Clearer Conveyancer Reports: What Changed and Why It Matters

When everything works, the data you get is the same. What’s changed is what you see when something is missing — and we’ve closed the gaps that let different parts of a report drift onto different properties. Here is what changed, in plain language, and why each one matters when a report is relied on for due diligence.

“Couldn’t check” is now different from “none found”

When the report looks up nearby development applications, there are three answers we now keep apart: some found (a count, with the detail), none found (the query ran and returned nothing within 200 m of the queried sources), and couldn’t be checked (the check could not be completed for this address).

Previously, if that check couldn’t be completed, the report showed a plain 0. On the page, “0” reads exactly like “none nearby”. For a due-diligence document that is the dangerous kind of wrong: “we didn’t look” is not the same as “there’s nothing there”. Now the report says, in words, when a check didn’t run — and it only lists a data source once it records that source was reached.

One property, from top to bottom

A report pulls together several things: the planning controls, the land valuation, the environmental overlays, and nearby activity. Each of those now comes from the single address you searched — rather than being assembled from separate lookups that could point at different properties. It traces back to that one address.

(One honest note: some controls — for example those for a strata scheme — are set at the parent lot, because that is how the planning system defines them. The report reflects that where it applies; it isn’t a sign of two different properties.)

The address label and the data come from one lookup

A report uses the property found during address resolution for both its address label and its data — the two are generated from the same lookup, not stitched together afterwards. Where an address is ambiguous, check the resolved property before relying on the report.

Clearer messages when a check can’t run

The most common interruptions are an address that can’t be matched to a parcel, or a government service that’s briefly unavailable. Where it can tell the difference, the report now says which one it is — and for an apparent temporary outage, it prompts you to try again — instead of a single generic “something went wrong”. A short outage no longer has to read as “your address is invalid”.

How we caught these

These came out of an independent review pass — a second, separate system reading the same code specifically to find places where a wrong or missing answer could look like a valid one. It is the same idea behind how the engine was built: the failures that matter most in property data aren’t crashes — they are the quiet cases where a report looks fine but isn’t. We added automated regression tests for these failure scenarios as part of the release process.

What this means in practice

• A check that couldn’t run is labelled as such — kept separate from “none found”.
• Each section comes from the one address you searched.
• The address label and the data are designed to come from the same property lookup.
• An apparent brief outage prompts you to try again, rather than a generic error or an “invalid address”.

The Conveyancer report is a due-diligence screening tool, not a formal planning certificate. It is built to surface potential questions early, with sources cited where available, so they can be taken to a qualified professional where it matters.