Special property law for Chch
Christchurch property owners will get protection from the legal chaos of earthquake movement.
Land movement of a metre or more has forced authorities to come up with a unique legal fix.
Many parts of the city have been affected by shallow ground movement, where buildings, fences and land had moved because of lateral spreading and stretching. These movements have challenged the integrity of property titles.
In February the surveyor general recommended Canterbury surveyors use a common law principle that property boundaries are fixed, even if land moves.
Property professionals have been calling on the Government to be more ‘‘pragmatic’’.
Christchurch surveyor Adrian Cowie last year said the consequences of incorrect surveying could be ‘‘catastrophic’’.
Licensed surveyors who were surveying for rebuilds of new homes were ‘‘increasingly placing the new boundary marks in the wrong location’’. Speed, rather than accuracy, was becoming the new norm in defining the city’s legal boundaries, he said.
Insurers could be forced to rebuild new homes, while some homeowners could findtheir fences, driveways and garages on a neighbour’s property.
It meant an EQC land claim could become an issue when land had actually moved into a neighbour’s title. EQC would have to find a way to ‘‘remedy shifting the land back to its original location’’.
The Government last week tabled the Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill. New Zealand Institute of Surveyors president Mark Allan said the Government had been asked to ‘‘ring-fence’’ Christchurch and parts of Selwyn and Waimakariri from common law.
He expected the first draft draft of the bill going to Parliament would include a moratorium on surveys done since the earthquakes, making them compliant with rules and guidelines at the time.
If the survey was ‘‘completely at odds’’ with evidence of land occupation, LINZ could require ‘‘remedial survey work’’ to fix faults.
The draft bill says boundaries ‘‘are deemed to have moved with the movement of land caused by the Canterbury earthquakes (whether the movement was horizontal or vertical, or both), unless the movement was a landslip.’’
The bill clarifies that a quakerelated boundary adjustment that follows moved boundaries was not subdivision, so did not require resource consent.
Allan said in his view the current draft of the bill ‘‘promotes the option that causes the least disruption and the least concern for land owners’’.
CanCERN spokesman Leanne Curtis said the community network wanted a pragmatic solution that meant ‘‘if you’ve moved a metre forward, you’ll lose a metre back.’’
Property rights had to be preserved, so that people knew what they had now and in future when they might decide to sell. No-one should get ‘‘hammered later on’’.
A LINZ spokesman said the Government was working on a first reading of the bill as soon as possible.