Demonstration only. Homeground is a working preview built on the Village platform. The listings, agencies and offers shown are sample data — nothing here is a live property, a real transaction, or an offer you can make. Pricing shown is planned and indicative.
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The law, in the open

Getting the law right first

The questions we're putting to a New Zealand property lawyer — before anything goes live.

Homeground asks sellers to put the LIM on the table before anyone offers. The same rule applies to us. Before this platform goes past demonstration, a New Zealand property and regulatory lawyer will test the design against the law — the Real Estate Agents Act, the Fair Trading Act, the Privacy Act, and the financial-advice rules. These are the questions we've written for them.

You won't find our guesses at the answers here, because guessing at the law is the one thing this platform is built never to do — every specific legal question on Homeground goes to a professional, and that starts with ours. We'd rather know where the lines are and sit well inside them than test them. Nothing goes live until the opinion is in and the design sits inside it. When it is, this page will say so — and say what changed.

The gate. This is a demonstration. Nothing is transacting, and nothing goes live for a real seller or buyer until an admitted New Zealand lawyer has given the opinion and the design has been brought inside it. These are the questions being answered before anything can be — not risks we're running now.

The questions

Each is a question about where a line sits — not a position we've taken. We name the statutes to show the homework; the reading of them is the lawyer's, not ours.

1. The self-service core

Where does a strictly self-service venue — owners listing their own property, an offer register the parties operate themselves, seller-provided LIM and title on the listing, saved searches, and aggregate anonymised demand statistics — sit against "real estate agency work" under the Real Estate Agents Act 2008?

2. Where information ends and advice begins

Generic materials that read the same for everyone — what a LIM is, how an offer works — plus tools a person operates themselves: where is the line between permissible general information and work done on behalf of a party, under the Act and the Real Estate Authority's rules?

3. The lawyer panel

A panel of conveyancing firms a client chooses from, listed for a flat annual fee for presence — never per referral, never a share of anything, neutral ordering: how does that sit against the referral-independence rule and the Secret Commissions Act 1910?

4. Hosting the LIM

A council issues a LIM on terms addressed to the applicant and asserts copyright. When a seller uploads it and we host it on the listing for registered readers: what does council copyright and licence allow, and how does the Privacy Act 2020 treat hosted LIM content as personal information of the current and any future owner?

5. The access log and the finance attestation

A quarantined record of who has read a hosted LIM, and a buyer's own attestation that they hold a pre-approval (lender and date, no documents, never verified by us): under the Privacy Act 2020 and the Fair Trading Act 1986, is minimal collection, disclosed meaning, and expiry the right treatment?

6. How agents compete

Where a seller wants an agent, they choose one through a compete step and decide how it runs, per listing. How does that sit against the Real Estate Agents Act 2008 conduct and advertising rules — and does presenting or ordering agents make the platform itself a participant with obligations of its own?

7. Finance information

Generic finance information — what a pre-approval is, how a finance condition works, how settlement money moves — plus checklists a person works themselves: where does that end and regulated financial advice begin under the Financial Markets Conduct Act as amended by the FSLAA 2019?

8. A mortgage-adviser or lender directory

If we ever listed licensed mortgage advisers the way we list lawyers — flat fee for presence, no per-referral — would that be a neutral directory, or a step toward regulated advice or intermediation? Or is a plain link to the official registers the safer answer?

9. The credit-law perimeter

Responsible-lending obligations under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003 sit on lenders. Is there any feature — saved-search alerts, readiness tiers — that could make the platform look like it is arranging or inducing credit?

Why there are no answers on this page

The platform runs one rule above all others: it never gives you a legal or financial conclusion — it gives you information and sends you to a professional. This page holds the company itself to that rule. Publishing our own guesses at the law would break the very discipline the whole platform is built on. So the questions are here; the answers belong to the lawyer, and the record of what changes when they arrive will be here too.

If you practise in this area

We're engaging a New Zealand property and regulatory practitioner for a fixed-fee scoping opinion on these questions. If they interest you and you'd like to see the full brief, we'd like to hear from you: homeground@mysovereignty.digital.

Writing to us creates no engagement and no client relationship, and nothing you send is published without your consent. This page isn't a request for open legal opinions — the deliberation is a private, paid engagement; what's on the record here is the question list and, in time, the outcome.