14-day notice to remedy NZ: complete 2026 guide

A 14-day notice to remedy is what a NZ landlord sends under section 56 of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 when a tenant has breached the tenancy, most often rent arrears under 21 days. The tenant gets 14 calendar days to fix the breach, counted from the day after the notice is legally received, not the day you hit send. Miss that distinction and the deadline you're working from is wrong.

This guide walks through the statutory basis, the service-of-notice rules that set the received date, two worked examples with real dates, and the mistakes that get these notices thrown out at the Tribunal.

What a 14-day notice to remedy is

Per Tenancy Services, a notice to remedy tells the other party three things: what they've done to breach the agreement, what they need to do to fix it, and how long they have to fix it. For rent arrears specifically, the standard timeframe is 14 calendar days, not working days. This is the pathway landlords use when arrears haven't yet reached 21 days and the tenant hasn't agreed to a repayment plan.

It is not an eviction notice. It's a formal opportunity to fix the breach before either side takes it further. If the tenant pays what's owed within the 14 days, the notice has done its job and the tenancy continues as normal.

The two other pathways: 21 days and 3 strikes

A 14-day notice to remedy isn't the only route to the Tribunal over unpaid rent. Two other sections of the Act cover arrears differently, and confusing them is one of the most common mistakes landlords make.

If arrears are already past 21 days when you're ready to apply, you can go straight to the Tribunal under section 55(1)(a) without sending a 14-day notice at all. The 3-strikes rule is a separate mechanism for periodic tenancies where rent keeps drifting late in smaller amounts. Each of the three notices under that rule must state the amount overdue, the dates it covers, the tenant's right to challenge it at the Tribunal, and how many other notices have already been given in the same 90-day period.

How the received date is set (section 136)

The 14-day count doesn't start on the date you sent the notice. It starts the day after the notice is legally received, and the received date depends entirely on how you served it. Per Tenancy Services, under section 136 of the Act:

Rentally currently supports email and hand-delivered service, which cover the vast majority of notices sent through the app. Letterbox and posted service carry their own longer, working-day-based timeframes; if you serve a notice by either method, you'll need to count the received date yourself using the table above.

Why landlords miscount the deadline

There are four distinct dates in a single 14-day notice, and most disputes over whether a notice was valid come down to landlords collapsing them into one.

• Sent date — when you issued the notice. Not a legal deadline on its own.
• Received date — set by the section 136 rules above. This is the date everything else is measured from.
• Remedy deadline (day 14) — 14 calendar days counted from the day after the received date.
• Actionable date — the day after the remedy deadline, shifted forward to the next working day if it falls on a weekend or public holiday. This is the earliest day you can apply to the Tribunal.

The most common error is counting 14 days from the sent date. An email sent at 6:47pm on a Tuesday isn't received until the next working day, which quietly moves every date after it forward by one, including the actionable date. Landlords who count from the wrong starting point often try to apply a day early, and an application filed before the actionable date has been reached is vulnerable to challenge.

Worked example: counting from a real notice

Say a tenant is $840 behind on rent. The landlord emails a 14-day notice to remedy at 2:00pm on Tuesday, 21 July 2026, before the 5pm cutoff.

If the tenant hasn't paid the arrears by Tuesday 4 August, the landlord can apply to the Tribunal from Wednesday 5 August, the day after the remedy deadline, because that date doesn't fall on a weekend or public holiday.

When the actionable date falls on a weekend

The shift-to-next-working-day rule only bites when the day after the remedy deadline lands on a non-working day. Here's a case where it does.

This time the landlord hand-delivers the notice at 4:30pm on Friday, 2 October 2026. Hand-delivery has no 5pm cutoff, so it's received immediately, the same day.

The day after the remedy deadline falls on a Saturday, so the actionable date shifts forward to the next working day. Sunday doesn't count either, which is why it lands on the Monday. A landlord who calendared the actionable date as Saturday and tried to apply that weekend would be applying before the tenancy has actually reached the point where the Tribunal can act on this notice.

Common mistakes that get notices thrown out

• Counting from the sent date, not the received date. These are only the same day if the notice was emailed before 5pm or hand-delivered.
• Missing the 5pm email cutoff. An evening email is received the next working day, not that same night.
• Using working days for the 14-day count itself. The 14 days are calendar days. Working days only come back into play for the actionable-date shift at the end.
• Forgetting the weekend and public holiday shift on the actionable date, and applying to the Tribunal a day or two too early.
• Serving by letterbox or post and assuming the same timing as email. These methods add 2 and 4 working days respectively before the notice is even considered received.
• Confusing this notice with the 21-day or 3-strikes pathways. If arrears are already at 21 days, no remedy notice is required at all.

How Rentally helps

Rentally does the counting, logging, and drafting. You review. You decide. You send. Notices are pre-filled from your tenancy data, the received date is set automatically from your service method and the time you sent it, and the remedy deadline and actionable date are calculated from there, including the working-day shift for weekends and public holidays. Every step is timestamped, so if a notice's validity is ever challenged, the record of exactly when it was sent and received is already there.

Rentally is built around the Residential Tenancies Act 1986, NZ-only, and starts at $9 a month for the first two properties.

Written by

Ron Venturina

Founder, Rentally

NZ founder building Rentally so self-managing landlords don't lose money to the same RTA admin gaps my parents did. Working days, strikes, Healthy Homes, IRD expenses, all sorted in one app.