This book is only available in PDF format

Author: Joanna Pidgeon
Published: 24 February 2020
Pages: 50

Introduction

There are over 216,000 cross lease properties in New Zealand, and nearly 50% of which are in Auckland. Cross leases were a clever invention in the 1960s by Brian Mahon, a North Shore practitioner to get around subdivision restrictions. They are created by private contract, rather than governed by specialist legislation, and over time problems arose with them. As a result, law reform was mooted in 1999 by the Law Commission to allow conversion to fee simple titles, as well as to unit titles which was already able to be done. Some 15 years later, although there has been unit titles reform, the cross lease reforms still have not been implemented.

Property lawyers and their cross lease owning clients are well aware of the deficiencies that still need to be addressed, as they deal with un-consented alterations, issues with multiple insurers and disputes regularly. Pending the implementation of a simple statutory fee simple conversion solution as a possibility, they need to be aware of what options are open to them when they deal with cross leases.

Content outline

• Law Commission’s recommendations
• Advantages of converting cross leases to freehold or unit title
• Benefits of retention of cross lease titles
• The decision to convert
• When freehold or unit title is the best option
• Converting to freehold with agreement
• Converting to freehold with objecting neighbours – Partition under the Property Law Act 2007
• Converting to unit title
• Converting company lease or license schemes