Vanessa Woodhead is relieved to be in her own house. She went through two Tenancy Tribunal cases in a year of hell at her previous flat.

As the screws tighten on landlords, cavalier property managers continue to play by their own rules, warns a tenant twice found to have been mistreated.

New measures being introduced by the Government and revealed by Stuff on Sunday aim to give tenants more rights and restrict landlords' grounds for eviction, but there is often a third party who plays a crucial role in the relationship.

Vanessa Woodhead has won two Tenancy Tribunal cases this year over her lease of a flat in Palmerston North. Both times, a property manager was found at fault.

She says a lack of regulation means there's little incentive for bad property managers to change their behaviour.

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"It's the landlord who had to pay me. There are no real repercussions for the property managers when they behave like this."

Tenancy Tribunal adjudicator J Robson ordered landlord Nicole Dexter to pay Woodhead $1440 for mistreatment in two separate cases.

In the first, Woodhead was not given proper notice before major repairs were made to the Takaro flat in late 2018. Her requests were dismissed by property manager Century 21 and she was subjected to ridicule.

"They worked through two weeks at ungodly hours of the morning ... I was sworn at, called names and at one point they didn't put the roof back on before a storm and my lounge was flooded."

Century 21 was judged to have handled the situation poorly, while the behaviour of the builder – identified as Mr Northcote – and his crew was considered outright harassment.

DAVID UNWIN/STUFF Palmerston North woman Vanessa Woodhead is calling for the Government to regulate property managers, after facing harassment, threats and verbal abuse from the agents of her previous landlord.

Shelley Naylor Realty took over managing the flat in January and instituted stringent quarterly inspections, then tried to evict Woodhouse for failing to meet them.

Robson deemed the cleaning requirements too harsh and the antagonistic communication from the property manager to the tenant was tantamount to harassment.

Woodhead joins the growing chorus of voices calling for stronger regulatory protections for both landlords and tenants.

In September, the Real Estate Institute and 40 organisations around New Zealand, including Bayleys, Harcourts and the Salvation Army, asked the Government to review the need to regulate property managers and to announce recommendations for reform before next year's election.

Century 21 principal agent TIm Kearins said they, overall, enjoyed a good rapport with Woodhead and always worked in her best interests. At the heart of the matter was a disruptive re-roofing project, organised directly through the landlord.

"Given the parties at play, it was an incredibly difficult situation for us to manage. Eventually, we made the decision to dissolve the management relationship."

Kearins said Century 21 accepted the tribunal's observation that while we merely trying to facilitate the job's completion, there were some consultation and planning inadequacies with the tenant.

He did not accept the insinuations that they were cavalier and did not respect the tenant's rights.

Shelley Naylor said she took full responsibility for what happened in the second dispute. She said her staff were generally excellent at their jobs, but had been overzealous in protecting the property and the owner's interests.

"The Tenancy Tribunal decision speaks for itself... It's made us revisit our own processes. We need to remember that we have two customers: the owner and the tenant."

Woodhead appreciated Naylor taking responsibility, but counting on companies to self-correct wasn't reliable enough to protect renters' rights.

Eight months of stress and anxiety had affected her mental health and doctors told her it would take time to get back to normal.

"I fell into a deep depression. I had two breakdowns where my mum had to literally come and pick me up off the floor... I still can't sleep well without sleeping pills."

She would have moved out of the flat, but there was nowhere to go in a tight rental market until her family managed to gather enough money to help her buy a house in October.

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