What property does the Crown own?
Toitū Te Whenua manages around 2 million hectares of Crown-owned land. We manage this ‘Crown estate’ to deliver the greatest benefits to all New Zealanders, both for today and in future.
The Crown estate includes:
- land held for Treaty settlements
- the beds of lakes and rivers
- forest land
- high country pastoral land in the South Island
- residential and commercial properties, closed schools, courthouses and prisons.
Caring for the Crown estate
We do a wide range of work on the Crown estate, such as:
- managing the leases of farmers who are leaseholders of Crown pastoral land
- managing commercial tenancies, leases and other agreements to use Crown lands and properties
- managing applications for permission to use Crown lands and properties
- acquiring, maintaining and disposing of land
- identifying and managing risks (for example, protecting the plants and animals on Crown land)
- providing management advice and services for other Crown agencies
- releasing assets to iwi for Māori and regional development.