Vexatious landlord Cheryl Scott: the scion of a property empire, or a fantasist?

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Cheryl Scott is alleged to have harassed those connected to her rental properties for decades, using the courts to pursue grievances far beyond the limits of a fixed-term lease. ETHAN TE ORA investigates.

Cheryl Scott​ leans over the seat of a toilet and takes a photo inside the bowl.

While she does this, the Wellington landlord is on camera herself. Ollie Rench​, a tenant at the three-bedroom flat, films the inspection on his phone. His disembodied groan can be heard at the moment the shutter clicks.

“Are you really taking a photo in the toilet, Cheryl?” he says.

Scott straightens a moment, seeming to study the image in the viewfinder. Apparently unsatisfied, she shuffles closer to the toilet, releasing the shutter of the point-and-shoot camera three more times.

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The inspection, carried out one afternoon this October, is over within 20 minutes.

For the past six months, Rench has filmed Scott’s monthly inspections. And she has repeatedly objected – in writing and in person – even, once, reporting him to the police.

Throughout this particular visit, she shields her face from the camera with a notebook. At one point, she threatens to slap Rench. “Stay away from me,” she says.

“Don’t f…ing back towards me then,” Rench responds.

Three days after the inspection, Scott tapes a nine-page handwritten letter to the front door. Written in strident, legalistic language, the letter informs Rench – and flatmate Scott O’Callaghan​ – that they have violated the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA).

Attached to the letter is a notice giving the flatmates 14 days to fix a litany of issues, at which point Scott will return for a re-inspection.

The alleged infractions, listed point by point, include “very visible poo” on the toilet bowl, dust on the window frames, flower heads on the front lawn.

It is the sixth 14-day notice she has issued since the tenancy started a year ago. Other notices allege that resting shovels against a fence – or not picking leaves off the lawn – are violations of the lease agreement.

One notice claims a coat hanger on a curtain railing constitutes a breach of the RTA.

Each notice is supported by its own handwritten letter, often pages long. And those letters appear to foreshadow legal action. They contain references to “serious offences”, “illegal behaviour” and “breaches of legislation”.

“This will serve as evidence,” a recent letter ends.

The trajectory of the disagreement feels inevitable. Over the past two decades, practically every inch of the flat on Rajkot Tce in Broadmeadows has been litigated – and re-litigated – through both the Tenancy Tribunal and Disputes Tribunal, in cases typically brought by Scott herself.

Another of Scott’s rentals, on Horokiwi Rd in nearby Newlands, figures heavily in litigation, too – as does her own Khandallah home.

A search for Wellington Tenancy Tribunal decisions and orders involving Scott turns up more than 200 pages, mostly over a seven-year period.

The paperwork shows her taking cases against tenants across eight different tenancies, often pursuing unrealistically high dollar-figure amounts for damages, dragging disputes through lengthy appeals processes for up to four years.

Tenants often allege harassment, in the forms of persistent communications and lengthy letters. Those letters are “litigious and accusatory in tone”, an adjudicator notes. One such letter comprises “an extraordinary 35 handwritten pages”.

But Scott’s letters are dwarfed by her own court submissions. She was once ordered to condense 148 handwritten pages of evidence into 10 single-sided, typewritten pages.

Tradespeople who work on Scott’s rental properties often go unpaid. In fact, Scott habitually attempts to make them pay out damages to her instead.

No fewer than nine cases have ended up at the Disputes Tribunal over the past 13 years, with amounts owed ranging between $329, for a small paint job, to $14,795, for a larger renovation. The latter case dragged on for five years before Scott paid up.

Some tenants and tradespeople, fearing another drawn out legal fight, have asked not to be named in this story, which is also covered in Cheryl Scott versus the people, the latest episode of Stuff’s True Story podcast.

Scott doesn’t own a smartphone, nor does she use the internet. Calls to her landline often go unanswered, tenants say.

Taped across her letterbox, inside a transparent A4 file, is a handwritten note: “Please put any mail etc. under the Red Brick, as the actual letterbox is not functioning.” (The Red Brick, in the note, is styled as a proper noun.) And, indeed, there is a red brick, inside an open compartment to the left of the letterbox, exposed to the street and the elements.

Tradespeople, renters and bailiffs alike – left with no other options to contact Scott – often cross paths at her Khandallah doorstep. And then, frequently, she trespasses them.

Scott has not responded to a typewritten letter detailing allegations raised in this story.

Her only acknowledgement comes in the form of a notice, courier-delivered to the Stuff newsroom in Wellington, trespassing the reporter from her home.

An invisible empire

Cheryl Scott is either the scion of a property empire, or a fantasist.

Rumours about her property holdings originate at a common source – Scott herself. She is known as a compulsive talker. Most tradespeople and tenants describe – at some point in their acquaintance with her – being subjected to hours-long monologues, dripping with self-disclosure.

A one-time tenant compares his former landlord to “a black hole into which time disappears”.

The most common story told by Scott concerns a vast property portfolio, passed down from her father to her.

The size of the inheritance tends to vary, depending on the source. Thirty properties often, sometimes 15 or 20 – a combination of residential and commercial property, mostly in Wellington, Wairarapa or Levin. More property, supposedly down south, in either Christchurch or Timaru.

Yet, the name Cheryl Scott shows up on just four current property titles. Three of them are residential houses in Wellington – the two rentals, plus Scott’s own home. The fourth is a commercial property in Levin.

That doesn’t mean the story isn’t true. Ownership of property is notoriously difficult to trace – sometimes held in opaque entities or trusts, rather than under a person’s name. And if the properties were sold before digital records began in the early 1990s, they would be virtually untraceable today.

Scott was born on May 30, 1948 to parents James Scott and Lucy Scott. In 1981, at age 33, she became the main benefactor of her father’s will. She inherited two thirds of his estate – the other third going to her brother – although specific assets are not listed in the settlement.

Her occupation on the will – and a contemporaneous 1980s property title – is listed as “real estate agent”.

She bought the Khandallah home, where she lives today, six months after her father’s death. The pair of rentals, from the tenancy disputes, were acquired much later – 1997, in the case of the Horokiwi Rd flat, and 1999, in the case of the Rajkot Tce house.

Two additional properties – a house in Petone, and a commercial space in Miramar – were once owned by Scott, and sold in the early 2000s.

At that point she ran a dress shop, along Ganges Rd in Khandallah, but closed the business soon after. Based on stories Scott tells tenants, she has lived off rental income ever since.

The first references to tenancy disputes appear five years later.

Sympathy for the landlord

For Scott’s tenants, the story begins with a flat hunt, and far less intrigue.

Some respond to rental listings in The Dominion Post, or exchange emails with property managers after spotting the advert on Trade Me. Others become unwitting participants in a sacrificial swap with tenants breaking a lease on Facebook.

The available pool of tenants seems to be shrinking as the years go by. Several property management companies have barred Scott, owing to a string of insistent, aggressive communications.

“She tried to give me 18 handwritten pages of extra clauses, on top of a normal tenancy agreement,” a property manager working at one such agency recalls. Even after being turned down, Scott showed up to the office another half dozen times.

Another source has heard Scott now goes 50 kilometres out of Wellington to find representation for her rentals.

But first impressions of the landlord are often sympathetic.

Ollie Rench – one of the current tenants at Rajkot Tce – thought she was “just lonely”. He had responded to a post on Facebook last November, from a tenant offloading the flat. (The previous tenants remain ensnared with Scott at the Tenancy Tribunal more than a year later.)

The initial meeting to sign the lease was planned as a pit stop – while his girlfriend waited outside in the car – but turned into a six-hour forum.

“I got her whole life story on the night,” he remembers. “Although she was old, and waffled, she seemed thorough – and that put my mind at ease a bit.” He rationalised the talking as a possible indication of social isolation.

Another tenant thought Scott was “a little bit eccentric”, but basically harmless.

Wilson McKay​ and Nick Bremner​ became involved with Scott when she spotted their van on the street and ambushed them. The roofers channelled the energy of someone helping an older relative set up a new piece of technology.

“She didn’t have a computer and was struggling to find tradies,” he recalls. “We thought, ‘well, we can help you out’.”

They went back and forth about the quote for weeks – with Scott making several long in-person visits out to their Upper Hutt workshop – before signing a contract for the $2560 job.

Builder Garry Ledbury was first contacted by Scott in May 2020, coming away from the phone call an hour later understanding that lockdown had stalled a bathroom renovation at the Rajkot Tce house.

“You sort of felt sorry for her,” Ledbury says. “The previous guy had maybe left her in the lurch.”

The remaining work – slightly under $30,000 – would take about six weeks, he estimated. He insisted on being paid an $11,000 deposit up front. Scott seemed resistant at first, he remembers, but eventually agreed to pay.

Interminable phone calls and long letters

Within a few weeks, the routine renovation became high maintenance.

Ledbury wasn’t needed at the house for the work’s initial stages. The bulk of early work was carried out by subcontractors. But Scott visited the site every day – and she wasn’t a passive observer.

He got those reports secondhand, as well as firsthand, because she called him every day.

“Basically, within five minutes, the call would become about everything else,” he says. “About her love life, about her father. Everyone who’s ever been through her house and given her grief.”

Ledbury started to verbally stipulate a five-minute time limit at the outset of calls. Thinking back today, he estimates Scott called him at least 50 times throughout the job.

Tenants typically realised something was up around the time of the first property inspection. By law, landlords can do inspections as often as every four weeks. Scott avows herself of that right, almost to the very letter.

Over 12 months as her tenant, Rench counts 11 inspections – not including six re-inspections following 14-day notices.

“It’s like she wants the rental income, but doesn’t want someone to actually live in the house,” he says.

Each inspection is typically preceded by two handwritten letters – the first a notification, the second a reminder – plastered to the front door. Each 14-day notice is supported by a typically lengthy handwritten letter.

When Rench rang Tenancy Services, he was advised to issue Scott a 14-day notice – for breach of quiet enjoyment. The term refers to a person’s right to enjoy peace and quiet in their own home. Rench puts it this way: “Your landlord can’t harass you.”

He hand-delivered the notice, asking for the constant contact to stop.

Scott rebutted the notice, in the form of a six-page handwritten letter, saying it contradicted her rights under the RTA to “access the property”. She also trespassed him from her home.

This letter followed perhaps the most tense inspection involving the tenant and landlord. As shown in his own video recording, Rench baits Scott. “Are we going to the Tribunal? Let’s go, I’m ready.”

“Don’t challenge me,” she responds.

Scott labels Rench’s behaviour, in the later letter, “intentionally and deliberately intimidating” and writes that she felt “extremely concerned” for her own safety. She accuses him of punching the passenger window of her car – Rench, however, denies this, and the alleged incident isn’t captured on his phone recording.

Dave Walker has rented a room at the Horokiwi Rd flat since last February. He received a 14-day notice last April, accompanied by a five-page handwritten letter.

This letter, too, mentioned “leaves or twigs on the lawn” – alongside many other allegations, including that the flatmates were using an air cooker “without proper protections” for the kitchen counter.

Walker supplies a folder that holds 26 handwritten letters, spanning across more than 50 pages, including three additional 14-day notices. “She just won’t leave you alone,” he says.

Leaves on the lawn are a regular bugbear for Scott, a scourge mentioned in notices issued to at least two previous tenants at Rajkot Tce.

Unraked leaves – and other alleged minor infractions – are not breaches of the RTA. Scott hasn’t pursued them further, across her numerous disputes, beyond issuing 14-day notices.

At one point during the one-sided correspondence, Rench estimates letters arrived every four days. A former Rajkot Tce tenant recalls a six-week period where letters, sometimes as long as 12 pages, arrived “every two or three days”.

The letters, tenants say, are often incoherent and rambling. “It was almost like a view into the inner workings of her mind,” one tenant recalls. “You could see her thought process chopping and changing.”

The longest letter on record, referenced by a Tenancy Tribunal adjudicator in a later order, comprised “an extraordinary 35 handwritten pages”.

Scott is prone to bouts of fury with seemingly no provocation. One former tenant, at Rajkot Tce, remembers a final flat inspection – a three-hour affair – that ended with Scott “screaming at us” on the doorstep.

McKay, one of the roofers, describes her as “a firecracker about to explode”, altercations that might involve Scott jumping and screaming, or visibly trembling.

“She froths at the mouth,” the other roofer, Bremner, says.

Interactions with Scott inevitably exact a psychic toll. “It started playing on my mental health pretty bad,” Rench says. “Like I was stressed out all the time.”

“I just dreaded coming home and seeing another letter taped to the door,” another tenant recalls.

“She just made us feel anxious living there,” a third tenant says. “There’s bad landlords, and then there’s Cheryl Scott.”

‘Your baby is not my concern’

One couple moved into the Horokiwi Rd flat in 2014, while expecting their first child.

There was persistent black mould on the master bedroom ceiling. One night, the father-to-be ended up in the emergency department – a reaction to the mould, he says.

The couple later tried to break the lease, four months into the tenancy, weeks before their child was born.

“She wouldn’t let us leave,” the man remembers.

According to court documents, the couple’s baby would later have difficulties breathing, a condition a doctor “attributed to their house being damp and mouldy”.

The house was visited by a health officer from the Wellington City Council, who described “visible signs of mould growth on the walls, carpets, floors and ceilings in a number of rooms”, even though the house was properly ventilated by the tenants.

Scott, conversely, attributed the mould to the couple’s “living habits”.

The council officer wrote to the tenants: “It is my belief that the house is not fit for habitation.” And they used that letter to give Scott two days notice to cancel the lease under the RTA.

Scott later questioned the officer’s jurisdiction to make such an assessment, and the notice was revoked.

The matter crawled through the courts for three years, with Scott unsuccessful in her claim for backdated rent. The man, who subsequently moved to Auckland, flew down several times to attend hearings.

One couple, this time at Rajkot Tce, ended up staying overnight in hospital when their newborn came down with bronchitis. Scott, when asked by them to make improvements at the draughty house, responded defiantly.

“Your baby is not my concern,” they recall her saying.

Glenn Rangi​ lived at the Horokiwi Rd flat for about 14 months, beginning in late 2016, moving there in the wake of family tragedy. He relocated from Australia after his son was in a life-threatening car crash.

“Mould was the number one problem in that house,” he recalls.

His son was not expected to live, but did – and Rangi decided to buy a house in the neighbourhood, ensuring he would be near to his son, who now required life-long care. He made an optimistic offer, by coincidence on the flat next-door – and it was accepted.

Scott refused point-blank to acknowledge a request to break the lease, something an adjudicator would later describe, in writing, as “legal though perhaps not reasonable”.

Unable to get a response from Scott, Rangi abandoned the flat, keeping money aside for rent payments. Scott would allege that he urinated throughout the house before leaving, eventually winning damages of nearly $10,000, which included replacing the carpet.

Rangi regrets not taking photos before leaving. “We are not the type of people where we urinate openly in a property we reside in.”

He still lives next door, but has been trespassed from his former rental, after attempting to warn prospective tenants about Scott.

When a group of renters opted not to sign a new lease at the Rajkot Tce flat, arrangements for flat viewings became contentious.

Scott insisted they needed to answer phone calls about possible viewing times immediately – irrespective of work commitments or the time of day – otherwise she would consider them to have “refused access to the property”.

“Half the time she’d end up screaming at me down the phone … calling me names and saying how horrible I was,” the tenant recalls.

She was once talking to Scott when the train she was on passed through a tunnel and lost reception.

“That came up in court as me hanging up on her. She said she knew the train lines like the back of her hand and there was no way I was passing through a tunnel at that point in the conversation.”

Cheryl Scott vs the people

Ledbury, the builder, wasn’t paid after work at Rajkot Tce was completed.

A second partial payment was made part-way through the job – but $11,325 remained outstanding. His invoice period lapsed. “A woman who called you every day now wouldn’t answer,” he remembers.

He planned to file an application at the Disputes Tribunal, but Scott beat him to it by several days. She wanted $30,000 in compensation from him.

Bremner and Wilson, the roofers, filed an application at the Disputes Tribunal, too. Scott counter-claimed, for $4500, saying they had breached the Fair Trading Act. In various ways, about eight of them, including an unreasonable quote and unreasonable delays.

Scott’s handwritten evidence, ahead of hearings, can be overlong and difficult to decipher – with submissions on record of 148 pages, 68 pages and 66 pages. Ledbury estimates there have been more than 1000 pages of handwritten evidence in his case altogether.

Scott argues, in details recorded for one case, that she should be allowed to read those submissions aloud, for posterity on the tape recording.

“Ms Scott seems to believe she has an unfettered right to present her case as she wishes,” one adjudicator notes.

Several times, Scott’s testimony is recorded as running so long that hearings are forced to adjourn.

In the direct transcript of a hearing, Scott is warned repeatedly by the adjudicator that time for her testimony is running out. Yet she runs 15 minutes overtime anyway. At four different points in the transcript, Scott interjects, and is either told to “shush” or “be quiet” by the adjudicator.

“She always does this,” a tenant at the hearing says.

“I know, you just have to do your best,” the adjudicator responds.

An adjudicator writes, in the preamble to a decision, that Scott is unable to present her case “in a reasonably clear and concise manner”. Other adjudicators label her “disorganised”, “repetitious” or simply “challenging”.

Bremner, one of the roofers, describes Scott coming to the Disputes Tribunal with two briefcases, and losing herself amongst a blizzard of paper. An adjudicator records that Scott is unable to produce documents referred to in her submissions.

On three occasions, Scott has been found to have breached the rights of her tenants to quiet enjoyment.

Paperwork survives for only one of those cases. The adjudicator writes, in the original decision, that Scott’s repeat offending warrants a penalty at the higher end, the sum being “exemplary damages for harassment”. Scott would appeal this penalty to the District Court, with the amount eventually reduced from $1750 to $750.

“The amount of time we had spent, in terms of annual leave, now exceeded the monies in contention,” a tenant says.

When unsuccessful, Scott typically exhausts every appeal. Even when successful, Scott sometimes appeals, pursuing larger rewards.

Ledbury won his case four times. Bremner and McKay have won twice and, now, Scott is appealing for a second time, challenging the entire process.

Scott often attacks court processes as well as court appointed representatives. She is recorded, in decisions, as making allegations against adjudicators ranging from “bias”, “incompetence”, “scheming and planning”, as well as colluding with “tenants outside of hearings”.

No beginning, or end

By her own account, Scott is a veteran of those systems she critiques. She once bragged to a tenant that she had been coming to the Tenancy Tribunal since its inception in 1987.

The only confirmation of cases before 2011 exists as oblique references to earlier historic decisions. The Wellington Tenancy Tribunal – and most other local tribunals throughout the country – have disposed of this earlier paperwork.

The Ministry of Justice confirms paperwork at local tribunals “may be destroyed” after 10 years. An individual tribunal might be able to track down a specific older case, but cannot blanketly determine whether orders beyond 10 years still exist.

In other words, a needle in the haystack can possibly be found, but not the haystack.

One earlier reference, in the existing paperwork, is to a tenancy dispute from Christchurch involving Scott, in 2009. The Christchurch District Court confirms any orders related to this case no longer exist.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment says its tenancy investigations team does not hold a file on Scott.

The last time Ledbury rang the courts, he received some surprising news – according to a registrar, Scott had recently acquired a smartphone. He sounds incredulous sharing this news, like something fundamental to the reality he knows has shifted.

Ledbury started bankruptcy proceedings against Scott, wanting the fact she hadn’t paid him to be publicly notified.

An initial hearing was adjourned, then a few days before the new court date, the $11,325 appeared in his account. He’s still weighing up further action to recover legal costs.

Rench still lives at the Rajkot Tce flat, for now at least.

He received another handwritten letter from Scott last week, offering him a new fixed-term lease – despite trespassing him from her home and reporting him to the police. Irrespective, too, of the numerous alleged breaches of the lease agreement.

There is one catch. She wants to increase the rent by $45 a week. The higher rent would be above market rates for comparable homes in the Broadmeadows suburb, meaning it likely wouldn’t stand if challenged at the Tenancy Tribunal.

The point is moot for Rench, who doesn’t plan to stay at the house beyond the end of his lease in February.

It’s a possible harbinger of things to come, though. Not staying in one of Scott’s flats doesn’t guarantee leaving her orbit. He expects another letter, perhaps this time from the Tenancy Tribunal, someday soon.

True Story is a new current affairs podcast from Adam Dudding and Eugene Bingham, makers of Stuff’s smash-hit The Commune. Each episode features a different story. This week’s is ‘Cheryl Scott versus the people’, written and presented by Ethan Te Ora, author of this investigation. It’s available from www.stuff.co.nz/truestory and wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Apple, Spotify or any other podcast app to get new episodes delivered instantly to your device.