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224: Restrictions upon deposit of survey plan
or “A survey plan can only be deposited if it meets specific legal requirements and has proper approvals.”
You could also call this:

“You can agree to sell land or a building before the survey plan is officially registered, but there are rules to protect buyers.”

When you want to sell land or a building that’s part of a subdivision, you need to know a few things. Even if the survey plan isn’t approved yet, you can still make an agreement to sell. The law says that these agreements are okay, but they come with some conditions.

First, the agreement is based on the idea that the survey plan will be officially recorded. This means it will be put into the Land Transfer Act 2017 system or the Deeds Register Office. Don’t worry - your agreement isn’t illegal just because you made it before the survey plan was recorded.

If you’re buying a piece of land in a planned subdivision, you have some rights. You can cancel the agreement within 14 days of making it by writing to the seller. Also, if the seller is taking too long to get things done, you can end the agreement. You can do this if, after two years from when the resource consent was given or one year from when you made the agreement (whichever is later), the seller hasn’t made good progress on submitting the survey plan or hasn’t recorded it in a reasonable time after it was approved.

Sometimes, when you end an agreement, it’s not possible for both you and the seller to go back to exactly how things were before. If this happens and you can’t agree on what to do, a court can decide what’s fair for both of you.

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Next up: 226: Restrictions upon issue of certificates of title for subdivision

or “Rules for creating official property records when land is divided into smaller pieces”
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Part 10 Subdivision and reclamations
Approval and deposit of survey plans

225Agreement to sell land or building before deposit of plan

  1. Any agreement to sell any land or any building or part of any building that constitutes a subdivision and is made before the appropriate survey plan is approved under section 223, shall be deemed to be made subject to a condition that the survey plan will be deposited under the Land Transfer Act 2017 or in the Deeds Register Office, as the case may be; and no such agreement is illegal or void by reason that it was entered into before the survey plan was deposited.

  2. Subject to subsection (1), any agreement to sell any allotment in a proposed subdivision made before the appropriate survey plan is approved under section 223 shall be deemed to be made subject to the following conditions:

  3. that the purchaser may, by notice in writing to the vendor, cancel the agreement at any time before the end of 14 days after the date of the making of the agreement:
    1. that the purchaser may, at any time after the expiration of 2 years after the date of granting of the resource consent or 1 year after the date of the agreement, whichever is the later, by notice in writing to the vendor, rescind the contract if the vendor has not made reasonable progress towards submitting a survey plan to the territorial authority for its approval or has not deposited the survey plan within a reasonable time after the date of its approval.

      1. An agreement may be rescinded under subsection (2) notwithstanding that the parties cannot be restored to the position that they were in immediately before the agreement was made, and in any such case the rights and obligations of each party shall, in the absence of agreement between the parties, be as determined by a court of competent jurisdiction.

      Notes
      • Section 225(1): amended, on , by section 250 of the Land Transfer Act 2017 (2017 No 30).