FAQ's

What is surveying and what does a surveyor do?
Surveying involves a diverse range of skills and knowledge and is both an inside and outside job. It involves the study of land and resource management law, measurement and ownership of land, design and advocacy skills as well as computer technology for data management.

Surveyors are trained in a variety of fields such as Cadastral (Land Title) Surveying, Civil Engineering, Land Law, Planning, Measurement Science, Geographic Information Systems, Industrial Measurement, Earth Deformation Measurement, Hydrographic Surveying, and Cartography (Map Making). Most Surveyors specialise in one or two particular areas.

In a nutshell, surveyors research your land and follow all necessary steps and legislation to enable you to fulfill whatever you wish to achieve with it.

What is involved when subdividing a property?
Firstly, a scoping exercise is completed to determine what the potential subdivider wishes to achieve. Relevant land information is researched to determine what elements make up the property and what may affect the subdivision.

The subdivider’s requests are examined with respect to the rules, regulations, objectives and policies of the District Plan to determine how to best present the application to the District Council.

The application is lodged with the District Council and they have twenty working days to process the application. At the Council's discretion, it can notify parties deemed to be affected by the proposal. At the conclusion of the notification period, the Council examines any submissions that were received. If there are submissions received that oppose the application, then the application will be heard by Council’s Judicial Committee.

Council is likely to impose conditions upon granting a subdivision consent. ie providing adequate access and servicing; providing easements where necessary; providing consent notices regarding conditions that are to be dealt with on an ongoing basis; providing conservation covenants if required and fencing of these. These conditions need to be satisfied before a subdivider can be issued with new titles. A Civil Engineering design of access and services for the subdivision can often be requested by the council, showing various items such as road extensions, private accesses and piped services.

The new subdivision boundaries must be pegged where they have not been previously pegged, and a survey dataset prepared for lodgment with LINZ.

The title sheet of the survey plan is to be certified by the Council and the dataset can be lodged with LINZ for approval as to survey.

Who are LINZ?
Land Information New Zealand. They hold authoriative information about land surveys and ownership, topographic maps and nautical charts.

What will it cost to subdivide my land?
This varies depending on the size, location, type of terrain, Council fees, Development Contributions and the local planning rules that the apply to certain land. The proximity of services to the property and their capabilities to serve the subdivided land can also affect the cost. A free, no obligation consultation can be completed to estimate the cost involved by contacting John Hesseling on ***.

I am about to build a house. What survey do I need and how long will it take?
You may need an architectural site survey, boundary redefinition survey or also a topographical survey depending on the site and the architects requirements. The field work normally takes 1-2 days of site work and another 1 - 2 days of processing.


I want to build a fence. How do I find my boundaries?
Only a Licensed Cadastral Surveyor can reliably locate and re-peg your boundaries. Employ us!


What is a limited title?
All title to land in New Zealand is guaranteed by the government but on some old titles, they have limited guarantee. This limitation is 'as to Parcels' meaning the area and boundaries are unknown and that your land has never been surveyed properly.


What is crosslease title?
These titles are based on undivided ownership of land and then leases or cross leases between the parties for the area that the buildings occupy.


I have a crosslease title. Can this be converted to freehold?
This is a viable option in most cases as long as all landowners are in agreeance. Please contact one of our team to discuss further.