If a landlord does not provide a signed tenancy agreement in writing to a tenant, they are committing an unlawful act and an infringement offence. 

It is also an unlawful act for a landlord to fail to incude all the necessary information in a tenancy agreement.

What a tenancy agreement must include.

Landlords are also required to keep and provide additional records about the property, including healthy homes standards information and maintenance records.

The full list of records that landlords must keep is in section 123A of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986.(external link) — New Zealand Legislation website