When land is subdivided and new roads are created, every holder of a registered covenant or easement over that land must individually consent before the road can vest as public road. In practice, this can mean obtaining written consent from hundreds of parties and their banks, at significant cost in legal fees and delays that are ultimately passed through to the price of new homes, even though courts have never found that any of these parties has a material interest.

This research note, supporting a recommendation by the New Zealand Law Society's Property Law Section to amend Schedule 7, clause 28(2) of the Planning Bill 2025, analyses the problem through property rights theory, transaction cost economics, and competitive land market (CLM) analysis. It finds the consent requirement is a textbook anti-commons: numerous parties hold formal veto rights over a transaction that harms none of them, imposing deadweight costs that fall on homebuyers.

The note uses this specific, narrow problem to demonstrate a broader principle. The same logic that resolves the road vesting friction at the site level, converting consent-based vetoes into prices that preserve the economic substance of property rights while removing disproportionate transaction costs, underpins the competitive urban land markets paradigm applied to the planning system as a whole. CLM navigates the tension between wider prosperity and the individual enjoyment of land by maximising the supply of housing to the net-benefit of society while respecting property rights. The form of protection changes. The entitlement does not.

The note presents two defensible reform options, a clean removal of consent requirements and a post-hoc compensation pathway, and frames the choice as a judgment call that depends on the broader institutional context, including whether the Planning Bill 2025 will provide meaningful compensation for regulatory takings of property rights.