Frequently asked questions

Six products, all driven off a street address:

Geotechnical reports - a PDF desktop study covering geology, soils, groundwater and nearby bores, plus a contaminated land check within 500 m: EPA registers in NSW and VIC, and licensed activities and fuel facilities in QLD and SA (not an EMR/CLR search). $119 per report.
Property Reports - zoning, flood, bushfire, heritage, development applications and other planning overlays, with a free interactive map preview. $9 per PDF.
Flood Model Report - every published flood model that reaches a property, with the modelled depth, velocity and flood level for each event and a map of the design flood. $9 per PDF.
Terrain Report - one property's elevation: contour map, cross sections with peak grade, slope map, an indicative house pad with cut and fill volumes, surface water flow paths and an interactive 3D model. $9 per PDF.
GIS Data Export - the underlying site datasets as DXF, Shapefile, GeoPackage and KMZ, ready for CAD and GIS. From $15.
Scout - a Chrome extension that puts flood, elevation, terrain and estimate data on every realestate.com.au listing. $15 per month.

We also run free tools, including the AS 2870 site classification calculator and the 12d to DXF converter. See pricing for the full picture.

Property Reports and GIS exports cover Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. Geotechnical reports cover Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Each state has its own set of spatial data sources - geology, soils, groundwater, planning overlays and imagery - and our system queries the right sources based on the address you enter.

Scout covers 16 Queensland councils (Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Moreton Bay, Logan, Ipswich, Redland, Toowoomba, Scenic Rim, Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Hinchinbrook and Mount Isa), 127 of the 128 councils in New South Wales (Broken Hill is not yet built) and every council in Victoria.

Western Australia and the Northern Territory are not supported yet. Every state publishes its data differently, so each one needs its own integration rather than a switch we can flip.

If you need ground conditions - geology, soil reactivity, groundwater, bore logs - use a geotechnical report. If you need planning constraints - what the site is zoned and what overlays affect it - use a Property Report. If you need the data itself to draw or model against, use a GIS export. Scout is for screening listings while you browse, not for a deliverable.

They are independent purchases, so many customers run a Property Report first as a cheap first check and only order the geotechnical report or export on sites that survive it.

No. A single geotechnical report, Property Report or GIS export can be bought as a guest with just an email address - the finished file is emailed to you and available from a private link.

An account (free) is needed to hold credits, see your past jobs in the dashboard, and unlock the account-only features in the free tools.

Addresses are matched against the official state address registers - the Queensland and NSW address registers, Vicmap Address, the South Australian address register, ACTmapi and the Tasmanian LIST - so if an address exists in your state's register we will find it. Try the street number and street name with the suburb (for example "42 Smith Street, Brisbane") rather than a unit number or building name.

Very new subdivisions can take time to reach the state register, and we deliberately do not fall back to an approximate global geocoder, because a near-miss would silently report on the neighbouring lot. An address we cannot resolve fails up front, before you are charged.

Typically 2 to 4 minutes. This includes geocoding the address, fetching data from a dozen or so government services, rendering the maps and assembling the PDF. A slow government data service can stretch this to about 6 minutes. Property Reports and GIS exports are usually quicker.

You are not charged for a failed job. Geotechnical and export credits are only deducted once the PDF or ZIP has been successfully produced, and a failed Property Report credit is refunded automatically. If you see repeated failures for an address, contact us and we'll investigate.

Data is pulled from state government spatial services at the time the report is generated, so it is as current as those sources. Geological mapping is updated infrequently (years) and soil classifications rarely change, while imagery, planning overlays and bore records are updated more regularly.

Every report carries its generation date so you know when the data was fetched.

LayeredGeo reports are intended as a desktop study aid - a starting point for early site review and preliminary geotechnical or planning context. They are not a substitute for a licensed geotechnical investigation or for planning advice, and should not be used as standalone evidence for engineering design, regulatory submissions or construction decisions without further investigation by a suitably qualified professional.

See the geotechnical methodology or planning methodology page for what each dataset can and cannot tell you.

A PDF covering the planning constraints mapped over a lot: zoning, flood, bushfire, heritage and character, noise and transport corridors, airport height and flight-path controls, observed aircraft overflight, vegetation and environmental overlays, cultural heritage, ground hazards such as landslide, mine subsidence and acid sulfate soils, easements, building setbacks and land reservations, other state and council planning controls with the share of the lot each one covers, and water, sewer, stormwater and power near the lot with the recorded pipe depths where the utility publishes them, the development applications lodged on the lot, next door and within 250 m, and the council area's declared disasters since 2017. School zones, nearby schools and the suburb's Census profile are in the Liveability section. For NSW lots it also reads what the zone permits for a house, granny flat or dual occupancy from the council's Land Use Table. It is built from the same council and state planning datasets a town planner would open one by one.

It answers "what am I allowed to do here, and what is in the way" - which is a different question from the geotechnical report's "what is the ground like".

The Property Report shows the flood overlay - the council's planning map of where flooding is expected and how likely. The Flood Model Report reads the flood model grids themselves: for every published model that reaches the property it states the modelled maximum depth, velocity, depth x velocity hazard and flood level in metres AHD for each event, from the frequent storms to the 2000-year and PMF-scale events, with a map of the design flood. It also draws the recorded extents of real floods against the boundary.

Models are held for parts of Queensland, NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT, from flood studies published or licensed by councils and state agencies, and the list grows as new studies are released. The address check on the page tells you before you pay whether any model reaches the property. $9 per PDF, no account needed. It is a read of published modelling, not a flood level certificate.

Yes. Enter any QLD, NSW, VIC, SA, TAS or ACT address to see every overlay group on an interactive map at no cost. No account is needed to search or to see the map. You only pay when you order the $9 PDF report. There is no minimum and no subscription required - the price is the same whether you buy one a year or ten a day. If you order regularly, an agency plan brings that to $4.90 or $2.98 a report.

The report says so explicitly. Zoning and the planning scheme overlay families are held state-wide for NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT; Queensland is covered council by council, since each council publishes its own planning scheme data.

Where we do not hold mapping for a location, that layer is reported as not assessed rather than as a clear result - an unmapped overlay is not the same as an absent one, and the free preview shows you exactly what is assessed before you buy.

Yes, as a data reference. A Property Report states the mapped zoning of the lot - the answer Part 3 of Form 2 asks for - and shows heritage overlays and mapped easements. It also covers the matters Form 2 tells buyers to investigate themselves, such as flood, bushfire and connected services.

It is not a disclosure document and does not replace the official title search, EMR/CLR search, body corporate certificate or the council-issued certificate itself. See the Form 2 planning data guide (QLD) or the section 10.7 certificate guide (NSW).

Yes - we publish free planning profiles for suburbs across Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT, each with a zoning breakdown, the constraints that dominate the area and a schematic map. No account needed.

An add-on to the Property Report for $9, or a report on its own for $9 from the free school zone checker. It covers 15 topics for the address in four groups: environment (parks, tree canopy, air, climate hazards), social (recorded crime, who lives here, things to do), economic (jobs, rents, everyday services) and infrastructure (public transport, walking and cycling, healthcare, schools, airports). Each topic has its own page and map, and the front page gives the address a Liveability score out of 100. See sample pages.

Published open data: state transport timetables, state road and facility registers, the national health services directory, education department school lists and zones, police recorded crime, the 2021 Census, state bond rents, the National Pollutant Inventory, Geoscience Australia satellite imagery and OpenStreetMap. Every page names its sources, and the last page lists them all with their licences.

Yes. Each report gives the address a Liveability score out of 100 and rates 13 topics from 1 to 5, each on a fixed rule printed on its page (for example, a park within 400 m on foot rates 5). Schools, healthcare, public transport, everyday services and climate hazards count double. The rules are the same everywhere, so two addresses can be compared side by side. Crime is rated on recorded offences against the state rate, and schools on distance only, never on quality. Who lives here and housing are described, not rated.

Walking distances follow streets and mapped paths from the address to the edge or entrance of the place, at 80 m a minute. Places too far to walk are driven along the state road network, without traffic. A straight line is only printed where no route exists, and the page says so.

Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. Some topics have less data in some states: Tasmania publishes no open suburb crime figures, and the ACT and Tasmania publish no school zones, so those pages say what is missing rather than leave a gap.

Yes. Open your order page and tap "Add to this report". You pay the $9 difference, and the report is rebuilt with the Liveability section and emailed to you again.

The GIS Export tool clips current spatial datasets to a QLD, NSW, VIC, SA, TAS or ACT address, drawn extent or uploaded boundary and packages them for CAD and GIS. Depending on the dataset, outputs include DXF, Shapefile, GeoPackage, KMZ, GeoTIFF, a DXF TIN, OBJ and COLLADA terrain meshes, and georeferenced imagery.

DXF - for AutoCAD, Civil 3D, BricsCAD and most CAD packages.
Shapefile (.shp) - the standard GIS vector format, compatible with ArcGIS, QGIS and others.
GeoPackage (.gpkg) - a modern open format supported by QGIS, ArcGIS Pro and most GIS tools.
KMZ - for Google Earth and lightweight spatial review in tools that support KML/KMZ.

Elevation is delivered as a DEM raster, and a TIN surface is available as DXF.

The current catalogue includes property boundaries, roads, easements, contours, elevation points, a GeoTIFF DEM, a TIN surface as DXF or an OBJ/COLLADA mesh, watercourses, geology, soils, acid sulfate soils, planning zones, flood, bushfire, geohazard and heritage overlays, plus available aerial imagery. The live dataset list is the source of truth as coverage expands.

Not every dataset is available in every state or format. Each ZIP includes human-readable and machine-readable manifests that say what was included, assessed with no features, not covered, deliberately unavailable, or missed because an upstream service failed.

Georeferenced aerial imagery is available for QLD and NSW addresses only. It is not included for Victorian addresses, because Vicmap aerial imagery is licensed and cannot be redistributed in an export.

For an address export, data is clipped to a buffer around the property. The buffer varies by dataset - tighter for property-specific layers like boundaries, wider for contextual layers like geology and roads.

Yes. In the export tool you can draw an extent on the map or upload a boundary as GeoJSON, KML, KMZ or a zipped Shapefile. Custom areas are billed at 1 credit per km² (or part thereof), up to 20 km² per export. The tool shows the exact credit cost before you run it.

Vector data is clipped to your shape; imagery and elevation cover its bounding box.

No credit is deducted if an export fails. Credits are only consumed after a successful ZIP download is produced. If a dataset is unavailable but the rest succeeds, the ZIP is marked as partial and lists what is missing, so you always know what you did and did not get. If you experience repeated failures, contact us.

Scout is a Chrome extension that adds a small badge to every realestate.com.au listing showing flood likelihood, elevation, terrain, road busyness and an estimated value, plus heritage, bushfire, transport and zoning screening. It's aimed at buyers and agents screening a lot of listings quickly, rather than at producing a deliverable.

$15 per month including GST, cancel any time. Coverage is 16 Queensland councils (Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Moreton Bay, Logan, Ipswich, Redland, Toowoomba, Scenic Rim, Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Hinchinbrook and Mount Isa), 127 of the 128 councils in New South Wales (Broken Hill is not yet built) and every council in Victoria.

No. Scout is a separate monthly subscription with its own sign-in, and it does not draw on geotechnical, planning or export credits.

The AS 2870 site classification calculator works out a site class from soil profile inputs, and the 12d to DXF converter turns a .12da or .12daz handover into a layered DXF that opens in any CAD package, with no 12d licence required.

Both are genuinely free. A free account lifts the daily limits and unlocks extras such as the geometry and setout report (CSV), LandXML alignment export and surface (TIN) exports.

Purchased credits never expire - geotechnical, planning and export alike. Once bought, use them whenever you need.

Each product has its own balance and credits are not interchangeable, because the products cost very different amounts to produce. Monthly export subscription credits reset at the start of each billing period and don't carry over.

Yes. Agency 10 is $49/month inc GST for 10 property reports ($4.90 each) and Agency 50 is $149/month inc GST for 50 ($2.98 each). Reports ordered on a plan carry your agency name and logo on the cover and are kept in your account for 12 months instead of 48 hours. Unused reports do not roll over, and you can cancel any time.

Yes. The monthly GIS export plan, the Property Report agency plan and the Scout subscription can all be cancelled any time, and you keep access until the end of the current billing period. There are no cancellation fees.

Geotechnical reports have no subscription at all - you buy credits as you need them.

Yes - every price shown includes GST and is in Australian dollars. $119 per geotechnical report, $9 per Property Report, $15 for a single GIS export, $15 per month for Scout. No surprises at checkout.

If a report fails to generate because of a fault on our side, we return the credit or refund a guest payment to the card used; ask within 30 days. If a rendering or data error on our side left a report clearly wrong, we re-issue it. We do not refund change-of-mind purchases. Contact us with your account email and the address concerned.

All payments are processed by Stripe. We never store your card details. Stripe is PCI DSS Level 1 certified.

We log usage (account ID, address, timestamp) for billing and support purposes. Generated PDFs and export ZIPs are stored temporarily and purged after a short period. We don't sell or share your data with third parties. See our privacy policy.

Almost all spatial data comes from Australian state and federal government open data, plus council-published planning scheme datasets. The exceptions are named where they appear, such as the observed flight paths from adsb.lol:

Queensland - QSpatial and the Queensland Government spatial services (geology, soils, imagery, elevation, administrative boundaries), council planning schemes for Brisbane, Gold Coast, Logan, Moreton Bay, Ipswich, Sunshine Coast and others.
New South Wales - NSW Six Maps, NSW Seamless Geology, NSW Environment and the NSW ePlanning Portal, state-wide.
Victoria - Vicmap, DataVic and DEECA, including Vicmap Planning, the Victorian Flood Database and the Victorian Heritage Register.
South Australia - Location SA and the Planning and Design Code (PlanSA).
Tasmania - the LIST and the Tasmanian Planning Scheme.
ACT - ACTmapi and the Territory Plan.
National - the National Groundwater Information System (NGIS) for bores and the Soil and Landscape Grid of Australia.

See How It Works and the methodology page for the full source list.