A buoyant property market and changes to lending requirements has put pressure on building file request timeframes, with Invercargill City Council advising would-be home-buyers to expect and plan for delays.
Council Group Manager Consenting and Environment Jonathan Shaw said statutory requirements under the Local Government Official Information and Meeting Act (LGOIMA) set timeframes of 10 working days for Land Information Memorandum (LIM) requests, and five working days for property file requests.
However, at the moment, it was taking Council about 15 working days to process LIM requests, and about five to process property file requests.
“Unfortunately, we are struggling to keep pace with the unprecedented volumes of LIM applications being requested at the moment, and this is causing challenges in our ability to issue these within the statutory timeframes. In January and February of this year, application volumes have essentially doubled compared to the same time last year. There are just a few days left in March but this month is also set to record the same kind of increase,” he said.
As well as an active property market, applicants had told Council that some lenders and insurance companies were also making LIM requests a mandatory requirement for potential buyers hoping to secure a new property. Council took its statutory obligations extremely seriously, and was working to have additional resources in place to get back to the usual timeframes soon, he said.
“We know buying and selling a property is already a stressful time. We are doing everything we can to try and minimise the impact to our customers, and address this issue as quickly as we can. However, securing additional people and training them takes a little bit of time – so we’re asking our community to be patient with us while we work through implementing a solution.”
Meanwhile, the resourcing challenges had also impacted property file record request timeframes.
Council was also experiencing high demand for these, and some files that had not yet been digitised needed to be recalled from off-site storage, which added to timeframes, Shaw said.
“We’d strongly encourage everybody to submit requests as soon as they can, and take these delays into consideration when buying or selling a home.”
Council would continue to keep the community informed about any changes to request timeframes, he said.
| LIM requests lodged | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
| January | 37 | 38 | 42 | 83 |
| February | 42 | 56 | 59 | 91 |
| March | 55 | 65 | 68 | |
| April | 43 | 57 | 80 | |
| May | 54 | 56 | 80 | |
| June | 49 | 51 | 56 | |
| July | 50 | 46 | 63 | |
| August | 54 | 52 | 58 | |
| September | 45 | 47 | 66 | |
| October | 56 | 46 | 70 | |
| November | 58 | 77 | 75 | |
| December | 28 | 30 | 54 | |
| TOTAL | 571 | 621 | 771 |
| Property File requests | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
| January | 284 | 284 | 364 | 502 |
| February | 289 | 260 | 512 | 532 |
| March | 273 | 336 | 534 | |
| April | 219 | 267 | 433 | |
| May | 280 | 394 | 563 | |
| June | 261 | 314 | 418 | |
| July | 263 | 296 | 509 | |
| August | 292 | 364 | 553 | |
| September | 248 | 363 | 475 | |
| October | 259 | 378 | 514 | |
| November | 332 | 439 | 541 | |
| December | 179 | 240 | 339 | |
| TOTAL | 3179 | 3935 | 5755 |
