LayeredGeo for mortgage brokers

Fewer surprises after the offer

A deal that looked settled can stall when the valuer notes a flood overlay, the insurer quotes a premium the client did not budget for, or the land turns out to be zoned for something other than a house. None of that is hidden: it is in public mapping. It is just usually found late, by someone else.

A LayeredGeo report puts that mapping in front of you and your client at the start, so the right questions are asked while there is still time to answer them.

What a broker gets from each report

• Property Report ($9) - the planning zone and land use, flood, bushfire, heritage and environmental overlays, acid sulfate soils, airport controls, mapped easements, and water, sewer and stormwater pipes. Where we hold no mapping for a layer at the address, the report says so rather than reporting a clear result.
• Flood Model Report ($9) - where a published flood model reaches the lot, the modelled depth, velocity and flood level for each event. An overlay says a lot is flood affected; depth is what tells your client whether that is a wet back corner or water through the house. Models are held for parts of Queensland, NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT.
• Terrain Report ($9) - contours, elevation cross sections and the grade of the block from government elevation data. For land-and-build and construction loans, a steep block means cut, fill and retaining that the build budget has to carry.
• Pre-Purchase Property Report ($25) - all three bound into one PDF for a buyer client.

Flood, bushfire and insurance

Insurers price flood and bushfire cover on their own data, so only an insurance quote tells your client what cover will cost. What the report gives is the published mapping behind that question: whether the lot sits in a council or state flood overlay or bushfire prone area, and, where a flood study covers it, how deep the modelled water is. That is enough to prompt your client to get a quote before they are committed, not after.

Zoning and the security

The planning zone tells you what the land is for. A house on land zoned rural, industrial or for future development can raise questions for a lender that a house on a residential lot does not, and the report states the zone and land use category for the address. Your lender's own policy decides what that means for the loan.

Agency plans for brokers

A single Property Report is $9 with no account needed. Brokers checking properties regularly can take Agency 10 at $49 a month for 10 reports, or Agency 50 at $149 a month for 50 reports, which brings each report to $4.90 or $2.98. The Property Report, Flood Model Report and Terrain Report each use one report from the allowance; the Pre-Purchase Property Report uses two.

Set your business name and logo once on your account page and they are printed on the cover of every Property Report and Pre-Purchase Property Report you order, above the LayeredGeo authorship line. Reports ordered on a plan stay in your account for 12 months. Cancel any time from the account page.

Coverage

Reports cover supported addresses in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. See the sample report for exactly what a client receives, or the methodology page for where every overlay comes from.

Important limitation

LayeredGeo is a desktop review based on government-published spatial data. It is not a valuation, an insurance assessment, credit advice or legal advice, and it does not replace a lender's valuation, a building and pest inspection, conveyancing searches or a soil test. Use it to ask better questions earlier.