting, or an exhaust capacity of at least 25 litres per second. A fan that was already there before that date only has to keep working, but the day it fails it is repaired or replaced with one that meets the new figures.

The date that changed everything for renovations was 1 July 2025. Before it, a landlord had 90 or 120 days from the start of a new or renewed tenancy to get compliant. Since then, Tenancy Services says all private rentals must comply with the standards at all times, whoever is living there and however long the tenancy has run. A bathroom renovation is the natural moment to fit the compliant fan, and there is no reason to fit anything less. What the fan and the electrician cost is in bathroom extractor fan installation cost.

The one exemption is narrow: where it is not reasonably practicable to install a fan, and the room was lawful when built and still meets the Building Code ventilation it was built to, such as an openable window of at least 5% of the floor area. In a bathroom that is being stripped and relined anyway, that exemption is hard to justify, because the ducting run is exactly what a renovation makes easy.

How much notice do you give the tenant for the work?

At least 24 hours, and the work happens between 8am and 7pm. That is the repairs-and-maintenance ground in section 48 of the Residential Tenancies Act, and Tenancy Services' access page puts it the same way: you or your contractors may enter to do necessary repairs or maintenance on at least 24 hours' notice, between 8am and 7pm. An inspection is a different ground, with at least 48 hours' written notice and not more than two weeks ahead. Entry without notice needs an emergency such as flooding or fire, a Tenancy Tribunal order, or the tenant's permission at the time.

A bathroom renovation runs for days, not hours, so the practical version is a written schedule agreed with the tenant before it starts: the dates, the hours each day, and what will be out of use when. The notice rule is the minimum, not the plan. If the bathroom is the only one in the house, the tenant will be without a shower for part of the job, and that is a conversation to have in writing before the first tile comes off, not on the morning it does.

Does a rental bathroom renovation need a building consent?

The same test as any other bathroom. Since MBIE Determination 2024/054 (2 October 2024), replacing a tiled shower in an existing dwelling has been treated as work on the internal linings under Schedule 1 clause 12 of the Building Act, so a like-for-like retile or shower replacement does not need consent. The plumbing sits under clause 35 as long as the number of sanitary fixtures does not go up and an authorised person does it. Moving walls, adding a fixture, or touching structure or fire separation between units is where consent comes back in. The clauses and the determination, in full.

There is one rental-specific wrinkle. Tenancy Services says a landlord must keep the documents that show healthy homes compliance and produce them on request, and a tenant can ask for that information at any time, with 21 days to respond. Exempt work has no council paper trail, so for a rental the records pack is not optional housekeeping: it is the only evidence that the fan meets the figures. What to keep, and who gives it to you.

Tiled or acrylic for a rental?

Usually acrylic, for the reasons that apply to any bathroom that has to survive other people: fewer joints, nothing to regrout, and a unit that can be swapped in a day. Superior Renovations puts an acrylic shower unit at $900–2,000 installed against $1,550–8,250 for a tiled equivalent across New Zealand, and lists rentals explicitly as the fit (GST status not stated on the source page). The case for tiled is a room you are keeping, not one you are letting. The full comparison.

What we do on a rental job

The measure-and-design visit records the existing fan, its duct diameter and where it vents, so the budget shows whether the ventilation standard is already met or is a line in the job. The fitted fan's make, model, duct diameter and flow rate go in the records pack at the end, which is the document a tenant's 21-day request is answered with. Details are on how it works.