Location properties on winforms acting strange - vb.net

Question

I have a form where I allow the user to generate multiple panels with some various contents in the panels by pressing an "add" button. Depending on what the user does in the panel, the panel grows and shrinks to fit the contents. Because of this change is size, I have created a sub that formats the panels on the form.
Private Sub formatPanels(frm As Form)
Dim count As Integer = 0
Dim startPoint As Point = New Point(12, 80)
Dim endPoint As Point = New Point(0, 0)
Dim maxY As Integer = 0
For Each pnl As Control In frm.Controls
If TypeOf pnl Is Panel Then
ReDim Preserve _arr_Panels(count)
_arr_Panels(count) = pnl
count += 1
pnl.Location = startPoint
startPoint.Y += pnl.Size.Height + 30
End If
Next
End Sub
So as you can see, we loop through every panel and the first always begins at the location (12,80) and then increments with the size of the panel and some spacing.
HERE IS THE ISSUE. This ONLY happens when i am SCROLLED DOWN the form. The panels spacing all of a sudden screws up and decides to put the first panel hundreds of pixels down the form. Is the location property based on what you're looking at? So if I were scrolled down the form location(0,0) would be the top left of the current view? There must be some weird property to location that I am not aware of.
Thanks

Answer 1

This behavior is not related to a panel, but to any control on a form with AutoScroll = True and Anchor including Top. (Note: if Anchor didn't also include Left I had some strange positioning on the first call of the function.
The solution is described here which is to use AutoScrollPosition. If you change your startPoint to this it will adjust for the scroll position.
Dim startPoint As Point = New Point(12, Me.AutoScrollPosition.Y + 80)
And the documentation for AutoScrollPosition states this:
When adding controls programmatically to a form, use the AutoScrollPosition property to position the control either inside or outside of the current viewable scroll area.