Property addressing for in-fill development

Property Addressing for In-fill Developments

Anselm Haanen, Surveyor-General / Kairūri Matua

Surveyor-General Anselm Haanen

Ensuring that individual properties can be readily and unambiguously identified and located is vital for the delivery of goods and services, but in an emergency, it can mean the difference between life and death. The allocation of addresses to newly developed properties is an important part of the subdivision process and is essential to any development’s ultimate success.

In the past, the allocation of property addresses for in-fill developments has sometimes required extra consideration by surveyors, developers and landowners.

The Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other

Matters) Amendment Act 2021 is likely to see an increase in housing density, and associated addressing issues. Therefore a reminder about the Guidelines for Addressing In-fill Developments seems timely. These guidelines were published by the

Surveyor-General in 2019 to help avoid addressing problems for in-fill developments. Addressing issues can arise when: Ÿ adding dwellings to a large lot Ÿ internally subdividing a single dwelling Ÿ converting a single-purpose building into multiple apartments

Ÿ extending a road to add more properties.

Territorial authorities, which control the allocation of addresses, use the Australian/New Zealand Standard for Rural and Urban Addressing AS/NZS 4819:2011 (‘Standard’) to ensure that addresses are allocated in a consistent and sensible way. Councils can also refer to the Guidelines for Addressing In-fill Developments for guidance and options for addressing in-fill developments.

Full compliance with the Standard when allocating addresses for in-fill developments can require changes to the addresses of existing properties, and can include road naming. This has caused significant concern for developers and property owners – especially when the latter are not directly associated with the development.

The Guidelines for Addressing In-fill Developments provide additional guidance and options for addressing these developments without compromising the overall integrity and use of the addressing and road naming system. The guidelines relate specifically to in-fill developments and complement the Standard. The provisions in the document vary from the Standard in several key areas, to deal with the issues that people have already been experiencing.

By following the guidelines, surveyors and developers can help ensure that developments comply with territorial authority requirements and avoid potential delays at the end of the development process. The guidelines will also help developers better understand the background to addressing and the requirements when numbers are being allocated.

Using these guidelines should avoid, or at least minimise, the need for renaming roads or renumbering properties in the future, while still ensuring that addresses enable properties to be easily identified, located and accessed. Having high-quality addresses from the start reduces the likelihood of problems when further in-fill development occurs in the future.

As well as issuing these guidelines, the Surveyor-General has enabled the Principal Unit numbers in a Cadastral Survey Dataset to be better aligned with the units’ addresses. The Rules for Cadastral Survey 2021 allow the identifier for a unit to be a letter followed by a number (eg, Principal Unit G02). In many cases this will allow the sub-address number and the Principal Unit number to be the same; although not in all cases.

The guidelines are available to download free of charge on the LINZ website: http://www.linz.govt.nz/ regulatory/01245 •