Sometimes you might need to contact the owner of your neighbouring property, for example if you need to discuss a dividing fence or an overhanging tree. If the owner of your neighbouring property doesn’t live there (for example it is their holiday home or an investment property), you may want to approach the state government or the local council to find out who owns a particular property, and/or where the owner lives.

Details of property ownership are held by Land and Property Information (formerly known as the Land Titles Office). Land and Property Information is part of the NSW Department of Lands. You can apply for a search of the land titles register, to find out who owns a particular property; this particular public register is exempt from the NSW privacy laws. There is a search fee. However a land title search will not tell you where the owner of the property lives, or how they can be contacted. Contact Land and Property Information for more information.

Because councils levy rates on the owners of property, councils must also know where property owners live or how they can be contacted. Some councils keep this property ownership information in a ‘public register’, while others do not.

If your council holds its information about property owners in a ‘public register’, you may be told the details of where your neighbour lives, unless their information has been suppressed. This is because the Local Government Privacy Code of Practice allows inspection and copying of a single entry from a public register held by a council. (You couldn’t however ask for a copy of the register for everyone in your street.) (More information on what information may be disclosed from a public register).

If your council holds the information you want in its normal records (that is, not in a ‘public register’), different rules apply. You could only be given the contact details for the owner of your neighbouring property in one of these circumstances:

• if the person has expressly consented, or
• if the person was informed at the time of the collection of their personal information that their contact details would be disclosed to neighbours in this way, or
• if the council believes the disclosure is for a purpose that is related to the purpose for which the council collected the information (ie. the purpose of levying and collecting rates), and the council would have no reason to think the person would object, or
• the council believes the disclosure of the person’s personal information is reasonably necessary to lessen or prevent a serious and imminent threat to the safety of any person.