When you bring your project to us, our Surveyors and Planners will consider your property in relation to a variety of Resource Management Act and local authority rules to determine if and how your property can be subdivided.
Below are just some of the issues we need to consider:
Which Council does your property come under?
- Development rules & standards can vary greatly from one local authority to the next.
Which zone of the District Plan is your property in?
- Each zone has different rules regarding lot sizes, access, density, site coverage, set back distances, stable building sites, flood levels & contaminate testing etc.
What size is your property? And what shape?
- Just because your property is double the minimum lot size or bigger, doesn’t mean you can automatically subdivide.
- There are rules about minimum road frontages, and the lot size area usually excludes any right-of-way; so on a long narrow section the right-of-way could take up a large portion of the available area and not leave you enough for a new section.
Location of any existing houses or other buildings on site.
- An existing dwelling may be located such that is doesn’t leave room for an access way to your proposed new Lot;
- or it may be in the middle of a property so there’s not enough area in front or behind it for a separate Lot;
- or it may create an unusual shape for the proposed new Lot, which may not allow for a suitable building platform, living and service areas, or turning circles for driveways.
Where are the driveway and existing services located?
- How will power, phone, gas, water, storm water, and wastewater services be supplied to the any new Lots?
- Some Council’s do not permit service lines to cross lot boundaries, so you may need to re-lay existing services to allow for proposed new boundaries.
- Is there any spare capacity in power and phone.
What classification of road is your property on?
- Councils and the NZ Transport Authority have rules about the number and location of entrance ways they will allow on to a road.
- These depend on things like the classification of the road, the speed limit, visibility distances, and distances from intersections.
A Simplified Subdivision Process
To start the process you need to see a land surveyor, such as ourselves, to ascertain whether your property meets all the relevant Council & Resource Management Act rules.
If it does, we will design a scheme plan with you and prepare a report detailing your proposal and how it meets the relevant rules. We submit these to your local Council as part of the Subdivision Resource Consent application.
Once Council are satisfied that your proposal meets all their rules & standards and that they have all the necessary information, they will issue you with a Subdivision Resource Consent.
This will include a list of Consent Conditions you will need to meet in order to get Council’s sign-off on the completed subdivision. We will go over the conditions with you and discuss how to satisfy them.
If there are engineering conditions, such as earthworks, roads, a right of way or installing services, we may need to prepare engineering design plans for Council’s approval before any works can take place. If your site is particularly complex, you may also need to engage a geotechnical engineer.
Once all of the physical works are done to meet the consent conditions, we will place the new boundary pegs on your site, and prepare the survey & title plans and accompanying survey documents.
We then apply to Council for their final sign off, supplying necessary plans & certifications from contractors & service providers for work done on site. Council review the information we send them and undertake a site visit to confirm works are done to their satisfaction, and finally issue their clearance certificates (223/224c).
Once we have Council’s final approval, we will liaise with your solicitor to lodge our survey plans & documents with Land Information NZ, while they lodge any easement documents and apply for new Titles.
Once you have new Titles, you are able to sell off the new Lot(s) you’ve created, or the one your existing house is on, or build on the new section.