All dwellings are buildings
All buildings are structures
All structures are realty
All realty is either land or fixed to land
if it’s not fixed to land it’s not a dwelling

Chattel, reality and the grey continuum between

• Is it fixed to land? Yes, it is a building
• No, it is chattel, even if permanent habitat
• This is well established in law
• But regulatory/judicial creep has corrupted thiS

Law

IT ALL TURNS ON THE QUESTION: IS IS FIXED TO LAND?

The most fundamental distinction in property law is between chattel and realty, movables and immovable, that which has an independent identity and that which, because it is fixed to land loses its independent identity and becomes part of the land. A careful reading of all NZ legislation finds this is inviolate, but recently, due to a vacuum in the law, council officers, MBIE and MFE officials and even Environment Court judges have ignored this fundamental distinction.

The court cases have been David v Goliath cases with well-resourced councils taking on people who got into mobile homes because the don’t have the money for a building – thus they don’t have the money for proper legal representation. And the cases councils cite are bad, involving “grey area” facts, such as Antoun v Hutt City Council where a DIY type made a land-locked tiny home that may indeed have been fixed to land, and Beachen v Auckland Council where Beachen represented himself without a lawyer and argued the case of facts where the law was incorrectly presumed to apply because Beachen did not speak to the law, and the judge glossed over it.