Cabinet has agreed to amend the Rating Valuations Regulations 1998 to improve the quality of sales data and create efficiencies in the rating valuation system. The Rating Valuations Rules 2008 also need to be amended to align with those changes and to support mandatory data requirements for property sales information.
Background
All councils have a District Valuation Roll (DVR), which is a record of the rating valuations of all properties in their district. Councils need to update these valuations every three years in a process known as general revaluation, and maintain the DVR between revaluations. Councils rely on rating valuations as a basis for implementing their rating policies.
Property sales information is a key input into general revaluations because it is the primary market evidence used to assess capital and land value. The price that a property is sold for must be provided to councils by the former owner under section 31 of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002. Other information about the sale of a property may be provided voluntarily. However, the property sales information provided, including sale price, is often missing or inaccurate. This has been contributing to a decline in the quality of general revaluations and creates inefficiencies for councils and their valuation service providers. It requires work to gather missing sales information for revaluations, taking time and resources that could otherwise be used elsewhere.
What is in the new regulations?
The Rating Valuations Regulations 1998 will be amended to make the following changes:
- When a property is sold, the seller, or the solicitor or conveyancer acting on their behalf in the sale, will be required to provide the following information to the Valuer-General:
- sale price
- the date of the agreement for the sale and purchase of the property
- settlement date
- whether the sale price includes GST
- the amount of the sale price that covers the land, building and fixtures (if this is different from the sale price)
- the nature of the sale, as specified in the Rating Valuations Rules.
- The property sales information must be provided within certain timeframes, and in the case of a transaction done via Landonline, must also be provided via the Landonline Notice of Change (NoC) service.
- It will be an offence not to comply with these requirements.
What is changing in the Rules?
To align with the amended Regulations, the Valuer-General is proposing the insertion of a new Rule 9 and Appendix I into the Rating Valuations Rules 2008. Rule 9 and Appendix I set out the sale reporting requirements and nature of sale descriptions practitioners must use when providing information on property sales in Landonline. These options will be codified within the existing NoC service.
Consultation document & FAQs
Rating Valuations Rules 2008
A copy of the current Rules (without proposed changes) can be found here: Rating Valuations Rules 2008: version date 1 October 2010 - LINZS30300
Privacy of submissions
Submissions are official information and may be the subject of requests under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA). The OIA specifies that information is to be made available to requesters unless there is a good reason for withholding it.
All submissions received within the timeframe will be considered and used to inform advice to the Government on these proposals. LINZ will not publish individual submissions. Submissions will be summarised and any statements will not be attributed to individuals or organisations.
Submitters may wish to indicate grounds for withholding specific information contained in their submissions, such as where they consider information is commercially sensitive or they wish personal information to be withheld.
LINZ will consider these requests in accordance with the provisions of the OIA. Should LINZ decide to withhold information on request, any such decision is subject to review by the Ombudsman.
Make a submission
Feedback can be provided by:
- Submitting an individual or collective written submission.
- Contributing to a submission from an organisation or professional body.
It would be helpful if feedback:
- Refers to the relevant section number in the Rules where possible.
- Includes the reason behind your comments (examples are encouraged).
- Comments on the options in the table, including whether they are easy to understand, if some options needed to be altered, or if there are additional options that should be provided.