Every room - apart from the laundry - was damaged in the home, the Tenancy Tribunal said.
The tribunal said the level of upset and stress the landlord had suffered as a result of the combination of circumstances caused by her two tenants meant she won an award for money at the upper end of exemplary damages.
In a hard-hitting tribunal decision, the tenants were ordered to pay more than $10,000 for damage, unpaid rent and other costs after they rented a flat in Linwood, Christchurch.
As if the damage to the property was not enough, the tribunal said the meth contamination was "another layer of stress and upset for the landlord", so a substantial award of exemplary damages was required.
"There was another incident at the premises which has resulted in the tenants being charged with aggravated robbery," the tribunal noted.
Courtney Hanna and Mark Francis must pay the landlord, Twinky Holdings, $10,446 which includes a $4000 insurance excess so a claim can be made to fix the huge mess they left behind.
Katrina Lynam is Twinky's sole director and shareholder.
The tribunal said the damage to her premises was so extensive during the tenancy that it was ruled to be intentional.
The tenants had insurance cover and their insurers assessed the damage.
"There was damage to every area of the premises apart from the laundry. A breakdown of the damage and the cost of repairs shows that the cost in relation to each of the seven areas affected exceeded the insurance excess of $500 for each event," the tribunal noted.
"Much of the damage was plainly intentionally caused, including damage to walls and doors and missing chattels," the decision said.
The landlord limited her claim for damage to her insurance excesses.
There was also evidence of methamphetamine use in the premises, so testing was carried out for meth contamination. That confirmed its presence. The tenants admitted using meth at the premises and the testing confirmed that.
The landlord hired a skip to remove the rubbish the tenants had left behind.
The tenants said they had given a 28-day notice to leave the place. But their occupation was a fixed-term tenancy.
So their leaving was ruled to have occurred far too early under the tenancy agreement and they had abandoned the premises.
The state they left the place in "caused the landlord's sole director and shareholder severe financial difficulty and an enormous amount of stress".
The tribunal made an award of exemplary damages, which it said was towards the top of the range available.
They must pay the $4000 insurance excess for the damage they caused as well as rent arrears of $4400 to cover from September to December last year. The tenancy was not due to end until March 20 but they had left months early.
The tribunal ordered they pay $1000 exemplary damages for unlawful use of the property and a further $1200 exemplary damages for the abandonment.
The sale of tenants' property netted the landlord $281, and was used partly to offset the amounts owed.
The landlord attended the hearing but the tenants did not.
Sharon Cullwick, executive officer of the Property Investors Federation, was disappointed to hear about the case.
"It's heartbreaking when tenants damage a property. It's costly financially and another thing to consider is the loss of rent that a landlord suffers until they get a property back to the standard needed to rent it," she said.
Most tribunal decisions were brought by landlords against tenants "although that's starting to level off a little more".
"I am glad that tenants in this situation were not given name suppression because in many cases lately that information has not been disclosed.
"That means that landlords can't do property credit and background checks on potential tenants. If a tenant with name suppression damages a house, then a landlord can't find out about that by checking tenancy rulings," she said.
She worried about how much it would cost the insurance company to pay to fix the premises in the latest ruling.
-By Anne Gibson
