Landwrap - September 2026

Kia ora

Welcome to this September edition of Landwrap.

Firstly, our sincere apologies for any inconvenience due to the Landonline outage late yesterday afternoon. We can confirm that Landonline services have now been restored.

Late yesterday (Wednesday 2 September), Landonline experienced an unplanned outage and was unavailable to users. Initial investigations quickly identified a technical infrastructure issue, which was resolved later that evening.

As a precaution, Landonline remained unavailable while we completed system checks overnight and again this morning.

Following those checks, and with all systems operating as expected, Landonline was made available to users this morning and the incident has now been resolved.

In this issue of Landwrap, you can read about:

• Our new and improved phone routing will connect you to the right team faster
• The Ngāti Rāhiri Tumutumu Claims Settlement Act 2026 Registration Guideline 2026
• The Te Here ā Nuku (Nelson Tenths) Act 2026 Registration Guideline 2026
• Updates to Authority and Instruction (A&I) form templates
• A change that the Registrar-General of Land has made to the compliance review process to address Overseas Investment Act (OIA) compliance.  
• New legislative requirements for the Notice of Change (NoC) process in Landonline which will take effect from 1 October 2026.
• LINZ has completed a major project to back-capture all pre-Landonline unit plans, making it easier for you to prepare replacement unit plans in Landonline.
• Improvements to Web Search: Search survey by surveyor is now available. You can search for surveys by a surveyor’s name or user ID.
• How to check and rectify a line thickness depiction issue in Plan Generation affecting height-limited primary parcels captured in the Strata layer.
• A reminder about the benefits of using the Landonline Schedule/memorandum

Also, please note: If you have been using Landwrap@linz.govt.nz to connect with us, please update your records to customersupport@linz.govt.nz 

New phone menu live – faster routing to the right team

We introduced a new phone menu at the beginning of July, to help direct your call to the right support team more quickly.

What changed?

When you call 0800 665 463 you are guided through a short set of options to route your enquiry.

What you’ll hear when you call*

You’ll first be asked to choose from three main options:

• Press 1 – Landonline enquiries
• Press 2 – Crown Property (including leases and rentals)
• Press 3 – All other enquiries

If you select Landonline (Press 1), you’ll then be able to choose:

• Press 2 – Dealing users
• Press 3 – Survey / Territorial Authority users
• Press 4 – Web Search users
• Press 5 – Finance enquiries

*Each of these has their own menu with specific support options.

Why has this been introduced

This change will help:

• Get you to the right specialist faster ✅  
• Reduce time spent being transferred ✅
• Improve overall response times ✅

What you need to do

No action is required, but when calling:

• Listen to the options and select the one that best matches your query.
• Have any relevant details ready (e.g. dealing or survey information). 

Ngāti Rāhiri Tumutumu Claims Settlement Act 2026 Registration Guideline 2026

The Registrar-General of Land has published the Ngāti Rāhiri Tumutumu Claims Settlement Act 2026 Registration Guideline 2026.

The guideline covers the title registration requirements of the Ngāti Rāhiri Tumutumu Claims Settlement Act 2026. The provisions of the Act took effect on the settlement date, 13 August 2026.

The guideline is primarily for Toitū Te Whenua LINZ employees with delegated authority to exercise registration functions under the Land Transfer Act 2017 and covers registration requirements and memorial formats for instruments lodged to give effect to the settlement.

Ngāti Rāhiri Tumutumu Claims Settlement Act 2026 Registration Guideline 2026

Te Here ā Nuku (Nelson Tenths) Act 2026 Registration Guideline 2026

The Registrar-General of Land has published the Te Here ā Nuku (Nelson Tenths) Act 2026 Registration Guideline 2026.

This guideline has been issued to ensure that instruments and applications received by Toitū Te Whenua LINZ under the Te Here ā Nuku (Nelson Tenths) Act 2026 are processed correctly.  The provisions of the Act took effect on 25 August 2026.

The Act provides for the Crown as former trustee to transfer the legal title to certain lands to the trustees of Te Here ā Nuku Trust. Properties to be transferred include areas of National Park and reserves. The Registrar-General of Land is required to register those transfers, and to create records of title if they don’t already exist to enable that registration.  

The guideline is primarily for LINZ employees with delegated authority to exercise registration functions under the Land Transfer Act 2017.

Te Here ā Nuku (Nelson Tenths) Act 2026 Registration Guideline 2026

Updates to authority and instruction forms

The Private Individual and Private Corporate Authority and Instruction (A&I) forms have been updated.

Changes to sections 4 and 5 and the notes to the forms include revised and new privacy statements for signatories and witnesses, a new witness certification to indicate whether identity confirmation was conducted in person or by audio-visual link (AVL), and a new explanatory note that AVL may only be used by practitioners and their trusted colleagues (as per existing guidance).  

The changes have been made to both the Landonline-generated A&I forms and the A&I form templates available on the LINZ website.

Authority and Instruction (A&I) form templates

E-dealing compliance monitoring and residential land statements

The Registrar-General of Land has made a change to the compliance review process to address Overseas Investment Act (OIA) compliance.  

The compliance review questionnaire now includes 3 new questions, designed to establish whether a residential land statement (RLS) was required and, if so, whether the practitioner holds a copy. If the answers indicate that a RLS isn’t held, the Overseas Investment team will make further enquiries.

Section 51C of the OIA requires that a conveyancer must obtain a RLS before lodging a transfer instrument and must keep a copy on file. The Registrar has specified compliance with s51C as a statutory requirement covered by a practitioner’s standard certifications, so practitioners will already be familiar with this requirement.

Adding the RLS questions will give the Registrar and the Overseas Investment team assurance that practitioners are complying with their obligations under the OIA. The updated questionnaire has been in use from 1 September 2026.

You can read more about the compliance review process and residential land statements on our website:
E-dealing compliance monitoring
Residential Land Statement

New legislative requirements for the Notice of Change (NoC) process in Landonline will take effect from 1 October 2026.

From 1 October, if you're completing a Transfer for a property sale in Landonline, specified sales information must be provided to the Valuer-General (VG) through the NoC function following amendments to the Rating Valuations Regulations.

This includes information such as:

• sale price
• agreement date
• settlement date
• GST status of the transaction  
• whether the sale price includes items other than land and buildings, household or minor farm chattels
• nature of the transaction (such as market or non-market).

For most Dealings customers, the overall NoC workflow will remain familiar, and the VG will pass the sales information to Councils, as currently occurs with the NoC process. The key change is that it will be mandatory rather than voluntary for practitioners to provide accurate information for all sales through the NoC process. In most cases, this information should come from the sale and purchase agreement and related transaction documents.

These changes are intended to improve the completeness and consistency of property sales information, supporting New Zealand's rating valuation system.

The legislation will also introduce a compliance framework, which includes an offence provision, overseen by the Valuer-General. We encourage Dealings customers to familiarise themselves with the new requirements before they take effect.

We'll be in touch with Dealings customers before 1 October with more information about the changes, including guidance, FAQs and support materials. Please keep an eye on your inbox for further updates.

Pre-Landonline unit plans are all now back-captured into Landonline

LINZ has completed a major project to back-capture all pre-Landonline unit plans, making it easier for you to prepare replacement unit plans in Landonline.

The project captured just under 9000 unit plans with CSD references below 300,000. These plans were created before Landonline was introduced, and their unit parcels were not originally captured in the Landonline database.

Previously, when a pre-Landonline unit plan needed to be updated and a replacement unit plan was required, LINZ first had to aspatially capture the existing unit parcels. This needed to happen before the new plan could be prepared.

With the back-capture work now complete, the existing unit parcels are already available in Landonline. This removes an extra step from the process when preparing replacement unit plans.

Further information on unit plans

For guidance on Unit plan requirements and Landonline capture, see:

• Cadastral survey guidelines – Unit plans
• Capture of Unit Development Plans in Landonline - Unit Titles Act 2010
• Unit Titles Act 2010 Guideline 2024

Web Search Release: Search survey by surveyor

Search survey by surveyor is now available in Web Search. You can search for surveys by a surveyor’s name or user ID.

You can also refine your search results by applying filters such as land district, survey purpose, and date range.

For more information about searching for surveys in Web Search, see: Search survey

Plan Generation: Check line thickness for height-limited primary parcels in the Strata layer  

Surveyors preparing diagrams in Plan Generation should be aware of a depiction issue affecting height-limited primary parcels captured in the Strata layer. Boundary lines for these parcels are incorrectly generated with a thin line.

Because these parcels are primary parcels, their boundaries must be depicted with a thick line. See Cadastral Survey Rules 2021, Schedule 7, Table 10.

If your plan includes a height-limited primary parcel in the Strata layer, check the generated diagrams carefully before submitting your plan. Where the boundary is incorrectly shown as a thin line, use the workaround below so the diagram is compliant:

1. In Plan Generation, manually add a line in the same location as the thin system-generated line.
2. Change the line’s width to 2.0 so the boundary is depicted as a thick line.  
   For more details on how to do this in Plan Generation, see Height-limited primary parcels captured in the ‘Strata’ layer are not depicted with a thick line type

Taking this extra check helps ensure that the title diagrams clearly show primary parcel boundaries and reduces the chance of requisitions.

Further information on height-limited boundaries

For guidance on meeting the requirements of the Cadastral Survey Rules 2021 (CSR 2021) relating to height-limited boundaries, see:

Cadastral survey guidelines – Height-limited boundaries

A reminder on the benefits of using the Landonline Schedule/memorandum

Evidence shows that using the Landonline Schedule/memorandum can reduce errors, minimise rework and can help your survey move through approval more efficiently.

Thanks to those who have already taken the time to provide feedback on the Schedule/memorandum tool functionality in Landonline Survey – this helpful feedback has informed us on where we could improve functionality and highlighted some misconceptions about when it delivers the most value. Here’s a reminder on the benefits of using Landonline Schedule/memorandum:  

• Use of Landonline Schedule/memorandum functionality has increased from 50% of applicable surveys in 2023 to 78% in 2026
• Analysis of all surveys submitted this year showed that surveys using the Landonline Schedule/memorandum received fewer easement-related errors than those using a manually prepared schedule.  
• For plans with more than 100 non-primary parcels, 50% of manually prepared schedules received easement-related errors, compared with just 13% of those using the Landonline Schedule/memorandum.

How you can help us expand the capabilities of the Landonline Schedule/memorandum:

While the Schedule/memorandum functionality now supports most common easement scenarios, we know there are still situations where it doesn't meet every requirement.  

• Where possible, record all information that can be captured using the Landonline Schedule/memorandum, and use a manually prepared schedule/memorandum only for the information that can’t be captured in Landonline.  
  For more information, see: Situations when you can’t use the Schedule / memorandum functionality
• Please let us know when you encounter these situations. Your feedback helps us identify gaps and prioritise improvements, so more surveys can benefit from the functionality in future.  
  You can find the Give feedback icon in Survey Capture, My Work, Plan Generation, and the main menu in all Landonline applications. 

For guidance on creating and completing a Schedule/memorandum in Landonline, see: Schedule / memorandum

Next time you prepare a survey, make the Landonline Schedule/memorandum your first choice, and include a manual schedule only where Landonline cannot currently support the scenario.

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Whether you’re interested in our upcoming events, aerial imagery updates, job vacancies, or just want to see some interesting maps... we’d love to connect!  

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Call us on 0800 ONLINE (0800 665 463) or email: customersupport@linz.govt.nz