Auckland Council have teamed up with LINZ to adopt the new Landonline Notice of Change of Ownership portal – allowing lawyers to quickly and accurately enter property sales data as soon as a house sells.
To understand how this new portal works and the benefits to Aucklanders, we’ve asked Senior Associate Carolyn Hintz from Gibson Sheat Lawyers on her experience with using the portal so far.
Kia ora Carolyn, to start, what is a Notice of Change?
So when a property sells or the ownership is otherwise transferred, the owner must notify the relevant local authority, in this case Auckland Council, within one month. The current system used by Auckland Council means solicitors need to manually input the sales data, and then it can take up to 10 working days for the council to update their records.
The council uses this data to understand who the owner is to be able to contact them for rating purposes. In most cases, the data also contains the sale price, which the council uses for completeness of the property file and an accurate record. The sale price is passed on to external valuers to help determine a property’s value, but it is not guaranteed to influence it.
Right, so this new system will take the notification time down from over a month to almost immediately?
Exactly. Using the Landonline Notice of Change, lawyers are able to input the sales data immediately after the sale of a property. The portal is so easy to use and it even pre-populates some of the data, which saves me time and improves the accuracy. It also removes the need for me to send separate sale notices to Sales Direct as these are incorporated into the system – and, it will notify the sale immediately on registration.
Sounds like a real benefit!
Yes, and along with making the whole process easier for us, it also ensures that the council has the most accurate data in a timely manner, removing unnecessary processing time and need for multiple sources. It’s available for Watercare customers too, so they can do it all in the same place – however the final meter read process still needs to be done via the Watercare website. It also means that market data of house sales is updated faster.
Excellent. So, if I were a lawyer wanting to use the system, how would I go about that?
The NoC portal is automatically available as part of their Landonline e-dealing workflow. They can find the new ‘Add NoC’ button on the bottom right of the screen when they prepare relevant instruments in Landonline. Once they register, information will automatically be sent to Auckland Council. The final read process remains unchanged for Watercare, so they’ll need to continue to book any meter reads as per usual.
Sounds simple!
It really is. Landonline NoC will be the only notice of change method for Auckland Council and Watercare moving forward. With the accuracy and efficiency – it’s definitely a win!
Thanks for your time, Carolyn!
