Do you know how risky your home is? Now you can find out in seconds

2 October 2026

This morning RNZ's Susan Edmunds asked a question most of us never properly answer before we sign: do you actually know the natural-hazard risks of the home you're buying?

The numbers in her piece are sobering. Only 57% of recent buyers considered natural-hazard information at all. More than a quarter didn't know where to find it, and one in five didn't even know what information existed. Meanwhile, an estimated 10,000-plus homes across Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin could become uninsurable by 2050 as climate risk reshapes the market.

That's a lot of New Zealanders making the biggest purchase of their lives with a blind spot exactly where the hazard information should be.

The fix everyone's describing already exists

In the same article, Suncorp NZ chief executive Jimmy Higgins describes the solution: one simple place to check a property's hazards, in plain English — so a hazard check becomes as routine as ordering a building report or looking up the school zone.

That's exactly what we built HazardCheck to be.

What HazardCheck does

Enter any New Zealand address and HazardCheck returns an official natural-hazard report in seconds, drawn from government and council data — covering:

  • Tsunami evacuation zones
  • Flooding (riverine and overland flow)
  • Liquefaction susceptibility
  • Active fault proximity
  • Coastal inundation
  • Contaminated-land (HAIL) status, and more

No jargon, and no hunting through a dozen different council GIS portals — just a clear, plain-English report for $9.99, available now at hazardcheck.co.nz.

The part we care about most: never a false all-clear

Here's the difference that matters. A hazard tool is only useful if you can trust it — and the most dangerous thing a report can do is tell you a property is safe when nobody has actually checked.

HazardCheck is built so that absence of data is never shown as safety. Every hazard comes back as one of three honest answers — present, none identified, or not assessed. Where the data for an area is thin, we say so, and point you to the next step, instead of quietly rendering a reassuring green tick. That discipline is the whole point of the product.

Make it as routine as a building report

Susan Edmunds' advice is exactly right: natural-hazard checks should be as routine as researching the commute, the school zone, or the building report. The information gap is real — but closing it no longer means knowing which council dataset to go hunting for.

Check your address — or the one you're about to buy — at hazardcheck.co.nz.

Source: "Do you know how risky your home is?", Susan Edmunds, RNZ, 2 October 2026 — rnz.co.nz.