What should I check before buying a house in NZ?

The record of title tells you what you are actually buying. It shows the tenure type, which might be freehold, cross-lease, leasehold or unit title, along with easements, covenants and any notices registered against the land. Each tenure type changes what you can do with the property and what questions to ask next.

Your lawyer will order and review the title as a matter of course, but look at it yourself early. A cross-lease with an extension missing from the flats plan, or a covenant that restricts what you can build, is better discovered before you fall in love with the place.

A LIM is the council's file on the property: building consents, code compliance certificates, rates, drainage and any hazard information the council holds. It can take around two weeks to arrive, so order it early in your conditional period.

Read it against what you can see. A 1990s extension with no consent on file, or a consent that never received its CCC, is exactly the kind of gap a LIM is designed to surface.

Paperwork describes the building the council knows about. A pre-purchase inspection looks at the one that actually exists. Get a written report from an inspector who works to NZS 4306, and walk through the property with them if you can. Half the value is in the conversation.

If the house has had recent work done, ask who did it and whether the consent paperwork is complete. Renovations sold as recently updated deserve the same scrutiny as the original build, sometimes more, because the quality of the work depends entirely on whoever held the tools.

Flood and slip mapping, zoning and planned development around the property affect what you are buying as much as the building does. Regional and district councils publish much of this, and school enrolment zones are mapped by the schools themselves.

You can run any NZ address through checkmybuilder.co.nz/property to see the title type, land details, zoning and known hazards in one view before you commit.

Every check above only protects you if your offer is conditional when you make it. Finance, LIM, building report and title approval are standard conditions; once you go unconditional, anything you did not check becomes your problem. If you are buying at auction, the same work happens before auction day instead.