A Grey Lynn body corporate spent $4,000 on legal advice trying to use their operational rules to ban short-term Airbnb lettings. A tenant had caused $8,000 in damage over a long weekend, and the committee was understandably furious. The problem: when the building was set up in 2011, nobody thought to put anything about short-term lettings in the rules. Without a specific rule, the body corporate had limited grounds to act. And the advice came with a second sting: even a new rule banning short-term letting outright might not survive a challenge, because the Tenancy Tribunal has found that rules prohibiting owners from renting out their units go beyond what a body corporate can regulate.
Operational rules are the body corporate's version of a constitution for how the building runs. They cover things like noise, pets, parking, how common areas can be used, what modifications owners can make to their units, and how disputes should be handled. Every body corporate has them — either the default rules set out in the Unit Titles Regulations, or a customised version that the body corporate has adopted.
The default rules are a starting point, not an endpoint. They cover the basics, but they were written to apply to a generic unit title development. They don't mention Airbnb, EV charging stations, the kind of dog breeds that are allowed, smoking on balconies, or any of the dozen other issues that come up regularly in modern apartment buildings. If your building hasn't reviewed its rules since it was established, there is a reasonable chance they don't reflect how people actually live there.
What can rules cover? Quite a lot, within limits. The body corporate can make rules about the use of units and common property, noise and nuisance, parking and vehicle use, pets (including whether they are permitted and what kinds), alterations to units, and how the building's shared facilities are accessed and used. Rules have to be reasonable and consistent with the Unit Titles Act — you can't use them to discriminate against owners or to take away rights the Act gives them.
What rules can't do: they can't prevent an owner from selling or renting their unit, override a right that is granted elsewhere in the law, or be applied in a discriminatory way. They also can't be changed informally. Adding a new rule, changing an existing one, or removing one that isn't working all require an ordinary resolution at a general meeting — and the change only takes effect once it is lodged with Land Information New Zealand. That is a lower bar than many committees assume, which makes it all the more surprising how many buildings are still running on rules written the year the building opened.
The practical advice for committees is to review the operational rules regularly — every three to five years is a reasonable cycle — and specifically update them when something new comes up that the current rules don't address. Airbnb, EV chargers, food delivery bike storage, commercial use of residential units: these are all things that buildings are dealing with now that nobody anticipated when many existing rule sets were written.
For owners reading their building's rules for the first time: you should have been given a copy when you bought. If you didn't receive one, or if the copy you have isn't current, you're entitled to request it from the body corporate. Rule changes have to be lodged with Land Information New Zealand before they take effect, so the body corporate secretary should be able to tell you what version is current.
Good operational rules don't prevent people from living their lives — they prevent people from making their neighbours' lives difficult. When they are clear, current, and applied consistently, most buildings find they barely need to enforce them.
Quarter is the new body corporate — transparent, owner-first, and built for the way people actually live together. See how it works at quarter.nz.