An easement doesn't stop a job. Finding out about it late does.
You've priced the slab. The client has signed. Then someone asks whether the drain running diagonally under the proposed floor is on an easement, and the answer changes where the building sits, or whether it can be built at all.
Here is how to check it properly, and the step most people skip.
What an easement is, in job terms
An easement is a registered right for someone else to use part of the land. The land carrying it is the servient land. The party who benefits could be a neighbour, the council, or a network utility.
Three you will actually meet:
Right of way. Someone else has the legal right to cross the land, usually to reach their own. Blocking it, narrowing it or building over it is a problem regardless of what the fence suggests.
Drainage, water and services. A pipe or line crosses the land and someone else has the right to keep it there and get to it. This is the one that most often collides with foundations.
Electricity and telecommunications. Similar, with a network operator as the beneficiary and their own approval process.
Where it shows on the title
Registered easements appear on the Record of Title under the interests, each with an instrument number. The title diagram or the deposited plan usually shows roughly where the easement runs.
That gives you two facts: an easement exists, and approximately where.
It does not give you the third fact, which is the one that decides the job.
The step most people skip
The title says the easement exists. The easement instrument says what it allows.
The instrument is a separate registered document, and its number is right there on the title. It sets out the terms: what the easement covers, what the beneficiary is entitled to do, and what the owner of the land may or may not do over it.
Two easements can look identical on a title and carry completely different terms. One might contemplate structures with written approval. Another might prohibit them outright. You cannot tell from the title line, and you cannot tell from the diagram.
If a structure is going anywhere near an easement, order the instrument and read it. It costs less than an hour of your time and it is the difference between a design that gets consented and one that gets sent back.
Who has to agree
Generally, building over an easement needs the agreement of whoever benefits from it. Who that is changes the process entirely.
A neighbour. A conversation, then something in writing. Cheap if handled early, slow and awkward if handled after the plans are drawn.
The council. Where the council benefits, expect a formal application and a wait. Some councils will not approve a permanent structure over their drainage at all, and will want the line relocated instead. That is a cost item, not a detail.
A network utility. Their own process, their own standards, their own timeframe.
None of these are quick. All of them are cheaper before you quote.
What the council will do at consent stage
Building consent and easements are separate questions that meet in the same application. The consent authority will look at what is registered on the title. If your plans put a structure over a registered easement without evidence that the beneficiary has agreed, expect a request for further information at best.
The delay is rarely the expensive part. The redesign is.
The sequence that avoids all of this
1. Order the Record of Title with the diagram. Read the interests. Note every easement and its instrument number.
2. Compare the diagram with where the client wants to build. If nothing is near an easement, you are done.
3. If anything is close, order the instrument and read the terms. This is the step that pays for itself.
4. If a structure has to go over or near it, start the approval conversation before you price the job — not after.
Where the title stops
The title records registered easements. It will not show an unregistered arrangement, a historic pipe nobody ever registered, or a service that exists in the ground without a legal right attached to it. For anything tight, a locate and a surveyor are still worth what they cost.
And this is not legal advice. If an easement changes what your client can do with their land, that is a conversation for their lawyer. We supply the official record so that conversation starts from facts.
What to order
A Record of Title with Diagram is NZ$42.90 and arrives in about two hours. It shows the registered owner, the legal description, the diagram and every registered interest, including easements and their instrument numbers.
An Instrument (Document) is NZ$39.90 and is the easement itself — the terms that decide whether you can build.
If you check titles as part of how you work rather than occasionally, we run trade accounts with prepaid packs and monthly invoicing. See title checks for trade.
Check the easements before you price the job.
