LINZ News

Forty percent electronic fees discount continues

Following the annual fees and charges review, LINZ has announced there will be no change to its survey and titles fees.

As with last year, key features of the 2005/06 LINZ fees and charges are:

• electronic transactions for both e-dealing and e-survey are cheaper than paper-based transactions
• for title customers, there are no changes to the most commonly-used fees
• there is no change to fees for standard title searches
• the survey requisition fees waiver will continue until 30 June 2006
• for paper based plans the requisition fee waiver will continue 30 September 2006 for those surveyors who complete the survey report template.

LINZ's full fees schedules can be found on the LINZ website.

A table of survey and title fees can be found on the Landonline website.

All listed fees include the 40 percent discount, the only exception being the printed Regulations, which show the original discounted fees.

Minister experiences Landonline firsthand

When Pete Hodgson was appointed Land Information Minister in December 2004, Landonline terminology such as 'validation' and 'pre-validation' was foreign to him. Not anymore.

Following a visit to the LINZ National Office and the Wellington Processing Centre on May 27, the Minister is now well acquainted with 'Landonline lingo', familiar to those associated with the state-of-the art online survey and title lodgement service.

During the visit Mr Hodgson viewed the e-dealing process step-by-step, the first demonstration of Landonline he had seen.

"We were pleased to have the Minister visit and appreciated the opportunity to show him Landonline's capabilities," LINZ Chief Executive, Brendan Boyle said.

In addition to an e-dealing demonstration, he saw e-search and e-survey in action and viewed the Landonline website.

"The Minister saw how customers and staff interact with Landonline, in particular how customers lodge e-dealings and e-surveys," Sharon Cottrell, General Manager Customer Services, said.

Following the demonstration Mr Hodgson visited the Wellington Processing Centre where he saw how a survey plan is captured into Landonline.

The Minister's questions focused on system capacity and security and the availability of training and support for customers.

In December 2004 Mr Hodgson added Land Information to his portfolio which includes Commerce, Statistics, Associate Health, Transport, Associate Industry and Regional Development. He is also Convenor of the Ministerial Group on Climate Change.

Landonline on show in Canberra

LINZ continues to stand out as the leader among countries moving towards fully automated land registration systems.

In May, a LINZ team of four management representatives returned from the Land Registrar Development Officers' Conference in Canberra confident that Landonline e-dealing offers the best automated land registration capability available.

Customer Services Senior Business Analyst, Brett Tercel, presented a background to Landonline as well as LINZ's planned approach to automating a wider range of title transactions. He also demonstrated an online real-time e-dealing registration.

"The online real-time registration captivated the audience from start to finish," Brett said.

Countries represented at the conference including Britain, Scotland, Singapore, Hong Kong, all Australian States and Territories, and New Zealand, use a Torrens-based system.

"Others are at varying stages of progress ranging from largely paper-based systems (Tasmania), to fully electronic registers and Cadastre (Northern Territories, Queensland).

"But while they might all be moving towards fully automated registration, New Zealand definitely leads the charge worldwide," Brett says.

LINZ continues to receive enquiries from around the world regarding the development, implementation, security and maintenance of Landonline.

LINZ welcomes Auckland e-dealing 'gate crashers'

Representatives from several Auckland law firms 'gate crashed' recent e-dealing information events, and LINZ could not be happier.

With the final Auckland event to be held in Mangere on 20 June Customer Manager, Katrina Jacobsen, says the move by LINZ to target Auckland firms, which began in March, had paid off.

By focusing on Auckland firms, the events aimed to increase Auckland e-dealing uptake by introducing them to LINZ services and assisting them with the transition to e-dealing.

Katrina says the idea was to reach as many firms as possible so the invitations were spread far and wide. To the delight of organisers, it was a bonus that not just those who had replied with a RSVP attended, but a good number of 'walk ups' appeared on the night.

"It was great to see them, and many in the latter category stayed on to sign up for free LINZ one-to-one training, and are now being brought up to speed," Katrina says.

With one event still to go, so far around 45 percent of all firms invited had attended an event and either booked training or had since received training.

The final Auckland e-dealing information event will begin at 5pm with drinks and nibbles for a 5.30pm start, on Monday 20 June at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, Mangere.

LINZ will then hold an e-dealing information event in Tauranga on 19 July, and in Taupo, for Taupo and Rotorua firms, on 20 July.

Contact LINZ e-dealing training co-ordinator on jgillatt@linz.govt.nz to sign up for any of the events and discuss your training needs.

Landonline

Calling all Landonline licence holders

Landonline licence holders will shortly be required to download an upgrade to their computers.

Licence holders use of Landonline is partly enabled by two pieces of software, namely Uniprint and ICA Client Server. In a manner similar to virus protection software, these sit behind users' computer systems and every so often need to be upgraded.

During July, users will be able to follow a simple process to upgrade Uniprint and ICA themselves when they log on to Landonline, or have their IT staff handle it.

This will enable LINZ to institute a behind-the-scenes system upgrade by mid-September that will deliver a new product, with new interface, new enhancements, more 'bug fixes', and increased reliability.

Landwrap will carry another article on the upgrade in July.

Big tick for Landonline Disaster Recovery exercise

A simulated Landonline disaster recovery exercise last month (May 2005) has LINZ staff confident they are well placed to respond if a genuine Landonline disaster did strike.

As part of their ongoing effort to prepare for and manage a Landonline disaster situation, LINZ staff were put through their paces responding to a simulated disaster. The scenario was designed to:

• test preparedness
• improve capabilities
• test business and customer communications processes

Customer Contact Team Leader, Leon Sullivan, says there is no better way to test disaster preparedness than participation in a realistic simulation.

"We need to know our processes are robust. To achieve this the exercise involved all LINZ internal business groups, along with our vendors EDS, IBM and Telecom," Leon said.

The focus was on strengthening LINZ's future Landonline disaster responses and processes, including testing the ability to post timely, clear messages on the Landonline Website to update customers and the possible direct emailing of customers regarding the situation.

"LINZ will continue to run these exercises periodically to ensure we keep everyone on their toes. It is all part of ensuring our systems are trustworthy and available quickly even after the largest of disasters," Leon said.

e-dealing saves your clients' money

Auckland law firm Carter and Partners were near the top of the country's e-dealing score card last month.

The firm has a substantial number of developers as clients, with many often having at least two mortgages to process. It was the realisation that the old, paper-based system was costing clients money, that spurred them to do more e-dealing.

Carter Senior Associate, Sharyn Robertson, says the result is all the more pleasing given that she and other members of the firm had been trained in e-dealing by LINZ over a year ago, but then delayed using it.

Sharyn says attending a further LINZ Auckland e-dealing information event recently had her going back to the office and saying: 'right, we've got to get onto it'.

"Clients had recognised that when it came to settle under the paper system, each document cost $156, made up of $50 lodgement fee for each document and $2 multi-title fee for each extra title in the one document. Plus, there was an agency fee to pay on top of that. Clients quite rightly saw this as money coming out of their pocket unnecessarily. Simply, we could save them money by e-dealing.

"In a recent case, we paid $21 total to process 54 titles in one PDM (Partially Discharged Mortgage). So we were saving our clients' money by using e-dealing."

Sharyn says legal executives within the firm have received training and play a large part in the e-dealing process. Either Sharyn or another partner certifies and signs each instrument, after support staff have created the e-dealing and prepared the appropriate documents.

Sharyn says like anything else, getting on top of e-dealing took some concentration but "now it's easy and we don't regret it".

Nationwide TA e-certification training launched

Following successful TA e-certification pilot training programmes in Christchurch and Marlborough last month, LINZ is taking the initiative nationwide.

Between 7 June and 6 July, contract trainer Malcolm Jeffrey will deliver a two-hour training workshop to licensed TAs in Palmerston North, Hamilton, North Shore and Manakau.

Malcolm has been delighted to see trainees recognise how significantly TA e-certification speeds up their processes.

Charged with developing the training resources and delivering the training, Malcolm is eager to see other TAs sign up.

Marlborough District Council Resource Management Officer, Ian Sutherland, encouraged his TA to adopt TA e-certification because he could see how the benefits could be passed on to local businesses. Ian highlights the following:

• TA e-certification in conjunction with e-survey and New Title Fast-Track speeds up the issue of titles, thus reducing costs to developers. Much to the delight of developers, several subdivisions recently had titles issued within 48 hours of lodgement



• TA e-certification and e-survey provides a computer audit trail if the surveyor changes the plan subsequent to approval



• digital files can be saved. Many councils including Marlborough are looking into digital storage of records, a move seen by Ian as positive



• the XML files, or plan, can be useful for updating TAs Geographic Information System (GIS).

As a former LINZ employee in Christchurch, Ian had the advantage of working on Landonline, gaining an understanding of the system and confidence in its abilities. As a result, he encouraged his TA to upgrade from e-search plus to TA e-certification, even before the surveyors were doing e-surveys. As he pointed out, there was no additional licence cost involved.

Malcolm will continue to roll out the TA e-certification training initiative across the country.

Faster property development with Landonline

Since August last year, LINZ has offered a fast processing service for dealings lodged with an associated e-survey.

Called e-survey and New Title Fast-Track LINZ' aim is to reduce the processing time for an e-survey and the associated new title, to a total of 12 working days for the plan approval and title issue.

To qualify for the fast 12-day turn around, the dealing must be lodged along with the e-survey and new title fast track request form, on the same day as the e-survey.

Neither should be requisitioned or rejected. If the dealing or e-survey are rejected or requisitioned, the timeframe reverts to the LINZ target timeframe of 10 working days for the e-survey and 15 working days for title issue.

Processing

LINZ celebrates huge climb in e-survey lodgements

e-survey lodgements clicked through the 2000 barrier in May and no-one is more delighted than e-survey Uptake Project Manager, Mark Williams.

When looking at data collected over the past two-and-a-half years, Mark discovered that while it took 25 months for 64 firms to lodge the first 1000 e-surveys, it took only five months for 99 firms to reach the 2000 mark.

A further illustration of the growing e-survey momentum is the fact that 64 firms were involved in the first 1000 lodgements, in contrast to a pleasing 99 firms having participated in the most recent 2000 lodgements.

And the numbers keep climbing. At 2098 on 3 June, by 17 June the tally was 2282.

Regulatory

e-dealing Compliance Reviews – tips for first-time compliance

By now, many e-dealing users will have participated in their first compliance review, the process adopted by LINZ to verify that supporting authorisations are held for certified e-dealing transactions.

The results of the reviews undertaken so far are largely positive. For the most part, users are diligent about securing client identification and authority in line with the statutory requirements and NZLS Guidelines.

Though LINZ is keen to minimise the impact of compliance reviews and avoid unnecessary re-work in the production of supporting documents, follow-up action has generally been to clarify requirements or forward documents not produced in the first instance.

Law firms and practitioners can make a valuable contribution to the process, and minimise the impact on their own time, by ensuring that all relevant authorities and other necessary evidence are returned to the RGL with the review questionnaire.

Common issues include:

Authority to Register a Transfer

As specified in the NZLS guidelines, an Authority and Instruction (A&I) form should be completed by the transferor(s) and transferee(s) and retained as evidence of authority to register.

Registration of a new Mortgage

On registration of a new mortgage, the 'certify and sign' actions completed by a conveyancer for the mortgagor and mortgagee include a certification that the conveyancer has authority to act for the mortgagor and for the mortgagee.

In most cases, conveyancers have supplied an A&I form completed by the mortgagor, but some have omitted to include an authority from the mortgagee.

The appropriate mortgagee authorities are:

• a letter of instruction from the lending institution authorising registration of the mortgage; or
• in the case of a private (non-institutional) mortgagee, an A&I form.

Conveyancers should also ensure that the letter identifies the land sufficiently and the page containing the signature of the person signing on behalf of the lending institution is attached.

Authority for Discharge of Mortgage

For a bank or institutional mortgage:

• a copy of the discharge of mortgage signed by the mortgagee (with certificate of non-revocation as appropriate) or
• written authority from the mortgagee authorising registration of the discharge.

For a private (non-institutional) mortgage:

• an A&I form

Client Identity

A copy of the form of photo ID used to identify the client (where applicable) should be attached to the A&I form.

Attorney

If an A&I form is completed by someone acting as attorney, a copy of the Power of Attorney and certificate of non-revocation must be retained on file and supplied as part of the evidence for the compliance review.

Solicitor a party to the Transaction

If a solicitor is a party to the transaction, he or she need not personally complete an A&I form if signing and certifying the instrument in his or her own right.

If a solicitor is a party to the transaction, he or she should avoid certifying or acting on behalf of others in the same transaction where this could give rise to a conflict of interest.

More details of the compliance review process are available on the Landonline website at www.landonline.govt.nz

Hot Topics

e-dealing timesaving Hints and Tips: #2 Prepare Instruments

• select instrument in Type or Status field to avoid drop down lists
• use available short cut keys
• use the Tab key after entering an instrument number in the Discharge Mortgage screen
• ensure you have the correct owners
• select the correct proprietorship type before entering data. This is important for a Combination proprietorship where editing only takes place in the last row
• ensure all group share is together
• avoid buttons you don't want to activate
• use the refresh button if you accidentally delete proprietors
• be aware there are separate fields for given and family names, and that these fields display as they will appear on the title.

LandXML popular for e-survey

Increasing numbers of surveyors are taking advantage of software compliant with LandXML. Data extracted from Landonline in XML format can be used to create an XML file of the new survey which can then be imported into Landonline.

Since March 2003 when XML was first used for an e-survey, 550 e-surveys submitted to LINZ have taken advantage of this XML import.

To learn more about LandXML and how it works with Landonline, follow the LandXML link.

Address book update

From 30 June 2005, anyone still using solutions@linz.govt.nz to reach the Customer Support team should update their address book to customersupport@linz.govt.nz

Emails to the former address will be re-directed and the sender sent an automatic reply message to that effect.

Landwrap

Landwrap is the authoritative news and information source for survey and title customers.

We welcome feedback on the contents. Please use the Contact Us page on the Landonline website.

If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Landwrap, you can do so here.