Landlords say they feel under siege with the government planning to make it tougher for them to boot out troublesome tenants.
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Renters argue they should have the right to address complaints when facing something as disruptive as being removed from their home, and say good landlords have nothing to fear from the changes.
Associate Housing Minister Kris Faafoi yesterday unveiled a suite of changes to rental laws including an end to "no-cause evictions" when landlords cancel open-ended tenancies without providing a reason as they long as they give 90 days notice.
Under the new regime, if a landlord wanted to evict a tenant for bad behaviour, they would have to apply to the Tenancy Tribunal with three examples over three months. Egregious cases would require just one offence.
Property Investors' Federation president Andrew King said the proposal was "well-intentioned" but misguided and have serious consequences.
Landlords would find it "extraordinarily hard" to provide evidence of anti-social activity as upset neighbours were often reluctant to speak to authorities, he said.
"There could be intimidation, there could threats, there could be physical violence.
"It may mean that good people, good neighbours, end up moving, instead of the people perpetrating the bad behaviour.
"We are not going to be able to protect the neighbours of any of our tenants that go bad."
He told Morning Report rents had continued to increase due to extra costs of regulation to upgrade properties before they could be put on the rental market.
The ending of fixed-term tenancies was another concern which he said would affect certain types of renters including students.
"Previously if you wanted to have a property and have the tenant there for a year you could have a year fixed-term tenancy, everyone knows that it ends in that year.
"Now they are saying that at the end of that the tenant will have the right to carry on that. So it means that fixed-term tenancies are effectively changing as well. That's going to have a serious effect on quite a few markets around New Zealand, particularly to the student markets in places like Dunedin."
He said it was still cheaper to rent than to buy, and denied many rentals were shoddy.
"Most tenants do not want to pay a lot for a property and it costs an awful lot of money to provide housing in New Zealand. Owner-occupiers have to spend a lot of money to buy their own home.
"We have to spend a lot of money to provide a rental property. That means that rents in New Zealand are high, and they're probably higher than they need to be because our job of supplying rental properties to people, is being made harder."
Speaking to RNZ, Property Managers' Institute president David Pearse objected to perception that they were tossing people out on the street "willy-nilly".
"At the moment, property managers probably feel like farmers, [we] feel as if we've been unduly focused on.
"No landlord just wants to chuck out a good tenant," he said. "The 90-day notice has been used for ... all sorts of anti-social behaviour or drug use in the property."
The Tenancy Tribunal was already overworked and would likely become bogged down by the new process, Mr Pearse said.
National's spokesperson for housing Judith Collins told Morning Report the government's policy was ignoring market rules of supply and demand.
She said more people should be encouraged to become landlords to take pressure off renters attempting to find well-priced accommodation.
"Now is not the time to be bagging on landlords and making it harder to rent out to people ... if people want rents to come down and tenancies to be more stable the best thing to do is encourage more people to rent out houses and to be landlords. One of the problems we have is that people find it is simply not worth their while to rent out, so they are selling their houses."
She said provisions for protecting tenants would inhibit dealing with troublesome renters, including those with gang connections.
Robert Whitaker - from the lobby group Renters United - told RNZ landlords "had nothing to fear" from the changes.
"It's pretty tough out there at the moment for renters - and once you do find a good place, it's really, really important that you can stay in it," he said.
Mr Whitaker said it was "totally reasonable" for the Tenancy Tribunal, rather than landlords, to make the final call regarding complaints about a tenant's bad behaviour.
"It's a basic principle of natural justice that if something is going to disrupt your life as much as being forced out of your home, that you [should] have to right to address those allegations."
Other proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act include tougher penalties for law-breakers, restricting rent hikes to once a year, and banning landlords from pitting tenants against each other in bidding wars.
