Mission Property Management (MPM) may well have been right about what was happening in one of its Auckland rentals. It didn’t matter. The Tenancy Tribunal has ordered the company to pay its former tenant after it ran an eviction by text message, and the decision is a sharp reminder that suspicion, even well-founded suspicion, is not a substitute for legal process.
Seven days, a text and a cleaning demand
The sequence was brisk. A body corporate complaint, relayed through Barfoot & Thompson as body corporate manager, alleged the unit was being used for commercial sexual services. MPM texted the tenant the same day, citing ‘pornographic activities’, gave her seven days to leave and added: ‘In your case, we also require full disinfection’. When she asked whether she really had to go, MPM said yes, noting ‘the body corporate has many evidence videos’. She moved out. MPM then tried to charge her two more weeks’ rent on the basis that her ‘personal actions caused the landlord’s loss’.
That last step is the tell. Having ended the tenancy unlawfully itself, MPM tried to bill the tenant for the consequences.
The Tribunal called it what it was
Adjudicator Robert Kee said MPM ‘considered it had caught the tenant red-handed so it could terminate the tenancy with impunity’, and called the approach ‘misguided’. The company, he said, appeared to think that evidence of sexual services meant the tenant had no legal rights. Kee’s prescription was mundane: ‘a more measured response to the body corporate complaint would have been to warn the tenant or seek termination through the tribunal.’
The Tribunal found MPM had unlawfully terminated the tenancy and harassed the tenant, ordering $2,348.71 in exemplary damages, overpaid rent and moving costs. It is worth being clear about what the ruling did not say. It did not clear the tenant of everything. She was found to have breached the requirement that the premises be used principally for residential purposes, though no remedy was ordered, and she was ordered to pay MPM $275 for leaving the place unclean and not returning all keys. MPM had a partial case. It blew it by acting as judge and bailiff.
The law is messier than the moral reflex
Landlords who assume sex work equals automatic eviction are working from instinct, not statute. The Residential Tenancies Act 1986 requires premises be occupied principally for residential purposes, which leaves room for some home-based business. The Prostitution Reform Act 2003 decriminalised sex work and permits small owner-operated brothels, with no more than four workers each controlling their own earnings.
The Tribunal has tested this boundary repeatedly. In 2025, an Auckland landlord, Kainan Shi, arrived with online ads, CCTV of people moving through the lift ‘day and night’ and a text allegedly inviting a client for sex, and still failed to evict the tenant. Back in 2023, by contrast, a tenant advertising services from herself and seven others in a multi-unit complex, where council bylaws banned brothels outright, was lawfully evicted. The difference was scale, location and the bylaw, all established through the Tribunal.
The same logic applies beyond sex work. A 2024 decision found a licensed immigration adviser running a laptop-and-phone business from a rental was not in breach. Low-impact work is not unlawful just because a landlord dislikes it.
Process is the cheap option
None of this is a case for landlords tolerating breaches. Owners have legitimate interests in insurance, body corporate rules and neighbours. But the industry’s own body has been plain about the route. In 2025, REINZ guidance told property managers that well-documented evidence matters, and that the Tribunal is where it gets tested.
The regulatory direction makes shortcuts riskier, not safer. Recent law changes restored 90-day no-cause termination for periodic tenancies, but alongside it sit anti-retaliation rules and exemplary damages available for up to 12 months after a breach. The government handed landlords a cleaner exit door. There is no excuse for kicking a hole in the wall instead.
What happens next
MPM general manager Wallace Wang says the company respects the decision and is reviewing its procedures and staff training. That is the right response, and other agencies should run the same review before a tribunal does it for them. The bill here was modest. The reputational cost of a ‘full disinfection’ text circulating in national media is not.
For property managers, the rule is simple. A complaint, even one with video attached, starts a process. It does not end a tenancy. Squeamishness is not a ground for termination, and moral panic is a poor substitute for a Tribunal application.
Sources
- ODT: ‘We require full disinfection’: Tenant unlawfully evicted after sex work complaint (2026-10-23)
- RNZ: Mission Property Management unlawfully evicted Auckland tenant after sex-work claims (2026-10-24)
- NZ Herald: Tenant allegedly running brothel from Auckland apartment unable to be evicted, Tenancy Tribunal rules (2025-05-22)
- Newstalk ZB: Adults only: Tenant evicted after failing to mention her ‘home-based business’ involved sex work (2023-06-19)
- Tenancy.co.nz: Decisions of Interest – Tenants working from home (2024-05-08)
- Tenancy Services: Tenancy law changes
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