Why Complete Cross Lease Conversion to Freehold Title

A cross lease titles is where multiple individuals own an undivided share of the underlying land. Each individual would build a house and that area of land would be leased from the other owners. Generally, these leases would be for a term of 999 years.

Cross lease developments were a popular historic form of development when Councils’ rules generally didn’t allow for high density subdivisions but did allow for multiple houses to be built on a site. Later they were used as the development requirements were less onerous and to avoid reserve contribution requirements at the time. As such cross lease developments could be created around these houses at a significantly cheaper cost than a fee simple development. With changes to Council rules following the introduction of the Resource Management Act 1991 the advantages that encouraged their use have diminished greatly and almost no new developments use this form of tenure. However, since many of the existing dwellings on cross-lease titles have had alterations and require cross-lease updates their titles are deemed to be defective.

A cross-lease conversion is upgrading your title from a cross-lease to fee simple. The process is usually quite streamlined especially if your drainage and driveways are in decent condition. The process usually involves getting your neighbours consent, you can’t upgrade part of a cross lease, it all must be done at once, completing a scheme plan/site plan and making a resource consent application to Auckland Council.

Council will normally issue consent with minimal consent conditions. Conditions requiring physical works are very unlikely unless there is a glaring issue.

Once the application is approved a Land transfer survey is completed to place the new boundary pegs. Plans and reports are prepared and submitted to LINZ along with your solicitors document to gain new fee simple titles.

The process for a cross-lease to fee simple title is generally a relatively simple process. First you will need to discuss and agree that you all wish to proceed with the cross lease to fee simple conversion with your neighbours. Thornley and Associates can then help step you through this process to gain fee simple titles. Below is the process to convert your cross-lease title to a fee simple title.