What "unmapped" means

There are three answers to "is this property in a flood area", not two.

The land can be inside a mapped flood area. It can be outside one. Or no authority has mapped flooding for that land at all, in which case there is nothing to be inside or outside of.

The third answer is the one most tools do not print. Asked about an address in a council with no flood mapping, they return no result, and a page showing no hazards reads as a page showing safety. It is not. No register covers that land, so the search cannot say whether the hazard applies. That is not the same as clear, and the council may hold its own information.

How common it is

In 115 of 128 New South Wales councils, fewer than one address in ten is on land that has any flood planning map at all in the NSW Planning Portal’s layers. Only 9 councils have a map for the land under nine in ten addresses or more, and 4 more for between one and nine in ten (our count, October 2026) © State of New South Wales (Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure), CC BY 4.0. Across most of the state, a flood search has nothing to search. That is a fact about the register, not about the land.

Our flood planning map by council shows, council by council, where the Planning Portal's layers have a flood planning map and where they do not, and each of our New South Wales council pages with hazard figures says which it is there.

The same holds elsewhere and for other hazards. Aircraft noise contours exist for the airports whose councils have mapped them. Landslide risk is mapped by some councils and not others. An absence in any of them means the mapping does not reach that land. The same holds in Tasmania, where a council's schedule may map no code, and in the ACT, outside its flood model.

Why an absence is not a finding

A mapped hazard area is a control, made by an authority, for a purpose. Bush fire prone land exists because a council made a map and the Rural Fire Service certified it. A flood planning map exists because a council made one and put it in its planning instrument.

Where a council has published no such map, there is nothing for the land to be inside or outside of. That is not the same as saying no control applies. The flood planning clause is compulsory in every New South Wales council's local environmental plan, whether or not that council has drawn a map. No register settles the question for that land, and the council may hold its own information.

Treating an unmapped hazard as a negative finding overstates what the register supports, and it is the most consequential thing a property report can get wrong: a buyer who is told "no flood risk found" and proceeds is worse off than one told "no register we read covers this land, so the report cannot say whether the hazard applies; here is who to ask".

What we do instead

Every field in our report is one of three states. The control applies. The control does not apply, and we say which register we read and when it was current. Or no register covers this land, in which case we say that and name who would hold the answer.

The third case is not a gap in the report. It is the section of it we would keep if we could keep only one: what we looked for, what we could not get, who holds it, and who sets the fee to tell you.

Reports from $9.90 including GST, paid once. The price belongs to the jurisdiction the address is in. The check is free: it tells you the exact total for your address, and which registers cover it, before you pay anything.