What's your process for checking property hazards before making an offer?
I'm looking for some honest feedback from people that have experienced buying property in NZ.
When you're researching a property, do you actually check council maps for things like flood prone areas, overland flow paths, coastal inundation, land stability, zoning, heritage overlays, significant trees and other natural hazards?
If you do, what's your experience been like?
I've always found the council GIS sites pretty clunky, especially on mobile, and not particularly easy to understand unless you already know what you're looking at.
I'm wondering if there would be any value in a simple mobile-friendly tool where you enter an address (or use your current location while standing outside a property) and it gives you a plain English summary of the relevant council data, along with a simple evidence map and links back to the original council information.
Would something like that be genuinely useful before making an offer, or are the existing council tools good enough?
Thanks.
Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not talking about replacing a LIM report or providing legal advice. I was thinking more about the very start of the buying process, when you're standing outside an open home or scrolling listings and want a quick summary of publicly available council information before deciding whether to investigate further. Think of it as a simpler, mobile-friendly way to access council GIS data, with links back to the official sources if you want to dig deeper.