The Final Tenancy Report and Why It Travels With the Tenant

A tenancy ends well when the final report is already written by the time the keys come back. The move-out date goes into HomeReview, the final inspection is scheduled on its own, and the tenancy closes with a complete report and a final tenant rating drawn from every inspection across the lease. The property manager signs the tenancy off and moves on, with nothing left to piece together later.

The harder version of move-out is a scramble. The bond needs settling, the next tenant is waiting, and the record of how the tenancy actually went is scattered across a few inspection photos, a couple of emails, and the property manager's memory. By the time that record is needed again, usually when the same tenant applies somewhere new, it has gone cold.

A final tenancy report is worth far more than the half hour it takes to compile. It is the moment a year of inspections becomes one clear rating, and the moment that rating starts working for the next property manager who deals with the same tenant. Built well, the report does not just close a tenancy. It travels with the tenant to the next authorised manager who needs it.

What the final tenancy report pulls together

A good final report is not written from scratch on move-out day. It is compiled from inspections that already sit on the file.

In HomeReview, entering the move-out date is what starts it. The system schedules the final tenancy inspection automatically, the same way it scheduled the 3, 6, 9 and 12 month visits during the tenancy. The property manager completes that final inspection, and the platform draws the whole tenancy together into one report on the tenant profile: every inspection, in order, with its photos, timestamps and notes.

That is the difference between a report and a recollection. A 200-property Christchurch agency closing several tenancies in a month does not have to reconstruct each one. The inspection history is already there, the final inspection slots onto the end of it, and the report compiles from a record that was built a visit at a time.

How the final tenant rating is set

A fair final rating reflects the whole tenancy, not the last walk-through.

The final tenant rating is the average of every inspection taken across the lease. Each inspection during the tenancy records the same things in the same way, property care, cleanliness, maintenance issues and any compliance concerns, and each one feeds the final figure. A single difficult month does not define the rating, and neither does a tidy final clean. The rating reflects how the tenancy ran from start to finish.

It helps to be clear about what the rating is. It is HomeReview's own operational figure, a summary of how the tenancy went, built from your own inspections. It is not a credit score, it is not a regulated assessment, and it is not a character judgement. Like the property rating set at the pre-move-in, it is a working number the agency uses to make better decisions, held to the evidence behind it.

Why the report travels with the tenant

The real value of a final report shows up after the tenancy, when the same tenant applies somewhere new.

When the report is complete, it sits on the tenant's Tenant Intelligence Profile alongside the inspection history and the final rating. If that tenant later applies to another property manager using HomeReview, the final report is visible to that authorised manager as part of a background check. The reference call that used to depend on whether the previous manager remembered the tenant becomes a dated record instead.

This is the part a spreadsheet cannot do. A 30-property Auckland agency that ran a clean tenancy builds something the tenant carries with them, and a self-managing Wellington landlord with four units can see a real history before signing, rather than starting every applicant as an unknown. The visibility is deliberately narrow: the profile is accessible only to authorised property managers. It is never public, and it is not shown to tenants or landlords directly.

1. 01

   Inspection history

   Every inspection across the tenancy, with photos, timestamps and notes, in the order they happened.

2. 02

   The final tenant rating

   The average score across the tenancy, with the inspections it was built from sitting underneath it.

3. 03

   Tenancy history

   The dates, the property, and the tenancy record, so the next manager sees the shape of the tenancy at a glance.

4. 04

   Risk indicators

   Any change-detection flags the AI raised across inspections, kept as dated signals rather than opinions.

Keeping the final rating accurate and fair

A rating only travels well if it is accurate, current, and held to a clear standard.

The standard is set by the operating environment, not by HomeReview. Under the Privacy Act, information held about a person should be accurate and up to date before it is used, the person is entitled to see what is held about them, and it should be held securely and only for a clear purpose. A final tenancy report sits comfortably inside that because it is built from dated, first-hand inspections rather than impressions, and because access to it is limited to authorised property managers.

That is also what makes it defensible. Records that are specific, dated and sourced are the ones that hold up, whether the question comes from the tenant, from a new agency, or from the Tenancy Tribunal. It is the same discipline that runs through the 2026 compliance picture for New Zealand property managers: keep the record clean as the work happens, and it is ready whenever it is needed.

Where this leaves the property manager

The final tenancy report is where a year of inspections pays off. The cadence runs, each inspection adds to the record, and at move-out the platform turns that record into one report and one rating without a scramble. The property manager closes the tenancy cleanly, and the tenant leaves with a history that means something to the next manager who needs it.

_Sources: Tenancy Services (tenancy.govt.nz), Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz). As at June 2026._