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A BASIX certificate goes in with the development application, and its commitments follow the project through to the occupation certificate. What it covers, which projects need one, how long it stays valid and how it works for dual occupancies and staged projects.
A height or floor space ratio on the map is a development standard, and clause 4.6 of the Standard Instrument allows consent in some cases even where a proposal breaches it. The two tests the applicant must meet, what the clause rules out, and what it means for a feasibility.
Two numbers on your council's maps decide how much building a NSW site can carry: floor space ratio and maximum height. What the Standard Instrument says each one measures, what counts as floor area, and why site area changes the yield.
Consent to subdivide is not the end of a subdivision. A subdivision certificate is a separate application made after the works are finished, and the new titles only exist once the plan is registered. What it needs, who lodges it and where projects stall.
Development consent is planning approval, and building work cannot start on it alone. A construction certificate, a principal certifier and two days' notice come first, and an occupation certificate closes the job.
A dual occupancy is two dwellings on one lot, so selling the halves separately needs a subdivision approval of its own. Where the 225 sqm and 6 m minimums apply, when complying development can do it, and which title the split creates.
The 10/50 online tool tells you whether your land is in an entitlement area. It doesn't tell you, on its own, whether the specific tree you want gone is one of the categories the Code of Practice excludes outright: coastal wetlands, littoral rainforest, koala habitat, critically endangered ecological communities, Aboriginal places, and a separate 10-metre buffer around any lake or river two metres wide. A different SEPP covers clearing that has nothing to do with bush fire at all.
Waterfront land under the Water Management Act is a flat 40 metres from the bank. The vegetated riparian zone the department actually expects you to protect is narrower on smaller streams, wider on larger ones, and half of it can be traded for other uses if you offset it. A separate exemption also takes most ordinary dwelling and dual occupancy applications out of the controlled activity system altogether, provided the building doesn't sit on the bed or bank itself.
A development consent is not a yes. It is a yes plus a long schedule of conditions that decide what gets built, what it costs and when you are allowed to start. Some conditions are not legally valid, some mean the consent does not operate yet, and the NSW Government is part-way through making a set of them mandatory. Here is how to read the document you were sent.
A development application can pull in another agency three different ways, and the three carry very different weight. A referral produces advice your council can disagree with. A concurrence has to be given or the council must refuse you. Integrated development means a second Act's approval is embedded in your DA. The one that catches Illawarra owners most often is a mapped watercourse and the 40 metres of waterfront land that comes with it.
A dual occupancy is financed against three things the owner rarely separates: the land they already hold, a fixed-price building contract, and a valuation of two dwellings that don't exist yet. Which of those the lender leans on, and whether it treats you as a homeowner or a developer, is decided by your exit, not your postcode. A worked example on an R2 block in Corrimal, with the figures kept inside our published ranges.
Tree removal on an urban block is governed by three different instruments depending on why you're removing the tree, and owners routinely use the wrong one. Chapter 2 of the Biodiversity and Conservation SEPP, the council's DCP, the Biodiversity Offsets Scheme threshold and the RFS 10/50 code each answer a different question. A worked example on an R2 block in Figtree shows which applies when.
A developer's letter promises a premium for your block. Before you reply, there are six checks that take an afternoon and cost nothing: the licence register, the ABN, home building compensation cover, the projects they say they've built, the contract itself, and the people they've done this with before. Here is how to run each one in NSW, with the government pages to use.
A worked dual occupancy case study on a typical NSW R2 block: what the planning controls allowed, which approval path the design earned, where every dollar went, and what was actually left after the pair sold. The block and the owner are illustrative. Every figure comes from the cost guide and is shown with its source range, so you can swap in your own.
Owners read the acid sulfate soils class on their LEP map as a severity rating and get it exactly backwards. Class 1 is not five times worse than Class 5. The number describes how far below the surface the sulfides are likely to sit, which means the constraint isn't your land. It's your excavation depth, your watertable, and on a subdivision, the volume of soil you were always going to move.
Almost every project changes between consent and construction. Section 4.55 of the EP&A Act is the machinery for that, and it has four doors, not one. Which door you are standing at is decided by the size of the environmental consequence and by a test most owners have never heard of, and the door you pick decides whether the change takes a fortnight or half a year.
There is no LEP clause about it, nothing on your 10.7 certificate, and often nothing on your title either. But a pipe running under your back yard can reshape a scheme more thoroughly than the zoning does, and the water authority can stop your council from consenting at all. Here is where the pipe hides, what the rules actually say, and how to find it before an architect draws anything.
Two blocks on the same street can both sit inside the bush fire prone land map and carry wildly different projects. The map is a switch that turns a process on. The BAL rating is the number that decides what the process costs you, how much of your land you have to give up, and on a subdivision, whether the Rural Fire Service gets a veto nobody warned you about.
Forty days after you lodge, the law treats an undetermined development application as refused, and a right of appeal opens that most applicants never learn they're holding. It is not the nuclear option people assume. Most appeals never reach a hearing at all — but knowing when to reach for it, and when reaching for it costs you more than waiting, is the part nobody explains.
"Flood affected" on a planning certificate covers two completely different conditions, and councils write them in almost identical language. One of them costs you a floor level. The other quietly removes you from the mid-rise housing reforms in twenty-two council areas. Owners are routinely told they have the first when they have the second.
A council can refuse your development application for all sorts of reasons. Contamination is different in kind: until the consent authority has considered it and satisfied itself the land is suitable, it has no power to approve anything at all. Which is why this question kills projects late, expensively, and almost always on sites the owner thought were ordinary.
"Feasibility study" covers everything from a free spreadsheet to a twenty-thousand-dollar consultant package, which is convenient for the people selling them. The work splits into four separate jobs with four separate prices, and most owners are quoted the expensive one when the cheap one would have answered the question.
Almost every property owner in NSW has been handed a section 10.7 planning certificate, usually stapled into a contract they signed years ago. It lists the overlays that govern what can be built on the land, and reading it properly is the cheapest development due diligence available. Here is what each part is telling you, and the three things it deliberately doesn't.
Owners inside a conservation area are routinely told their block is off limits, and the people telling them are usually confusing two very different things. The Low and Mid Rise Housing Policy excludes heritage items. It does not exclude heritage conservation areas, and the difference decides whether your land carries development value or none at all.
Three adjoining houses fetch one price sold separately and a larger one sold as a parcel, because a single narrow lot cannot physically use the floor space ratio the mid-rise controls allow and three lots together can. That difference is the assembly premium, and which side of the table keeps it is decided by how the group structures the sale.
The Low and Mid Rise amendment made residential flat buildings permissible on ordinary suburban lots, which means ordinary owners can now cross a threshold that used to belong to apartment developers. At three storeys and four dwellings the Apartment Design Guide starts applying, and the cost base underneath your feasibility changes with it.
A duplex is not a planning term. Dual occupancy is, and so is semi-detached dwelling, and the gap between those definitions decides which title your finished pair ends up on. The same building, two very different outcomes. This is the terminology and the title question, not the build budget.
Native vegetation is the one cost line on a subdivision that can arrive without warning and without an upper bound. Three separate triggers can pull a project into the NSW Biodiversity Offsets Scheme, and two of them are decided by mapping you can check for free before you spend anything.
The NSW Low and Mid Rise Housing policy opened up a menu of housing types most owners have never heard of, and the names are legal definitions rather than marketing labels. A manor house is not a townhouse and neither is a residential flat building. Which one your block suits decides your title, your approval pathway and your end value.
A feasibility is four lines: what the finished project sells for, what it costs to deliver, the margin the project has to return, and whatever is left over for the land. The discipline is in the twenty-odd cost lines people forget. Here's the method, with a worked example and the sensitivity test that decides most sites.
Before you pour a slab, the council wants its share of the infrastructure your project will lean on. Section 7.11 and 7.12 contributions are a real, sometimes five-figure line in any development feasibility, and owners routinely leave them out. Here's how the two levies work, what they cost, and where to find your number.
A slope doesn't rule out development, but it changes the maths. Cut and fill, retaining, engineered footings and drainage all land before the first wall goes up, and they scale with the fall. Here's how to read a sloping block, what the earthworks realistically cost, and when the site still stacks up.
Before you get to knock-down-rebuild territory there's an earlier fork: renovate the tired house, demolish it, or step back and ask what the land is worth to a developer. Each answer suits a different owner, and choosing the wrong one can quietly destroy the very value you're trying to unlock. Here's how to tell them apart.
In a development joint venture you contribute the land, a developer contributes the money and expertise, and you share the finished project's profit instead of taking one payment upfront. Done well, it's how landowners capture the uplift developers normally keep. Here's how the structures work, what a fair split looks like, and the clauses that protect you.
Build a duplex and you still have to decide how to split the title: Torrens, with two fully independent lots, or strata, cheaper and faster but with shared insurance and a scheme to run. The choice quietly moves your resale price and your build cost more than most owners expect. Here's how to pick.
Developers don't value your property by comparing it with the house that sold down the street. They work backwards from the finished project using residual land value, and understanding that method is the single best negotiating tool a landowner can have. Here's the maths, with a worked example.
An easement is a legal right someone else holds over part of your land, usually for a sewer, drain or shared driveway. Some barely dent a development site; others quietly kill a duplex design. The difference comes down to where the easement sits and what runs through it. Here's how to find yours and read what it does to your land value.
Probate is done, the house sits empty, and you and your siblings own it together and don't quite agree what to do. There's no wrong pace to take this at, but a few decisions are worth understanding early, especially the two-year tax window and what the land might really be worth. Here's a calm way to think it through.
If your home sits within a few hundred metres of certain NSW train stations, a state-led rezoning may have quietly lifted what a developer can build on your land to six storeys or more. Owners inside these rings are getting letterbox drops for a reason. Here's how to check whether you're in one, and what to do if you are.
A knock down rebuild in NSW now runs from roughly $700,000 to well past $1 million once demolition, approvals and the build are counted. Sometimes that's money brilliantly spent. Sometimes selling the site, or partnering on its development, leaves you far better off. Here's how to tell which owner you are.
Subdividing your land can be taxed as a modest capital gain or as business income with GST attached, and the same block can fall either side of the line depending on how you go about it. This is general information, not advice, but knowing where the line sits tells you which questions to bring to your accountant before you lodge anything.
A development approval can lift what your site sells for, because the buyer inherits a project instead of a gamble. But getting one costs real money and the better part of two years. Here's the maths on when the premium beats the spend, and the middle path most owners never hear about.
Developers regularly pay 10 to 25% above what a home would fetch on the open market, because they're buying your land's future, not your kitchen. Here's how selling to a developer actually works, when it beats a normal sale, and the contract traps to avoid.
A duplex can clear a healthy margin or quietly lose money, and the difference usually comes down to one question: did you already own the land? Here's the full 2026 feasibility, worked two ways, plus the option that lets you build without funding it yourself.
A complying development certificate can be signed off by a private certifier in as little as 10 to 20 days. A council development application now averages around 122 days across NSW, and the slowest councils run past 250. CDC is faster and cheaper when you qualify, but there's a reason developers sometimes choose the slow path on purpose.
A battle-axe subdivision turns one street-front block into two lots, with the rear one reached by a long driveway handle. It can unlock real value, but the handle costs money to build, eats into your land area on paper, and the rear lot sells at a discount. Here's the maths that tells you whether it stacks up.
Subdividing a block in NSW typically costs somewhere between $50,000 and $150,000 for a straightforward two-lot split, and the range is wide for good reasons. Here's where the money actually goes, from council contributions to Sydney Water certificates, and the questions to ask before you commit.
For most standard blocks in NSW the answer is now usually yes. Dual occupancy became permissible across every R2 low-density zone after the recent reforms, and on the right lot you can build two dwellings and split them onto separate titles. Here's what's allowed, the forms it takes, and the handful of situations where the answer is still no.
In NSW a granny flat can be approved by a private certifier in as little as 10 to 20 days, rented out separately, and built on most standard blocks over 450 square metres. It's the easiest secondary income a backyard can produce. It can also quietly cost you a much bigger development, and that's the part nobody mentions.
Corner blocks command premium prices in property development, often achieving 30% higher returns than standard blocks. From dual street access enabling better subdivision to reduced overlooking issues and superior design flexibility, discover why developers compete fiercely for corner sites and how to maximise your corner block's hidden value.
Sydney's top development suburbs for 2025 combine new planning reforms, infrastructure investment, and untapped potential. From Western Sydney's growth corridors to inner-ring transformation zones, discover the 20 suburbs where developers are making 20-40% returns and why corner blocks near new Metro stations are today's gold mines.
The 2025 NSW planning reforms have revolutionised R2 low-density residential zones, allowing townhouses, terraces, and multi-dwelling developments where only single houses were permitted before. Discover how these changes could multiply your property's value and what you can now build on R2-zoned land across Australia.
What a dual occupancy actually costs to build, line by line, and how long each stage takes. Approvals, demolition, construction, contributions, finance and selling costs, with worked profit examples. For what the terms dual occupancy, duplex and semi-detached each mean and which title you end up on, read the terminology guide instead.
Your property could be worth significantly more than you think. Use this comprehensive 10-point checklist to assess your property's development potential and discover if you're sitting on a goldmine. From zoning and size to market demand and planning changes, we cover everything Australian property owners need to know.
Thinking about selling your property without an agent? Discover how for sale by owner (FSBO) could save you thousands in commission fees, plus learn about a revolutionary alternative that offers the best of both worlds - professional support with maximum returns through development potential
Sydney's property market is experiencing a transformative shift in 2025. With median house prices hitting $1.48 million and new planning reforms unlocking unprecedented development potential, savvy property owners are discovering their homes could be worth 15-25% more than traditional valuations suggest.
Life doesn't wait, and neither should your property sale. Whether it's a job relocation, financial pressure, or simply wanting to move on quickly, discover how to sell your house fast in Australia without sacrificing value - including an innovative option that could net you 15-25% above market value with settlement in just 21 days.
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