Owners surprised by Maori land flag

Tens of thousands of property titles have been flagged by Land Information New Zealand as potential Maori land without it conducting individual checks or telling the registered owners.

In many cases, the first time property owners may be aware of the flag is when they decide to sell.

Local Maori trusts appear not to have been informed about the indicators, termed Maori land flags, which have been placed on more than 61,000 properties nationally since 2003, and remain linked to more than 31,000.

About 550 properties in the Greater Wellington region remain flagged. The flags appear as part of a standard title search, but are not on the registered title.

Real estate agents Tania O’Connor and Paula Watkins, of Just Patterson in Wellington, dealt with a case in which the existence of a flag came as a surprise to the landowner after it turned up via a routine title search.

The flag had been put on the title because the property had been Maori land in the late 19th cen- tury. ‘‘ We came across it last year,’’ O’Connor and Watkins said. ‘‘It was a complete surprise to us. We had never seen one before, neither had anyone in our office.

‘‘We found it because we did a title search before the property was marketed and so we had time to deal with it.

‘‘If we hadn’t, and it only got found once the sale was almost complete, it could have been a problem. Of course, we disclosed it to the buyer.’’

The marketing of the property had to be postponed until the owner had the flag investigated and removed.

Michael Veneer, acting registrar general of land at Linz, said that, of the 30,000 flags removed nationwide, 20,000 cases were instigated at either the landowner’s request or by Linz itself.

Linz published information about Maori land flagging when it was introduced in 2003. But he said landowners were not individually notified.

He said the flags were ‘‘only administrative’’ and investigating every title would have been too expensive.

‘‘The Maori land flag does not determine land status and has no legal effect on flagged titles. It is purely an administrative prompt to ensure land status is properly investigated when property is dealt with.

‘‘A full investigation of each and every title would have been prohibitively costly and timeconsuming, and was not warranted given the flag does not purport to provide a definitive statement of land status.’’

Liz Mellish, of Te Atiawa and Ngati Ruanui iwi, is chairwoman of the Palmerston North Maori Reserve Trust and had never heard of the system.

The trust operates in Palmerston North and Wellington, and works closely with the Wellington Tenths Trust.

‘‘It raises questions,’’ she said. ‘‘I certainly have had no consultation with Linz on this matter. I’m still unclear what criteria they have used to establish the flagging arrangements.’’

Vermeer said the flags were appended to registered titles where Linz decided there might be a Maori interest.

‘‘Linz ran checks across the Landonline database to identify potential Maori land based on certain indicators – such as land appellation, which has some unique characteristics in the case of Maori land, and prior-registered Maori Land Court orders.’’

Linz had paid legal costs incurred by landowners to have the indicators removed on two occasions, and many of the original flags were no longer in place.

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The Maori land flag does not determine land status and has no legal effect on flagged titles. Michael Veneer Acting registrar general of land at Linz