Property terrain report for any New Zealand section

Who uses this

• Section and lifestyle-block buyers. Compare the terrain on every block on the shortlist before paying for reports on one.
• Architects and designers. Get the ground shape, slope classes and aspect at brief stage.
• Real estate agents and vendors. Answer the slope and drainage questions buyers ask.

When to use it

• You want something to send to a client, a builder or a family member rather than a screen.
• You are shortlisting rural or lifestyle blocks and want the same terrain summary for each.
• You need a record of what the ground looked like on the LiDAR capture date.

Which tool for your job

Property Report is one step in a bigger question. These are the jobs it helps with, and the tools that go with it.

How to use it

1. Open Property Report and click inside the parcel, or search its address.
2. Wait for the preview. Larger parcels take longer because more terrain is loaded.
3. Choose Download report for the PDF, or the bundle for the PDF plus the underlying GeoJSON and GeoTIFF files.

Step by step: Mt Iron, Wānaka

We build the full terrain report for the Mt Iron reserve parcel.

What it showed

• Page 2 sums the report up in five findings. The other pages cover contours, aspect, drainage, hillshade and elevation statistics, then two pages list the official records the report does not replace, with where to check each.
• Data bundle (ZIP) gives you the same results as GeoJSON and GeoTIFF files for GIS.

Screenshots from NZ Elevation Tools. Aerial imagery from LINZ Basemaps. Sourced from the LINZ Data Service and licensed by Environment Southland, Otago Regional Council and Queenstown-Lakes District Council for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

How it works

The parcel boundary is fetched from the LINZ cadastre and the 1 m LiDAR terrain is loaded for its extent. Contours, slope, aspect and elevation statistics are computed on that terrain and clipped to the boundary.

Each page is rendered in the browser and assembled into a PDF, with the LiDAR survey and its licensor named on the attribution page.

The closing checklist lists the records a terrain report cannot stand in for: the title, the district plan, council hazard maps, the property file and a LIM, linked to the council's own viewer where one is known.

Reading the results

Slope classes are given as a share of the parcel. Ground under about 10 degrees is generally buildable without major earthworks; above 20 degrees expect retaining and geotechnical input.

Aspect is where each face points. North-facing shares matter for winter sun in New Zealand.

Elevation statistics are relative to the LiDAR datum, which is close to mean sea level.

Limits and warnings

• A terrain report is not a survey, a geotechnical report or a planning assessment. It shows the ground shape on the LiDAR capture date only.
• Where 1 m LiDAR has not been flown the tool falls back to the national 8 m elevation model, and the result says what share came from the fallback. The 8 m model was interpolated from 20 m map contours and is not fit for site-scale decisions.
• Parcels larger than the free area limit are refused. Draw a smaller area with the other tools instead.

Data and attribution

Results come from the LINZ national 1 m LiDAR bare-earth elevation model, read in your browser, with the national 8 m model filling any gaps. Tools that use the surface model (Sunlight, Viewshed, Object Heights) read the matching LiDAR surface tiles.

Elevation and cadastral data is sourced from the LINZ Data Service and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Copyright in each LiDAR survey belongs to the body that commissioned it — a regional or district council, Waka Kotahi, NIWA and around thirty others — rather than to LINZ, which hosts and processes the national dataset. Every file exported from this site names the licensors whose surveys cover the area, and anything you publish from those files carries the same attribution requirement. See https://www.linz.govt.nz/products-services/data/licensing-and-using-data/attributing-elevation-or-aerial-imagery-data

Questions

Related

Neighbouring tools

• Property — Selects the legal parcel under your click and uses its real boundary as the analysis area for every other tool.
• Saved Properties — Keeps up to five places in your browser and compares their elevation, slope, winter sunlight and drainage side by side.
• Slope & Aspect — Maps how steep every part of your area is and which compass direction each face points, with a full breakdown of slope classes and aspect shares.
• Sunlight — Models hours of direct sun across a site on any day of the year, with shadows from terrain up to 3 km away and, where LiDAR has been flown, from trees and buildings.

Guides

• Terrain Checks Before Buying Rural Land
• Slope Maps for Building on Sloping Land