NZ Building Answers

What do easements on a property mean?

Updated June 2026

Short answer

An easement is a registered right for someone else to use part of your land for a defined purpose, or your right to use part of theirs. Shared driveways, drainage pipes and power lines are the everyday examples. Easements live on the record of title, they bind every future owner, and they shape what you can build and where, so read them before you buy.

Source: LINZ. Updated June 2026.

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Key facts

An easement is a registered right over land for a defined purpose
Common types: rights of way, drainage, water, power and telecommunications
Easements bind future owners; selling the property does not clear them
Building over an easement is usually restricted
They appear on the title held by LINZ

What an easement actually is

An easement carves a specific right out of land ownership without transferring the land itself. One property carries the burden, meaning part of it can be used by someone else for the stated purpose, and another property or a utility holds the benefit. The right attaches to the land, not the people: when either property sells, the easement carries straight on to the new owners, which is exactly why it has to be read before purchase rather than discovered after.

The common types

Most residential easements fall into a handful of categories:

Right of way: the legal backbone of shared driveways and rear sections
Right to drain water or sewage: pipes crossing one property to serve another
Right to convey water, power, gas or telecommunications across land
Easements in favour of councils or utilities for network infrastructure
Rights of support, common where land or structures depend on adjoining ground

What they mean for living there

A right of way must be kept clear: parking your trailer across the neighbour's legal access is not a neighbourly dispute, it is a breach. Maintenance of shared driveways is typically shared among the users in line with the easement terms or the default rules in property law, which is worth understanding before the first pothole argument. Drainage and service easements usually restrict building over them, since the pipe owner needs access; that surprise has reshaped more than one extension plan. The easement instrument, the document behind the title entry, sets out the exact rights and obligations, and instruments vary. If a term is unclear, ask your lawyer to explain it in plain language before you commit.

Checking before you buy

Easements show on the record of title, but the schedule only names them; the substance lives in the instruments, which your lawyer should read as part of conveyancing, especially for a shared driveway or a rear section where access is the whole game. Looking up the address at checkmybuilder.co.nz/property pulls together the title and land information for a property as a starting point. If you plan to extend, pool or subdivide later, map where the easements sit before you fall in love with the plan, because the pipe under the lawn has a longer memory than the listing photos.

Before you hire

Knowing the rules is half the job. The other half is knowing who you're hiring. Check any NZ builder against the public record: company status, licensing and insolvency notices, from the official NZ sources.

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