New South Wales property data tools: what each official one shows

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Kooky

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Before a private data product says anything about a home in New South Wales, the State has usually said it first. The land value comes from the Valuer General. The sale price comes from a notice lodged with the land registry. The owner's name and the mortgage sit on the title register. The zoning sits in the planning database. Each of those records has its own public tool, its own keeper and its own rules about what may be done with the result.

The tools are easy to confuse because they overlap at the edges. A land value is not a sale price, a sales search is not a title search, and a planning property report is a summary drawn from a database, with its own stated gaps. This guide takes the four official systems one at a time, using the pages each body publishes: who runs it, what it shows, what the published material says about cost, and what it leaves out. Where a page is silent, the guide says so instead of filling the gap.

NSW Valuer General pages on land values; NSW Land Registry Services 2026/27 fees update, fee including GST.

Four record keepers, four sets of tools

The first system belongs to the NSW Valuer General. The Valuer General's pages describe the office as an independent statutory officer that sets and oversees the valuation of land in New South Wales, appointed by the Governor of New South Wales. The same pages say Value NSW manages and supports the valuation system. Two families of tools come out of it: the land value tools, built on the Register of Land Values, and the property sales tools, built on the sales that valuers study.

The second system belongs to NSW Land Registry Services, known as NSW LRS, which describes itself as the body that creates and maintains land title records on behalf of the NSW Government. Its information products include the title search, and it names a channel of authorised information brokers.

The third and fourth tools share one home, the NSW Planning Portal. The Spatial Viewer is the portal's map, and the property report is a document the map produces for one property. A portal article of 26 August 2019 describes the Spatial Viewer as the digital mapping service of what was then the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. The material read for this guide does not name the department as it stands in 2026, so the guide uses the 2019 description and dates it.

The land value search and the Register of Land Values

The land value search tool is the public window on the Register of Land Values. According to the Valuer General's page on finding land values, it lets a user view and print land values and property information from the register from 1 July 2001. The page gives no earlier date, so a value made before July 2001 is outside what the tool is described as holding.

The tool does not start from an address. It starts from a property number, and then the user selects the valuation date required. The Valuer General lists five ways to find a property number: logging in to the NSW Valuation and Objection Portal, reading it from a notice of valuation, reading it from a land tax assessment notice issued by Revenue NSW, making a title reference enquiry, or making a property address enquiry. The last two matter to anyone who is not the owner, because the first three are documents and accounts an owner holds.

The notice of valuation is the paper the owner receives. The same page describes it in one place as issued "at least once every three years" and in another as issued every three years. The guide cannot say which wording is the working rule; the page carries both.

Beyond the single-property search, the Valuer General publishes land values in summary form. Summaries are searchable by local government area, and historical summaries can be searched by local government area and by year. Bulk land value summaries are available for local government areas from 2017 onwards. Those are not an open download on the page read for this guide: they are requested through an online enquiry, and the page says this route ensures compliance with licensing terms.

The page states no fee for the land value search, the summaries or the bulk request. It does not call them free either, and this guide records that silence as an open point instead of reading a price into it.

How a land value is made

A number in the land value search is the end of a process, and the process explains what the number can and cannot be used for. The Valuer General's overview page defines the term in one line: land value is the value of the land only. It does not include the value of a home or other structures. The page on how land is valued adds that concessions based on personal circumstances, such as a pensioner concession, do not apply to land values. The figure describes the land, not its owner.

The legal base named on the Valuer General's pages is the Valuation of Land Act 1916 of New South Wales. Two special cases carry their own provisions: section 14G of that Act governs the land value of properties that are heritage restricted by a planning instrument, and sections 124 and 125 of the Heritage Act 1977 govern properties on the State Heritage Register.

Over 2.7 million parcels of land are valued each year, according to the Valuer General. Valuing each one individually every year is not how that is done. The Valuer General uses what the page calls a mass valuation approach, to cover that number of properties.

The logic rests on one stated expectation: properties in a component are expected to experience similar changes in value. A primary benchmark represents most properties in the component. Reference benchmarks represent the higher-valued and lower-valued properties and other subgroups, so that the edges of a component are tested as well as its middle.

A worked example shows the mechanics. The figures are illustrative and are not market data. Assume a component whose primary benchmark had a land value of A$800,000 at the previous valuing date and is valued at A$840,000 at the new one. The change is A$40,000 on A$800,000, or 5 per cent. A property in the same component with a previous land value of A$650,000 would move by the same 5 per cent, which is A$32,500, to A$682,500. Nobody needs to have sold next door for that value to change: it moves because the benchmark moved.

Valuers do the work, and the Valuer General's page mentions contract valuers, whose performance the Valuer General monitors through an annual risk-based quality assurance programme and system-based data integrity checks. Value NSW quality assures the land values. Before values are accepted into the Register of Land Values, the Valuer General carries out formal quality assurance reviews in each local government area.

The date matters as much as the method. The values the Valuer General published in November 2025 are land values as at 1 July 2025. A land value read in the search tool in October 2026 is therefore a statement about the market on a 1 July, not about the day it is read.

What land values are used for

The Valuer General's pages name two public uses. Revenue NSW uses land value to determine land tax and surcharge land tax. Councils use land values for rates; for strata units, the page on how land is valued says councils use each unit's land value to determine rates.

The pages stop there on purpose. For how a value turns into a rates bill, the overview page sends readers to their local council or to the Office of Local Government. For how it turns into a land tax assessment, it sends them to Revenue NSW. The land value tools show the input, and the bodies that send the bills hold the formula. The pages read for this guide do not state how often councils receive new values or whether any averaging applies, and the guide leaves both out.

For a transaction, the practical reading is narrow. A land value excludes the home and other structures by definition, so it is not an estimate of what a house or unit would sell for. It is the figure on which two charges are based, set at a fixed date by a method built for consistency across millions of parcels.

When a printed value is not enough, there is a formal document. The Valuer General describes a certificate of land value as a legal document that certifies the details of an entry in the Register of Land Values. It includes the land value, the owner's name or names, the property description, the area and dimensions, any applicable allowances, the property number and the date the valuation was made. The request has an order to it:

1. Complete the online registration form.
2. Receive an activation key by email.
3. Find the property number.
4. Complete the online request form with the activation key, the property number and the valuing year required.

The page gives no fee for the certificate.

Published sales: search, map and bulk files

The second family of Valuer General tools deals with sales. The reason it exists is stated plainly on the Valuer General's page: property sales are the most important factor valuers consider when valuing land. The State publishes the sales because it values land from them.

The source is a single stream. New South Wales property sales information comes from Notices of Sale lodged with Land Registry Services, according to the Valuer General. That makes the data a record of transfers notified to the registry, which is a different thing from an advertised price or a result called out at an auction.

There are three ways in, and their depth differs.

• The property sales search covers individual property sales dating back to 2001. A search by suburb takes the suburb and, optionally, the street, the dates, the purchase prices and a property type of house or unit. A search by property number takes the number and the sales dates, with purchase prices optional.
• The land values and property sales map shows individual properties since 2001, and streets and suburbs for the last 5 years. The Valuer General describes the map as a joint initiative of the Valuer General and Spatial Services.
• The bulk property sales information download, often shortened to bulk PSI, holds bulk property sales data since 1990.

The gap between the three is worth holding in mind. A single address can be traced back to 2001 in the search or on the map. A street or suburb view on the map reaches back 5 years. Only the bulk files go back to 1990, eleven years before the search begins.

The page read for this guide does not state how often the sales data is refreshed, the file format of the bulk download, the list of fields it carries or any fee. It does not describe the delay between a sale and its appearance. Those are open points, and anyone timing a market reading against this data would need the answer from the publisher.

The two sales reports behind a valuation

Two reports tie the sales data back to an individual land value. They are the nearest thing the system offers to seeing a valuer's working.

The benchmark component report shows the sales the valuer used to value the benchmark properties in the component the property belongs to. Since the benchmark's percentage change is what gets applied across the component, this is the evidence behind the movement in every land value in the group.

The valuation sales report shows some of the sales valuers considered. According to the Valuer General, it includes the land size, the contract price, the purchase price and the adjusted land value. The last of those is the telling column. It is the sale after the adjustments described in the valuation method: the added value of improvements such as buildings removed, and the price brought to market conditions at 1 July of the valuing year. Reading a contract price next to its adjusted land value shows how much of a sale the valuer attributed to the land.

The wording is careful: the report shows some sales, not a stated full list.

Strata needs a different key. The valuation sales report is not available for individual strata units. The Valuer General's page says to use the strata scheme's property number instead, which reports on the whole scheme. An owner of one unit therefore reads the evidence at scheme level, even though, as the same pages note, councils rate each unit on its own land value.

The licence that comes with the sales data

Open to look at is not the same as open to reuse, and the sales data is where that line is drawn most clearly. The Valuer General's page says property sales information is for non-commercial use only, under a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, NoDerivatives 4.0 licence. The three parts of that name are the three conditions the licence title sets: the source is credited, the use is not commercial, and the material is not turned into derivative works.

The second of those three triggers is the one that is easy to miss. Under the wording on the Valuer General's page, the PSI licence is needed for business sharing as well as for resale. A spreadsheet of bulk sales passed around an office falls under the same heading as a paid data product. How that applies to a given use depends on the use and on the licence terms themselves, which the page does not reproduce.

The same idea appears on the land value side, in softer form: bulk land value summaries are released on request, and the stated reason is compliance with licensing terms. The pages do not publish the price of a PSI licence, and this guide does not have one to report.

Title searches and the NSW LRS fees for 2026-27

A land value says what the land is worth for rating and taxing. A sales record says what was paid. Neither is the title. Land title records in New South Wales are created and maintained by NSW Land Registry Services on behalf of the NSW Government, and information from them is sold as priced products.

NSW LRS publishes a yearly fees update. The 2026/27 edition describes its contents as the most common regulated and other fees charged by NSW LRS, and the fees apply from 1 July 2026. Under its Information Products and Services heading, four products carry the same over-the-counter price.

A worked example for the search products, using only the listed fees: one title search, one plan image, one dealing image and one owner inquiry, all over the counter, come to four times A$18.70, or A$74.80 including GST. Excluding GST the same four come to A$68.00, so the tax in the total is A$6.80, one tenth of the price before tax.

The registration fees are in the table for contrast, because they show what the search fees are not. Looking at the register costs under A$20 a product. Changing it costs more. A second worked example: a purchase registered with one transfer and one mortgage would carry two lodgment fees of A$182.73, or A$365.46 including GST. The fees update notes that each of those fees includes a A$5.35 levy paid to the Torrens Assurance Fund, so A$10.70 of the A$365.46 is levy.

Plans are priced by the lot. The fee for lodging a deposited or strata plan for examination is A$349.80 excluding GST for the first lot, and each lot after the first is charged an additional A$349.80. As a worked example, a plan of three lots would come to three times A$384.78, or A$1,154.34 including GST.

One transitional rule applies around the fee change. According to the fees update, 2025/26 regulated fees are applied to land title dealings and plans lodged before 1 July 2026 but not finalised until after that date. The date of lodgment sets the fee, not the date of registration.

On brokers, the document says one thing: additional products and professional assistance can be obtained through NSW LRS Authorised Information Brokers. It lists no broker prices and does not say whether a broker charges its own service fee on top of the listed fee. The price a member of the public pays through a broker is therefore an open point in this guide, and the A$18.70 figure should be read as what the fees update calls it: the over-the-counter fee.

The Spatial Viewer and its property report

The planning record has the most visual of the four tools. The Spatial Viewer is an online map of planning controls, described in a 2019 Planning Portal article. It launched in May 2019.

The portal's guide to the viewer describes how it is reached and used. It opens from the portal's Find a Property link, as a separate site, and the user must accept its terms and conditions before the map appears. Four searches are offered: by address, by lot (entering the lot, section or deposited plan), by local government area, and by point of interest. Results appear as tabs at the top right of the map.

What the map draws is described in the 2019 article. Planning controls, named there as State environmental planning policies, local environmental plans and development control plans, appear as coloured polygon layers. A layers tab selects them, a legend shows how each appears, and a control adjusts their opacity. Five base map options sit behind them. The viewer links each control to the relevant legislation on the Legislation NSW website, and a further link opens a separate site for downloading spatial data sets.

The property report is the viewer's output for one property. An icon next to the search bar generates it, the browser has to allow pop-ups, and the result downloads as a PDF. The 2019 article describes it as a detailed summary of all planning controls affecting a property, and says it had by then been enhanced with further land attributes: classified roads, high-pressure pipelines and Sydney Trains assets.

Where the data comes from is spelled out. The Spatial Viewer draws all its information from the NSW Planning Database, which the article calls a single source of truth. Some State agency datasets arrive through direct data interfaces. The cadastre and address database from Spatial Services, which is what turns an address or a lot number into a shape on the map, is updated nightly.

That restriction is the clearest stated limit on the tool: access to sensitive data is restricted as the data custodian requires. A site that looks clear on the map may still carry an entry in its report, which is a reason the two are read together.

Neither the guide nor the article states a fee for the viewer or the report, and neither carries a statement of the report's legal standing or accuracy. The viewer's own terms and conditions, which each user accepts on entry, were not among the pages read for this guide.

What the published pages leave open

The four systems answer four different questions: what the land alone was valued at on a 1 July, what was notified as paid, what the register holds, and which planning controls touch the site. None of them answers for another, and a land value in particular is never a sale price.

Four public records describe a New South Wales property, each kept by a different body and each dated, licensed or priced in its own way.

The Valuer General's pages do not state a fee for the land value or sales tools, the refresh cycle of the sales data or the price of a PSI licence. The NSW LRS fees update does not state what a broker charges. The planning material read here dates from 2019 and does not set out the report's legal standing. Each of those questions has an owner among the four bodies, and the answer in a given case depends on the product, the purpose and the date.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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