The woman, who declined to be named, said her daughter and other students were getting stung by landlords with an extra day of rent at the end of their contract.
"Several students, my daughter included, have been charged an additional day’s rent for December 31, despite their fixed-term tenancy clearly running from January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025.
"Some rental agencies are arguing this charge on the basis of a ‘daily rent’ calculation, effectively claiming the tenancy ends at the start of December 31 rather than the end of the day."
The mother said while the extra-day charge was not necessarily a high amount, it was still unfair in principle.
The sums involved might seem small individually, but collectively amounted to thousands of dollars extracted from students each year, she said.
It also appeared to delay the repayment of the bond.
"I was like, well, that just doesn’t seem fair, because my knowledge of bonds is that when the tenancy manager’s been in and checked and found it all to be great, which it was, then that’s the end of the story, or at least it should be.
"The land agent should have said there and then that there would be an extra day, but suddenly, they’re doing it retrospectively."
This practice was "particularly problematic" for students because many were required to pay a new bond for the following year before receiving their old bond back.
Otago University Students’ Association residential representative Zoe Eckhoff said the practice was "shady", and pointed to an even broader problem with rental agreements in the student quarter.
"It’s a very poor interpretation in my opinion. I actually think students should fight these extensive fixed-term tenancies in the first place when most of them aren’t even inhabiting the properties during their tenancy for months at a time around the summer period."
A Consumer New Zealand spokeswoman said they would recommend anyone with a problem like this call the government’s Tenancy Services.
Miss Eckhoff said students who moved out in late November and moved in in early February should not be forced to pay rent during the period they were not there.
"Logically it makes no sense to pay for a property you’re not inhabiting, especially when lots of these properties aren’t even being cleaned during this period when they ideally would be. Something we often see when students first move in is there’s leftover trash and debris from previous tenants or the landlord themselves in some cases.
"So why pay all that money for a place you aren’t living in?"
