Contour Map of Your Property
Click any New Zealand property and get contour lines snapped to its legal title boundary, generated from the national 1 m LiDAR elevation model. Free, in the browser, at any interval from 0.5 m.
Start with your property
Search an address, click the parcel, pick an interval. Nothing to install and no account.
Open the property tool →Why the title boundary matters
Most online terrain tools ask you to drag a rectangle. That is fine for a catchment and wrong for a property, because a property is not a rectangle. Draw a box around a section and you get contours for the neighbour's bank, the road reserve and half the paddock behind — then you spend an afternoon in CAD trimming to the boundary you actually care about.
Selecting the parcel instead uses the LINZ primary parcels cadastre — the same legal boundary that appears on the title — as the analysis area. The contours are clipped to the property line, the terrain statistics describe your land and nobody else's, and the export arrives already trimmed.
What a contour map of a property actually tells you
Contours are the cheapest way to answer a set of questions that otherwise need a site visit and a good eye.
- Where is the flat ground? Widely spaced contours mean gentle ground — the building platform, the shed site, the part of the paddock you can work.
- How much fall is there, and in which direction? The difference between the highest and lowest contour is the fall across the site. Which way it runs decides where water goes, whether a gravity connection to the sewer works, and how much cut and fill a level platform will need.
- Where does water collect? Contours that bend uphill trace a gully; a closed loop at the low point is a hollow that will pond. Both are visible on a contour map long before they are obvious standing in the paddock.
- Where are the steep bits? Contours crowding together mark banks, terrace faces and slips. On a lifestyle block this is usually the difference between usable hectares and scenery.
- Is the site benched or natural? Unnaturally straight, evenly spaced contours often mean earthworks — an old terrace, a forestry track, a filled gully. Worth knowing before you dig.
Choosing a contour interval
The interval is the vertical distance between contour lines, and picking it badly is the most common way to end up with an unreadable plan. The right interval depends on the size of the site and how much relief it has.
| Site | Interval | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Suburban section, 400–800 m² | 0.5 m | Shows the fall across a site that may only drop a metre or two in total |
| Lifestyle block, 1–10 ha | 1 m | Enough detail for building platforms and drainage without crowding |
| Farm or station, 50 ha+ | 2–5 m | Reads as landform — ridges, gullies, faces — rather than noise |
| Steep or hill country | 5–10 m | On a 30° face, 1 m contours are 2 m apart on the page and illegible |
Contours render on the map as soon as you pick an interval, so the practical approach is to try one, look at it, and step up or down. It costs nothing to change your mind.
Exporting for the people who need it
A contour map is usually made for somebody else — a designer, an engineer, a contractor, a council. Each of them wants a different file.
- DXF for AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Revit and ArchiCAD. Contours arrive as polylines with elevation attached, ready to be used as a surface rather than traced.
- GeoJSON for QGIS and ArcGIS, in WGS84, with the contour elevation as an attribute on every line.
- PDF for printing, marking up by hand, or attaching to an application.
- STL and OBJ when you want a physical or rendered 3D model of the site rather than lines on a plan.
More than contours, from the same click
Once a property is selected, the rest of the terrain tools work on the same boundary — no need to re-select.
Where the accuracy sits, honestly
The elevation behind these contours is the LINZ National Elevation Programme's 1 m LiDAR digital elevation model. Vertical accuracy is inherited from the survey that covers your area — typically in the tens of centimetres — and it is not asserted by this tool. Three things are worth being clear about before you rely on a contour:
- Age. The model is a snapshot of the ground on the day it was flown, which could be anywhere from 2008 to this year. Check the capture year for your address on the LiDAR coverage page before trusting contours over recent earthworks.
- Coverage. Where there is no LiDAR, elevation falls back to the 8 m national DEM, which LINZ itself describes as unsuitable for terrain analysis. Contour intervals below about 5 m are meaningless on it. Every result on this site states what proportion came from the fallback.
- Standing. This is a measurement, not a survey. It has no legal standing and carries no professional liability. For feasibility, concept design and understanding a site it is excellent. For a finished floor level or a boundary dispute, engage a licensed cadastral surveyor.
Related guides
- Slope maps for building consent — what councils look at on steep land, and how to produce it.
- Terrain checks before buying rural land — aspect, drainage and slope due diligence before you make an offer.
- LiDAR coverage in New Zealand — is your area flown, and when.
- Contour lines for New Zealand — the general guide to generating and exporting contours.
- Topographic maps of New Zealand — how to read contours, and how custom maps differ from Topo50 sheets.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get a contour map of my property for free?
Yes. Click your property on the map, and contours are generated from the LINZ national 1 m LiDAR elevation model over the legal title boundary. There is no account, no software to install and no charge. The elevation data is public and licensed CC BY 4.0 by Toitū Te Whenua LINZ; this site does the processing.
What contour interval should I choose for a residential section?
For a typical suburban section of 400–800 m², 0.5 m is usually right — it shows the fall across the site without turning into a contour thicket. For a lifestyle block of a few hectares, 1 m reads more clearly. For a farm or a whole catchment, 2–5 m. A useful check: if the contours are so dense you cannot see the ground between them, step the interval up.
Is this the same as a surveyed contour plan?
No, and the difference matters. A LiDAR-derived contour map is an aerial measurement of the ground surface with a vertical accuracy typically in the tens of centimetres, captured on the day the survey was flown. A surveyed contour plan is measured on the ground by a licensed cadastral surveyor, to a tighter tolerance, on a known date, and carries professional liability. Use LiDAR contours for site assessment, feasibility, concept design and understanding what you are buying. Use a surveyor when a boundary peg, a legal level or a consent condition depends on the number.
Will a council accept these contours in a consent application?
It depends entirely on what the contours are being used for. Councils routinely accept LiDAR-derived contours for context plans, site analysis, catchment and stormwater assessments and preliminary earthworks estimates. They generally require surveyed levels for finished floor levels, building platform certification and anything where a specific level is a condition of consent. Ask your council or your designer which category your application falls into before you rely on it.
How current is the elevation data?
It depends on when your area was last flown, and that ranges from 2008 to the present. Contours cannot show earthworks, a new driveway cut or a subdivision that happened after the survey. Check the capture year for your address on the LiDAR coverage page before you rely on the contours for anything recent.
What format should I export for my architect or engineer?
DXF for anyone working in AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Revit or ArchiCAD — it comes in as editable polylines with elevation values attached. GeoJSON for GIS work in QGIS or ArcGIS. PDF when you want something to print, mark up or attach to an application. All three come from the same generation, so they agree with each other.
Does the contour map include buildings and trees?
No. The contours come from the digital elevation model (DEM), which is bare earth with vegetation and structures stripped out during processing. That is what you want for ground contours. If you need the tops of things — canopy height, roof levels, shading — that is the digital surface model (DSM), a separate LINZ product.