Development applications near a property: how to check what is coming

The quiet street you fell for can change a lot in three years. The vacant block on the corner has a DA for eight townhouses. The house behind is going to be a two-storey dual occupancy looking into your yard. The paddock at the end of the road is the first stage of a 300-lot estate. None of this is a secret; every one of those proposals is on a public register. It is just that nobody puts the register in front of you when you buy.

Here is how to check what has been lodged on a property, next door and around it, state by state, and how to read what you find.

Why it matters before you buy or build

Three reasons to look at development applications around a property:

1. What is coming. An approved DA next door is a near-certain change to your outlook, privacy, traffic and, during construction, your peace. Approvals in most states lapse after a few years if not acted on, so the date matters.
2. What the block has already been through. A DA history on the lot itself tells you about past subdivisions, extensions, retaining walls and pool approvals, and whether that granny flat out the back was ever approved at all. Unapproved structures become the buyer's problem at settlement.
3. What the council will accept. If three dual occupancies have been approved in the street in the last two years, your own proposal is walking a worn path. If two have been refused, read the refusal reasons before you spend money on plans. Our guide on checking what you are allowed to build covers the zoning side of the same question.

Queensland

Most larger Queensland councils publish their DA registers online. Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast use Development.i, a map-based portal where you can search by address and see every application on the lot and around it, with the documents attached. Other councils run PD Online or a similar tool from their own website. There is no statewide register; the state's planning site points you to the council.

Queensland applications carry an application number, a type (material change of use, reconfiguring a lot, building work, operational work), a status (lodged, information request, decided) and usually the full plans and the decision notice. The decision notice is the document to read: it carries the approved plans and every condition.

New South Wales

NSW is the easiest state. The NSW Planning Portal publishes an application tracker covering the applications lodged through the portal, statewide, on one map. It is not a complete history: anything lodged before the portal, or not lodged through it, sits only on the council's own application tracker. Search the address, turn on the DA layer and every application around the property appears with its description, status and the council handling it. Complying Development Certificates, which are approvals issued by a private certifier without a DA, show on the same map.

One thing to know: the portal record shows what was lodged and decided through it, but the detailed documents sit on the council's own DA tracker, so follow the link there for the further records, the plans and the conditions.

Victoria

Victoria has no statewide register. Each council publishes its own planning register, usually as a list on the council website rather than a map, and some publish nothing beyond the statutory advertising notices. Check the council's "planning applications" or "advertised planning applications" page. A handful of councils, City of Casey among them, publish their full register as open data, which is the only reason a Victorian address can be checked automatically.

Victorian planning permits are also a title matter: a permit runs with the land, and section 32 statements must disclose any permit or notice affecting the property, so read the vendor statement closely.

South Australia, ACT and Tasmania

South Australia's PlanSA portal carries a single statewide development application register since the Planning and Design Code replaced council-by-council schemes. The ACT publishes DA Finder, a searchable list of every DA lodged and decided in the Territory. Tasmania's PlanBuild portal lists applications currently advertised; older decisions are on each council's website.

How to read what you find

Status first. Lodged means nothing is approved yet and you can still make a submission if it is on public notification. Approved with conditions is the one that matters. Refused or withdrawn tells you about the council's appetite, not about what is coming.

Dates. An approval from 2019 that has never started may have lapsed. Check the currency period in the decision notice, or ask the council.

Description. "Material change of use - multiple dwelling (8 units)" is what it says. "Operational work" is often the earthworks and drainage for something approved earlier, so look for the parent approval.

The plans. Storeys, setbacks, window placement and the driveway position tell you what the block behind you will actually look like. The description never does.

What the planning report does

A LayeredGeo planning report includes a Development Applications page for every address it covers. It reads the published registers directly and reports three scopes: every application on the subject lot, every application on an adjoining lot, and everything lodged within 250 m in the last three years. Each is drawn on the aerial with a numbered marker, its status and the register's own description, nearest first.

It is currently sourced from Development.i for Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, the NSW Planning Portal tracker statewide, the PlanSA register, ACT DA Finder and the City of Casey open data register. For a council outside those, the page says so and points to the state search rather than showing an empty table as if nothing was lodged.

Two honest limits. Registers only hold what was lodged through them, so an old approval that predates the online register will not appear. And a register that has not geocoded an application cannot place it on a map, so an application with a bad address can be missed. Treat the page as the fast first pass, and follow the application number back to the council for the plans before you rely on it.

About this article. Published by LayeredGeo and written from the published research cited in the Sources section above. It is general information about how property and ground conditions are assessed in Australia, not engineering, planning, legal or financial advice, and it is not specific to any property. Check anything that matters against the source dataset or a suitably qualified professional before you rely on it. If you spot something wrong, tell us at hello@layeredgeo.com.au and we will fix it.

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