By the rules: Unravelling the mystery of modern covenants

Covenant — a word almost entirely unfamiliar to New Zealanders until very recently, writes Seven Sharp reporter Jilian Lee.

If anything, the word conjures up images of witches chanting around a bubbling cauldron, or some mystical cultists in robes initiating a new member with certain ordeals.

But to a growing number of New Zealanders living in recently built homes, it means an entirely different thing. Something far more benign than chanting in a dark underground lair surrounded by candles.

The covenant is just a rule or set of rules you have to agree to when you buy a property in a new subdivision. The rules could be things like the minimum size of a new build, the materials it’s built from or how far back from the road a dwelling or fences can be.

There can be more unusual covenants like a ban on cats (for areas bordering native bush) or visible washing. When you buy a property in a new subdivision there are often one or several covenants attached to the buy.

And they’re all written by the developer who can basically decide whatever they like. They can also last for however long the developer decides. Or the developer can simply decide to not have any at all.

Berryfields is a large, brand-new development in Richmond just down the road from Nelson. Unlike many new subdivisions with names that seem to have been randomly generated by AI, this land actually used to be berry fields.

It’s a long way from the original cookie-cutter subdivisions hurriedly thrown up in the 90s in places like East Auckland. Berryfields developer Graham Vercoe from GJ Gardner Nelson describes those types of subdivisions as such: buying a paddock, chucking a road down the middle, putting the houses up, cashing out and leaving. He says some developers still do this.

Berryfields, on the other hand, like other newer subdivisions in New Zealand, has been carefully designed by urban planners. Shared cycleways, amenities (like a café and cinema), a heavy emphasis on foliage, and curvy roads – they’re all meant to bring the community together and buck the typical lifelessness new subdivisions tend to have.

And Berryfields’ covenants are all part of this.

Berryfields has a reputation as one of the most covenanted subdivisions in New Zealand. There’s a ban on animals larger than 50cm and certain breeds of dogs. There's a ban on garden ornamentation. New owners have 12 months to establish a lawn and a garden. Campervans must be back a certain distance from the road. There’s a lot more. These covenants last for 20 years.

Vercoe, the developer, came up with these. He was a builder for many years. He built over in Australia. In the early 90s, he started hearing a new word over there – the covenant. And he immediately liked it. As a builder, he knew exactly what he was and wasn’t allowed to do without running afoul of whoever in the neighbourhood might have a problem with his build.

The immediate impulsive thought, for this reporter at least, is the issue of personal freedom. The right to do what you like with your property forever and ever until you sell it or die. And here we have residents effectively volunteering to give up some of their property rights.

As Vercoe points out succinctly, people want the covenants. He reckons 99 percent of people do. It’s fair. It’s a guarantee that no one in the neighbourhood is going to go awry with overgrown lawns, garish colours or designs, or mongrel dogs. The covenant bestows a sense of security, not only when it comes to crime and safety but property values. They help to reduce the likelihood of disputes in the community. It all seems to make sense.

We talked to Joe who runs the new community Facebook page. He likes the covenants. He says it helps build a sense of community, that everyone is on the same page. We talked to Chris, a local bus driver. He’s a little more lukewarm but he too doesn’t mind them. He’s never had a problem with them. We spotted a cheeky little meerkat statue in Chris’s garden.

And covenants aren’t really a huge leap forward.

After all, when you own a piece of land how many rights do you actually have? When you take into account government regulations and council regulations… what are a few extra rules on top?

My big question is how on earth do you enforce the covenants? The police aren’t involved – neither is the council. There’s no subdivision police force roaming around.

As it turns out, you don’t. Vercoe explains that it’s effectively like a gentlemen’s agreement. When neighbours have disagreements about each other’s properties they can refer back to the covenants as a standard. And almost always, issues tend to be resolved.

But when they aren’t resolved, the covenants become a matter of civil law. While the developer is still present in town, they’re the sheriff. They can do things like mow someone’s overgrown lawn and send them the bill. Once the developer has left, locals can take other locals to court. Vercoe says it hardly ever happens.

There’s another interesting point here.

In a big development like Berryfields, there are multiple developers involved. And they all decide their own covenants or lack of covenants. In Berryfields, when you cross the stream, the development subtly changes. Before you get to the stream, there appear to be fewer rules. Then you cross the stream into the part Graham developed and things seem somewhat more orderly. This of course means that over time, Berryfields West may end up entirely different to Berryfields East.

In its ironic essence, there are no rules about covenants. There’s no law.

Vercoe explains that this has led to problems in other parts of New Zealand. Developers looking for a quick buck will effectively “throw down a road in a paddock” like they did in the 90s and the subdivision has the potential to deteriorate quickly.

At the other end of the spectrum, developers who are new to the industry and don’t have prior building experience may enforce covenants that often don’t make sense. Graham’s example is having your actual build plans tied to a covenant, leaving a nightmarish scenario where you may have little say in how your new house actually looks.

The covenant is slowly becoming a part of New Zealand life. But it’s such a new concept the majority of New Zealanders (a guess) still don’t have experience with it. As time goes on, however, and more people move into houses built under covenant, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

There’s a nagging thought here too. As humans, we tend to seek safety, security, and predictability (well, most of us anyway). People move to places like Berryfields for that reason. They accept the covenants because the covenants guarantee stability. And if you go to Berryfields you’ll see they work.

But perhaps the covenant does have a little something in common with that original image of the covenant we had in mind at the beginning – witches, rites, robes. Cults.

The cult…of risk aversion?

As New Zealand veers more and more towards risk aversion in almost every part of life, we’ve gained a lot. Better health and safety standards mean fewer workplace injuries and better building standards mean fewer leaky homes and house fires.

But are we losing something along the way?

Some of the most interesting urban environments in New Zealand are organic, colourful, and sensory – Karangahape Road, Cuba Street, and Castle Street. Around the world, some of the most delightful places are famous for their vibrancy and chaos. Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Barcelona. These places have a lot of problems – a lot – but they also capture the range of the human experience.

Berryfields is no Bangkok.

You’ll never see a hawker outside the Alioke Eatery or Sprig and Fern on Berryfield Drive. There’s no livestock on the road and you’ll probably never hear the blasting of loud, exotic music. Subdivisions have always struggled to capture that energy.

What Berryfields is, however, is progress. It has come a long, long way from the dystopic lifeless copy-and-paste subdivisions ridiculed in the 90s.

And in places like Berryfields, people want in. They do. So they swear by the covenant.