The rules behind the tool, in plain English.

What Plainview is

Plainview is a comparison tool for house-and-land in Canterbury. We watch the sections and subdivisions on the market, pair each one with the house plans that fit it, and estimate what the finished home would cost — so you can compare places on the same basis before you spend a weekend on any of them.

We are not a real-estate agency, we are not the vendor, and we are not a licensee under the Real Estate Agents Act 2008. We do not own the land shown here, we do not list it, and we are not paid when it sells. Nothing on this site is an offer to sell land or an invitation to make one.

We are not a builder either. Where a house plan appears it belongs to the builder named beside it, and the link goes to their own page for it.

How a listing gets here

Sections and subdivisions come from what is publicly advertised for sale. No one pays to appear, and no placement is for sale — the order of results is set by the filters and sort you choose, and by nothing else.

Every package carries a link back to the original advertisement. If that listing and this page disagree, the original listing is right.

Availability changes faster than we can re-check it. A section shown as available may be under offer or sold; confirm with the listing agent before you act on anything here.

What the prices are, and are not

Every figure on this site is an indicative, GST-inclusive “from” estimate. It is not a quote, a fixed-price contract, an offer, or an offer capable of acceptance. Nobody is bound by it — not us, not the agent, not the builder.

An estimate is built from the land price, a house price for the plan at the specification shown, site works, landscaping, any site-dependent items the section needs, and a contingency. The contingency is drawn on the build cost only; land is a contract price and does not carry one. Every part is shown on its own line so you can see what is being assumed rather than take one blended number on trust.

What you finally pay depends on the land contract, ground conditions, the specification you actually choose, council and engineering requirements, and a signed build contract. Treat what is here as a way of ruling places in and out, not as a budget.

We are not a consent authority and we do not give financial advice. What can be built on a section is decided by the district plan and the council; whether you can afford it is between you and your lender.

Images, plans and documents

Renders and artist impressions are labelled as such. They show a plan of that type, not the house that will stand on that section.

Photography and documents published by an agent belong to them or their photographer. We publish our own imagery on listings and credit anything supplied to us. Anyone with a claim to an image or document can have it taken down: write to us and it comes off the site.

Documents attached to a package — a record of title, a LIM, covenants, a plan's specifications — are available once you have an account. Making one is free and takes an email address.

Your information

Browsing takes no account. If you make one, we hold your name, email address, phone number if you give it, and your email preferences. Making an enquiry records those details, which package you were looking at, the specification you had selected and anything you write in the message.

Saved properties, saved searches and comparisons are held against your account so they are there when you come back. We measure anonymous traffic to see which parts of the site are useful.

We use that information to run your account, answer your enquiry, send the saved-search digest you asked for, and improve the tool. Marketing email is opt-in and separate from the messages you get because you asked us something.

When you make an enquiry we pass your name, contact details and message to the people who can answer it — that is the point of sending it. We do not sell your information to anybody, and we do not pass it to advertisers.

Where your information lives

We use established suppliers to run the site rather than building everything ourselves: hosting and databases, email delivery, the workflow that routes your enquiry to a person, a contact record so nothing is lost in an inbox, and error reporting so faults get fixed. Each holds only what it needs to do its job. We will name any of them on request.

Some of those services store data outside New Zealand. They are bound to protect it to standards comparable with the Privacy Act 2020, and they process it only to run this site.

Asking for your information, or its removal

You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account and everything attached to it. Email us and we will.

We keep enquiry records while they are live and for a reasonable period afterwards, then delete them.

Your rights under the Privacy Act 2020 apply regardless of what this page says. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Using the site

Look at whatever you like, save what is useful, and send the comparisons to whoever is helping you buy. What we ask is that you do not scrape the site wholesale, republish the estimates as if they were quotes, or use the contact details of the agents shown here to sell them something.

We keep the site up as best we can but do not promise it will always be available or always be right. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for a decision made on the strength of an estimate here — which is why every one of them says to confirm with the agent and the builder.

These terms are governed by New Zealand law.

Getting hold of us

Anything on this page — a correction, a takedown, a privacy request, or a listing that is wrong — goes to the same place. Use the enquiry form on any package, or the contact details on the About page. We read them ourselves and reply as soon as we can.

Last reviewed August 2026.