Review of anti-competitive land agreements

About the consultation

In December 2022, the Commerce Commission (the Commission) published its market study into residential building supplies. In its final report, the Commission recommended an economy-wide review into the use of land covenants and exclusive leases (including other contractual provisions with similar effect) to assess whether a wider multi-sector solution is needed to address their impacts on competition. To initiate this review, this document seeks information to help define the nature and scale of the problem and inform future actions.

What we are seeking feedback on

The discussion document seeks feedback on:

• how land agreements can be used to reduce competition
• what purposes land agreements can serve
• how well the current rules support competition across all sectors in the economy
• whether we have the right settings for enabling land agreements where they provide benefits, and how we can identify these, and
• if needed, options for improving regulatory settings to promote competition.

We would like to hear from a range of stakeholders, whether retail or non-retail, rural or urban, including:

• Businesses and individuals that have been impacted by land agreements. This could be for example, by limiting the options available for sites, or imposing higher costs which makes it more difficult to enter a market or grow a business.
• Businesses that benefit from land agreements, to understand what purpose they serve and whether there are practical alternatives to achieve this.

We also encourage consumers, property developers and legal practitioners to submit.

Submissions on the discussion document

Submissions closed on 25 August 2023 and a total of seven submissions were received.

Some personal identifiers have been removed as well as some sensitive information at the request of submitters.

View the submissions on the review of anti-competitive land agreements consultation.

Discussion documents