Most of what OwnBetter shows about a property comes from public registers kept by the Crown, councils and industry bodies. Here is each source, who publishes it, and what we use it for.
We use each dataset as its publisher supplies it, under the licence it is published with — for most, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. We refresh them on the publisher’s schedule, so a figure can be as old as the publisher’s latest release: a council rating valuation, for example, is usually two to three years old.
Where a figure comes from a source rather than from you, we say so beside it. Where a source has nothing, we show nothing rather than an estimate dressed up as a fact.
Registered owner names are personal information. We hold them under LINZ’s licence for personal data, keep them off public pages and out of search engines, and delete them on request — see our privacy policy.
| Dataset | Published by | What we use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Titles, owners and memorials | Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) | Which titles make up a property, who the registered owners are, and the mortgages and other interests registered against them. |
| Addresses, parcels and roads | LINZ | Every address in the country, the land parcels beneath them, and road names used for address search. |
| Aerial imagery and elevation | LINZ, from imagery supplied by councils and regional partners | Aerial photographs of each property, by survey and year, and ground heights. |
| Rating valuations | District and city councils | Capital, land and improvement values from each council’s district valuation roll, and council rates. |
| Building consents and property files | District and city councils | Council property files, ordered on request from the council that holds them. |
| Dataset | Published by | What we use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Census | Stats NZ | Who lives in a neighbourhood — age, households, tenure, income, travel to work — at the smallest published area. |
| Recorded crime | New Zealand Police | Victimisations by meshblock. Rates are not shown for very small populations or counts. |
| Schools and enrolment zones | Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office | Schools near a property, and the enrolment zones it falls in. |
| District plan zoning, overlays and hazards | District and regional councils | Zoning, heritage and character overlays, height controls, viewshafts, and flood and other natural hazard layers. |
| Traffic counts | Auckland Transport and NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi | Average daily traffic on the roads around a property. |
| Public transport stops | Regional councils’ published timetable (GTFS) feeds | The nearest stops and the services that call at them. |
| Water and wastewater networks | Watercare | Pipes near a property, used to work out its likely water connection. |
| Dataset | Published by | What we use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity connections (ICPs) | Electricity Authority registry | The electricity connection at an address, its network and its current retailer, and the register of market participants. |
| Gas connections (ICPs) | Gas Industry Company registry | The gas connection at an address and its current retailer. |
| Broadband availability | Chorus | Which fibre and copper services an address can get. |
| Retail plans and prices | Retailers’ published plans | Electricity, gas and broadband plans used for comparisons. |
| Maps, Street View and solar | Street-level imagery and the roof analysis behind solar estimates. |
| Dataset | Published by | What we use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Companies register | New Zealand Companies Office | Companies and their shareholders, so a property owned through a company can be matched to the people behind it. |
| Register of licensed insurers | Reserve Bank of New Zealand | Licensed insurers, used to identify who underwrites a policy. |
Balances, interest rates, loan terms, bills, policies and what you pay for services are not on any public register. Those come from you — typed in, uploaded, or from an account you connect — and are private to your account.
If something about your property is wrong, it is usually wrong at the source, and the fix that lasts is made there: titles with LINZ, valuations with your council, connections with your retailer. Tell us at [email protected] and we will point you to the right place, and correct anything that is ours.