[Carey]

How long is the usual rental period for? What's the minimum or does it depend on the individual landlord? How much notice do they or you have to give to vacate the property? Is it negotiable?

[IanW99]

How long is the usual rental period for? What's the minimum or does it depend on the individual landlord? How much notice do they or you have to give to vacate the property? Is it negotiable?

Not sure if it varies by region but normal rental period is 6 months.

I would guess it's upto the landlord to agree on a minimum period if its less than the 6 months. You can certainly find rentals which are for less periods than this though e.g. periodic tenancies.

At the end of the fixed period it normally moves onto a rolling monthly basis so you would give a months notice (officially 42 days or 90 days notice by law) to vacate.

The immigration has some good information on their website i.e. Housing (http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/settlementpack/Housing/)

Ian

[thezorbster]

I would say it depends upon the individual landlord. We had 2 rentals before we bought. The first required 3 weeks notice (we handed in ours after only 2 weeks in the property) and the second was 6 weeks notice. Friends up in Devonport were required to sign up for a year so there doesn't seem to be any consistency. No way would I have signed up for a year rental though.

[Familyofmonkeys]

Both our current rental and our previous rental required 3 weeks notice. It seems most contracts are 6 months minimum ans some properties are advertises as long term tenants required...in which case they are usually 12 month contract. It is possible to get shorter contract...our last contract was 5 months as we didn't want it to finish near xmas in case we decided to move (which we did) and couldn't get any furniture removals arranged that time of year.

[peebles16]

Our rental contract is for a year and that suited us as we didn't want to get tempted into buying or moving too soon.. But think they vary hugely and you can get much shorter rentals on houses that are also on the market for sale but really depends on what you are looking for.

Best of luck with house hunting :)
Karenx

[nippa&pippa]

We got our previous rental house for a year but we have brought our house we want sooner for number reasons inc, hate our rental house very much, kids need to be settling in our own house sooner and a new baby on the way few months later. So we only stayed at rental house for less than 7months instead 12months :yes after we had discussed with landlord, we agreed to pay for rent ongoing after we moved out till someone move into our rental house. Lucky the new tenant was found as soon as we started to advertised and they moved in two days after we move out :nice1 so we didn't to pay anything for leaving rental house too early :D

[Bunstar]

Definitely depends on the landlord - our current rental is on a rolling basis and has been from the start. When we rented the letting agent asked us how long we'd be in the property. We said that we honestly couldn't say for sure, and she set it up without a fixed term and said she hoped they got at least 6 months out of us!!

[Chiba]

The DBH site has the law:

http://www.dbh.govt.nz/tenancy-index

It also has a helpful bond look-up feature that'll let you estimate the market rate for places you're interested in.