Buying a home? Read the terrain first
A ten-minute check that belongs next to the survey and the mortgage quote.
Most buyers investigate a neighbourhood's schools, commute and noise before offering on a house. Far fewer look at what the land under it does when water arrives — usually because the information seemed hard to get, buried in planning portals or absent altogether.
It takes about ten minutes with the Hexaflood Explorer. Here's the routine we'd use ourselves.
1. Look up the address
Open the Explorer and search the property's address. The map centres on its hexagon and shows the headline susceptibility score — where recognised defences exist, that headline already accounts for them, with the without defences reading shown alongside.
Don't stop at your own hexagon. Zoom out one notch. Is the property a low cell in otherwise elevated surroundings, or high ground beside a valley floor? The pattern around a property tells you where water would concentrate in the wider neighbourhood — the approach roads, the supermarket, the school run.
2. Read the breakdown, not just the number
Click through to the factor breakdown. Three things deserve a buyer's attention:
- Height above drainage. The metres between the property and the nearest natural drainage line. Single digits deserve respect; twenty-plus is a different world.
- Slope and surroundings. Flat cells hold water. A property at the base of a long slope receives everything that slope sheds.
- The percentile. How the cell compares with the rest of its city. "Better ground than 85% of this town" is a sentence worth having in a negotiation.
3. Act on what you find
A Moderate or High reading is not a verdict — it's an agenda:
- Ask the seller directly about water history: cellar damp, garden pooling, past claims.
- Have the surveyor look specifically at drainage, damp-proofing and ground levels around the building.
- Get insurance terms before exchange, not after — susceptible terrain can show up in premiums and excesses.
- Look at the specific defences the protected score relies on, and who maintains them.
And a Very Low score is worth knowing too — it belongs in your offer as quietly persuasive context.
The terrain was there long before the listing photos, and it will be there long after the paint dries. Ten minutes on the map puts it on your side of the table.