The Council's rates records must show the same ownership details as the property's Record of Title.

Common situations where a property owner or ratepayer changes one or more names on a property’s Record of Title include:

  • A property sale or purchase.
  • Ownership of property transfers into the name of an executor and/or trustees in the event of the death of an owner or for any other reason.
  • A property owner changes their legal name, such as marriage, separation or gender transition.
  • Adding an additional owner, such as a partner or spouse, or removing one of the existing owners.
  • In some limited cases, where the property has a rate-paying tenant. See below for more information.

Usually, your solicitor will arrange the changes to the Record of Title and will ensure Council is notified for the purposes of administering local government rates.

Changes to the Record of Title are normally made by a solicitor by submitting a Notification of Change (NoC) to Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), through the Landonline system. LINZ then notifies the relevant councils. This fulfils the obligation that a property owner or ratepayer has to notify the Council of a change of ownership or a change of name under sections 31 or 36 of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002. A previous system for solicitors to notify Councils of property sales is QV’s Sales Direct system – which is sometimes still used by solicitors.

Council normally accepts a Notification of Change of Ownership/Name only when submitted by a property professional through the Landonline or Sales Direct systems. However, if an owner wishes to do their own conveyancing, LINZ provides advice on the manual-dealing process on its website. The owner would then have to notify Council separately in accordance with section 31 or 36 of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 – by email to noticeofsalesadmin@ccc.govt.nz.

If you want to change your email address, phone number or postal address, you can update your contact details online.

If you want to change the email address to which your rates invoices are sent, or to sign up to receive your invoices by email, please visit rates invoices. 

When ownership of property changes, including separation or death of an owner,  it is important to ensure the rates for the property continue to be paid by the due date to avoid late payment penalties.

Reason for the name change The action you need to take
Relationship separation

In the event of a relationship separation, the Record of Title is changed only once the relationship settlement is complete.

The solicitor handling the settlement will complete the usual LINZ Notification of Change.
If the property has a rate-paying tenant

Section 11 of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 provides for limited circumstances where a tenant of the whole of the property may become the named ratepayer.

The lease needs to be registered on the Record of Title and be for longer than a period of ten years. The current ratepayer is required to provide relevant documentation or a statutory declaration before the tenant can be the ratepayer.

Please discuss this with your solicitor. Please note that the owner remains ultimately responsible for the rates if they are not paid by the tenant.
A name is spelt incorrectly on a rates instalment notice

If a name is spelt incorrectly on your rates instalment notice, please call the Council(external link) or email ratesinfo@ccc.govt.nz. We will check that the spelling is the same as on the Record of Title.

If a name is spelt incorrectly on the Record of Title itself, please refer to advice on the LINZ website about how to correct a land record. Please note that rates remain payable despite the incorrect spelling.

By law, we have to make rating information about rating units available to the public. We make this available via our rates and valuation search(external link) and through our customer services team.

Information we make available to the public Information we don’t make available to the public unless required by law
  • Property address, legal description and rate account number.
  • Ratepayer’s name and mailing address. Not available through the website – but it is available through the customer services team unless withheld - see below.
  • Rating valuations: capital value, land value, value of improvements.
  • Other information from the District Valuation Roll such as valuation number and property area, in hectares.
  • Annual rates for that rating unit, and the quarterly instalment amounts.
  • The amount of each rate that is set, both for Christchurch City Council and for the Canterbury Regional Council.
  • Rates remissions granted,
  • Any penalties imposed, such as for late payment.
  • Information about postponed rates.
  • The rates balance, such as an arrears balance.

We provide the owner’s name and postal address only if the inspection is made through our customer services team and relates to a specific property, or a series of related properties provided the purpose is not for the bulk collection of names and addresses.

Where a rating unit is being sold, we provide rates settlement information to the solicitor, or any person acting as agent for a party to the transaction, including the balance of the current rates, but we do not give out the name or postal address of the ratepayer if withheld.

For more information, see the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002, especially Part 2. It is available at legislation.govt.nz(external link).

Please contact our Customer Services Team by email at ratesinfo@ccc.govt.nz, or by phone at 03 941 8999 or 0800 800 169 or by visiting one of our Service Centres if you want to:

  • Have your name and/or postal address withheld. This means that a member of the public will not be able to see that information.
  • Update your email, phone or postal address contact details. You can do this online.
  • Add an authority to the account. This is another named person who has your authority to access the account, or to give effect to an enduring power of attorney.
  • Let us know if some information in the rating information database, or on your rates invoice, is incorrect.
  • Object to information we hold in our rating database or in our rates records.