Subdividing — what first?

We recommend discussing the project with your professionals first. Check that your local council’s district plan will allow you to subdivide your property. Your surveyor prepares a scheme plan to submit to the council for resource consent.

A resource consent for subdivision may be issued by your council from anywhere between 20 working days to years depending on the complexity of the project.

If your resource consent is issued, it will generally have a list of conditions and requirements to be completed before the council will sign off the subdivision. You can include a condition in your agreement that allows the seller and buyer to approve the resource consent before work begins.

The council’s signoff is known as s223 and 224 approval.

Once s223 and 224 approval is received, the LT Plan can be lodged with Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) by the surveyor with the legal documents being lodged by your lawyer at the same time; Once lodged at LINZ it takes approximately 15 to 20 working days for the Titles to issue. Once the Titles are issued your lawyer can then completed the transfer to a new buyer.

Easements and covenants

An easement is a right on, over or through someone else’s land such as a shared driveway or the right to lay power and phone lines, be it on, over or through land.

Your council may require you to include easements as part of the resource consent. If the correct easements aren’t in place you could find that the section you have sold has an electricity connection, but the buyer has no right to use it.

Covenants are a type of promise between landowners. By using covenants, you can restrict what the buyer does on their land.

Common covenants include setting out requirements for the size, colour and value of houses being built; whether the property can be used for “home” businesses; detailing fencing and landscaping requirements in the subdivision.

For a rural subdivision, you can restrict the types of animals being kept on the land such as no pigs; keeping plants that are noxious to animals away from boundaries; set out restrictions for types of home businesses that can be operated from the property and ensure that current and usual farming operations on adjoining farming properties are protected against complaints.

If you’re looking to subdivide, get in touch and we can help you through the process.