Every Auckland Property Is Now on the Landslide Map: What It Means for Your Property
If you have checked your Auckland property on GeoMaps recently, or received a LIM report since October 2025, you may have seen landslide susceptibility information for the first time. And if you are buying, you might be alarmed to see “Detected” next to a landslide layer, even for a flat suburban section in Mangere or Flat Bush.
Before you worry, here is what is actually going on. In 2025 Auckland Council mapped the entire region for landslide susceptibility. Every property now has a classification, which means a result of “Detected” usually just means the property has been assessed, as every property has. The harder problem is that most Aucklanders have never seen these maps, and the council has deliberately made them hard to read at property scale. This guide explains the Auckland landslide map in plain language: what the five levels mean, why the colours vanish when you zoom in, and what a higher classification means for buying, building, and consent.
§ 1.0Auckland mapped the entire region for landslides
In 2025, Auckland Council completed a region-wide landslide susceptibility study, the first comprehensive assessment in almost 30 years. The study, conducted by engineering consultants WSP and published as Technical Report TR2025/7, covers every square metre of Auckland from Warkworth in the north to Franklin in the south, including the Hauraki Gulf islands.
Auckland Council's Chief Engineer Ross Roberts put it simply: “If you live in Auckland, these maps apply to you.”
This means every Auckland property now has a landslide susceptibility classification. Every single one, whether you are on a steep hillside in Titirangi or a pancake-flat section in Otara. According to TR2025/7, roughly 11 percent of the Auckland region is classified as high susceptibility and a further 7 percent as very high, so close to one in five parts of Auckland's land area sits in the upper two bands. For most urban residential land, though, the classification is Very Low or Low.
§ 2.0Why the maps were made
The 2023 Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle triggered approximately 50,000 landslides across the region, the largest landslide event in New Zealand's recorded history. These events caused loss of life and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to private and public property, and landslides accounted for the majority of the fatalities.
Before this study, Auckland's landslide information was patchy and outdated. There was no consistent, region-wide dataset, and consenting officers often worked from anecdotal or very localised information. TR2025/7 was commissioned to fix that gap. The resulting maps now feed into planning decisions under Plan Change 120, appear on LIM reports, and are publicly available through Auckland Council's GeoMaps viewer.
§ 3.0Two types of landslides, two separate maps
The study produced two separate layers, because two different types of landslide behave very differently.
Shallow Landslide Susceptibility
covers the failure of a thin layer of soil, typically less than 2 metres deep, sitting over harder rock. These are the rainfall-triggered slips that dominated the 2023 storms, where saturated topsoil detaches from the bedrock beneath. They can occur on relatively modest slopes and often happen with very little warning.
Large Scale Landslide Susceptibility
covers deeper, larger features that span most or all of a hillslope, including historic slip scars, coastal cliff instability, and deep bedrock failures. They are influenced by deeper geology and groundwater, develop more slowly, but can be far more destructive.
Your LIM shows both. A property can carry different ratings for each, for example Low for shallow but Moderate for large scale, or the other way around.
§ 4.0What the five susceptibility levels mean
The study classifies all Auckland land into five categories. Here is what each one means in practical terms.
Very Low
characteristics that make landslides very unlikely, typically very flat terrain with stable geology. No specific action required.
Low
landslides are unlikely under normal conditions. Most flat to gently sloping suburban land sits here. Standard good practice around drainage and earthworks applies, but no specialist assessment is typically needed.
Moderate
some terrain or geological features could contribute to instability under certain conditions, for example prolonged heavy rain saturating the soil. If you are planning development or significant earthworks, a geotechnical assessment is advisable.
High
characteristics strongly associated with landslide susceptibility, such as steeper slopes, specific geological formations, or proximity to known landslide deposits. A geotechnical assessment by a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng) is strongly recommended before purchasing or developing.
Very High
the strongest association with landslide susceptibility. Under Plan Change 120, very high susceptibility may preclude certain types of development. Professional geotechnical assessment is essential.
The vast majority of Auckland's urban residential land falls into Very Low or Low. If your property shows “Detected, Low,” that is a routine classification for typical suburban land, not a red flag.
§ 5.0Why the map seems to vanish when you zoom in
This is the single most common reason Aucklanders conclude their property is not mapped, when in fact it is.
Search your address in GeoMaps with the landslide layers turned on and you will see the colour classifications clearly at suburb or regional zoom. Zoom in to property level, the view most people naturally use when checking a specific house, and the colours often drop out entirely. The layer toggle is still on. The data is still there underneath. The rendering simply stops.
This is working as intended. Auckland Council's GIS team has deliberately enabled a standard GIS feature called scale dependency on these layers, a minimum scale setting that prevents them from displaying below a specified threshold. The reason comes straight from TR2025/7. The executive summary instructs the council to restrict display scales:
“The maps are suitable for use at 1:25,000 scale for shallow landslide susceptibility and 1:50,000 scale for large-scale landslide susceptibility. The maps should be used at scales appropriate for this regional-scale assessment, and where made available to the public through the Council GIS viewer the scales at which they can be viewed should be restricted.”
In plain English, 1:25,000 to 1:50,000 is roughly suburb to regional zoom. Property-level zoom, what you instinctively reach for when searching an address, is far more detailed, often 1:1,000 or finer. Zoom past the recommended threshold and GeoMaps stops rendering the layer. The council's GIS team followed the report's explicit direction. It is working exactly as the technical experts recommended.
The reason is sound. The mapping is a regional desk study built on a 32 metre analysis grid, regional geology, LiDAR, and the catalogue of roughly 50,000 landslides from 2023. No site visits were carried out. Site features like retaining walls, drainage condition, recent earthworks, exact soil profile, and slope modifications are not captured anywhere in the dataset. Displaying the layers at property scale would invite people to treat the classification as a precise risk rating for their individual section, which the report repeatedly warns it is not. The disappearing colour is, in effect, the council protecting users from misreading a screening tool as a verdict.
§ 6.0Screening level, not site specific: holding both ideas at once
Here is the tension worth understanding. The council has mapped every property, tied the classification to LIM disclosure, and linked it to consent consequences under PC120, while also deliberately restricting how it displays at property scale. Both things are true, and they stop feeling contradictory once you see what the data is for.
The classification is material information. It is on every LIM, it can trigger consent requirements, and it is now part of the public record for the property. Ignoring it is not an option.
But the classification is also screening level, not a definitive site-specific risk rating. It tells you which factors may predispose a piece of land to instability. It does not predict how often a landslide will occur, or what the consequences would be. The right way to read it is the way the council frames it on LIMs: your property is classified as a given susceptibility on the regional maps, this is not a site-specific risk rating, and a qualified geotechnical engineer should assess it before you build, renovate, or subdivide. Treating the screening map as a final answer, whether reassuring or worrying, is the mistake. For a definitive answer at property scale, a geotechnical assessment is the only thing that counts.
§ 7.0Why your classification still matters
If you are buying, selling, or renovating in Auckland, there are several reasons to check the landslide layer before you act.
Every new LIM now discloses it. Since 15 October 2025, Auckland Council LIMs include landslide susceptibility as a standard hazard disclosure. A Moderate, High, or Very High classification is now a legally disclosed fact that will appear on every future LIM for that property.
PC120 introduces consent consequences. Under the new Chapter E36 rules, which took legal effect on 3 November 2025, properties with higher susceptibility classifications face tighter consent requirements. For new dwellings, major renovations, subdivisions, or earthworks within mapped susceptibility areas, a formal Landslide Hazard Risk Assessment prepared by a suitably qualified geotechnical engineer, following the Appendix 24 methodology, may be required to support the application. That assessment costs money, takes time, and may conclude that the proposed development needs mitigation such as retaining walls, piled foundations, or slope drainage. A section that looks buildable can in practice be expensive or restricted to develop.
The slope above you can matter as much as your own title. A property can sit on flat ground with a Low classification on its own title and still sit at the base of a hillside mapped as High or Very High. The regional maps do not currently model run-out or regression zones, the report notes these have not yet been assessed at regional scale, but the surrounding susceptibility pattern is visible on GeoMaps and is relevant context when a geotechnical engineer assesses a specific site. If you are buying at the bottom of a slope and the hill above is red or orange, that is information worth having before you go unconditional. This matters more in some areas than others. Titirangi, Howick, Hillsborough, Kelston, Glen Eden, Mt Wellington, Meadowbank, and many suburbs built around Auckland's old volcanic cones are places where slope context is worth checking.
It is information insurers and lenders can also see. The classification is public and sits in datasets that insurers and lenders are able to reference. Whether and how it factors into a quote or a lending decision is for each provider to determine, and it can vary between them. The practical step for a buyer is simply to know your classification before you commit, and to confirm insurance for the specific address early in your due diligence.
§ 8.0How to check your property in three minutes
There are three ways to look at the landslide susceptibility of an Auckland property.
Auckland Council GeoMaps (free)
Open geomapspublic.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz, choose the “Natural Hazards” theme, and tick both “Large Scale Landslide Susceptibility” and “Shallow Landslide Susceptibility.” Because of the scale restriction above, the workaround is to search your address and then zoom out to suburb level, where the colours render clearly. Note your classification and the pattern across the surrounding slopes, then zoom back in for street context if you want. This is free and authoritative, but the interface is clunky and the interpretation is left to you.
Order a LIM (around $375, up to 10 working days)
A post-October 2025 LIM includes the landslide notation as a mandatory disclosure. This is the legally definitive source. The trade-off is cost and time, and a LIM states the classification without explaining its consent or insurance implications.
Use a hazard report (Know Your Risk NZ, $49, instant)
A report pulls the same council data, shows the layer rendered clearly at property scale, and translates the Very Low to Very High classification into a plain-English explanation of the PC120 consent pathway and the relevant Appendix 24 requirements, alongside six other hazard layers.
§ 9.0The bottom line
The 2025 Auckland landslide susceptibility maps are the most important hazard mapping the city has produced in a generation. They are free to view, feed into every new LIM, and classify every property in the region. Yet most buyers have never looked at them, partly because the council has deliberately made them hard to read at property scale.
What matters is not whether a classification exists, it does for every property, but what level has been assigned and what that means for your plans. Check the level, read it as the screening tool it is, look at the slopes around you, and get a geotechnical assessment if you are buying, building, or developing on anything Moderate or above. A three-minute check now is a very small investment next to discovering, six months after settlement, that a consent you assumed would be routine now needs a geotechnical report.
Check your property's landslide susceptibility and 6 other hazard layers
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Check Your Auckland Property →This article is general information only. It is not legal, financial, or engineering advice, and it does not replace a LIM report or a site-specific geotechnical assessment by a suitably qualified engineer. For any property where landslide hazard is a material consideration, always engage a Chartered Professional Engineer (geotechnical) before making property decisions.
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