Information about the size, value and use of land that our Crown Property team is responsible for.
Land managed by Toitū Te Whenua on behalf of the Crown is about 2 million hectares, which is about 8% of New Zealand’s land area.
Toitū Te Whenua has responsibilities to ensure the Crown Property it manages makes the best use of the Crown Estate, to deliver government priorities, outcomes for Māori, and benefits for all New Zealanders.
Asset management is closely aligned to kaitiaki (guardianship for the sky, the water and the land), that complements the Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand kaupapa and whakataukī. Improving asset management practices will lead to better accountability, sustainability, financial efficiency, risk management, and better match levels of service with customer requirements.
Toitū Te Whenua land by asset management portfolio
We administer approximately 6,400 properties on behalf of the Crown with a value of nearly $1 billion and covering some of NZ’s most iconic land areas. In addition, we manage some residential properties and closed/future school sites on behalf of Ministry of Education, Department of Corrections, and others.
Most properties are bare land; however over 1,000 properties have improvements, including buildings. The property portfolio is diverse, geographically spread, and some properties are difficult to access due to location or are “landlocked”. Bare land needs managing as there can be noxious weeds, dangerous trees, erosion, access issues, or unauthorised occupation/use.
The table below shows the 9 Toitū Te Whenua administered property portfolios and a description of the properties in each.
| Toitū Te Whenua portfolio | Assets (approx. numbers) | Value ($) at 1 February 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| Waterways | 53 lakebeds, 1,069 riverbeds and braided riverbeds | $7m (most $0) |
| Landbank | 400 residential properties mostly North Island 600 non-residential properties (200 with buildings) | $417m |
| Licenced Crown Forests (CFL) | 26 forests | $108m (land only) |
| Toitū Te Whenua portfolio estate – non residential | 4,000 properties | $128 million |
| Toitū Te Whenua portfolio estate – residential | 24 properties | $18.6m |
| Crown pastoral leases | 191 leases/ agreements covering 1.2m hectares (5% of NZ land area) in South Island | $58m |
| Crown Forests (non CFL or landbank) | 5 forests, 13,046 hectares | $14m |
| Coastal reclaimed land | 35 properties cover 57 hectares | $3.130m |
As part of our activities in these asset management plans, Toitū Te Whenua can have several (sometimes overlapping) roles:
- As regulator (ie. approving activities on Crown Pastoral land leases)
- Being regulated (ie. disposals)
- Property management (ie. Healthy Homes, biodiversity/biosecurity work)
The Crown Property team also looks after the property owned by other government agencies. The services the team provides are property management on behalf of the agencies, managing the disposal of their surplus properties, as well as the management of two endowment property portfolios.
There are 4 client-agency portfolios: Non-core teacher housing (Ministry of Education), Closed/future schools (Ministry of Education), Auckland housing village (Department of Corrections) and Client-agency disposals (for various Departments).
Toitū Te Whenua responsible camping site usage
Toitū Te Whenua owns and looks after 5 camping areas on Crown land in the South Island. These include: Bendigo, Lowburn, Jacksons Inlet, Champagne Gully and Pukaki.
We collect vehicle movement numbers to get a sense of the number of visitors to these campsites.
The Toitū Te Whenua responsible camping sites remain popular. The table below shows the vehicle counts for our sites from October 2020 to April 2021.
| Site | Total vehicle counts per site |
|---|---|
| Bendigo | 15,143 |
| Lowburn | 33,357 |
| Champagne Gully | 17,588 |
| Jacksons Inlet | 3,089 |
| Pukaki | 17,296 |