A contract review tells you about the title. It does not tell you whether you can extend, add a granny flat or subdivide. This checklist covers the planning questions your conveyancer won't answer for you, across NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
Almost every planning disaster we see follows the same pattern: the buyer assumed the property could do something, and the planning controls said otherwise. None of it appears on a title search or a standard contract review.
Minimum lot sizes, frontage rules and zone land-use tables decide whether a second dwelling is even on the table. The agent's “granny flat potential” is not an assessment.
Drainage easements and sewer mains regularly run through the exact part of the block a buyer planned to build on. Utility authorities do not move infrastructure to suit a renovation.
Conservation areas, character controls and environmental overlays restrict demolition, extensions and even materials — on ordinary-looking homes, not just listed ones.
Work through the universal checks, then turn to your state. Tick what you have confirmed in writing. Whatever is left is your due diligence list.
Get the checklistZoning, overlays and constraints, easements and covenants, lot dimensions against your plans, existing approvals and unauthorised works, and what is planned around you.
The Section 10.7 certificate, LEP zoning and minimum lot size, bushfire and flood mapping, heritage and conservation areas, and whether the fast-track CDC pathway is open to you.
The Planning Property Report, what the Section 32 does and does not tell you, reading each overlay individually, permit triggers, and the single-dwelling covenants that override good zoning.
Scheme zoning and precincts, whether your project is accepted, code assessable or impact assessable, flood mapping, character and heritage overlays, and hazard controls.
The planning atlas, identifying your assessment pathway under the Planning and Design Code, heritage and character overlays, hazard overlays, and minimum site areas.
Where DIY research stops, why interpretation is a planner's job, and a side-by-side of the questions a checklist answers versus the ones a report does.
The first part is public. The second part is professional judgement — and it is the part your purchase decision actually turns on.
Yes. The checklist is a 7-page PDF and costs nothing. We ask for your name, email and state so we can send it and tailor the occasional planning update to where you are buying.
Free, 7 pages, no obligation. If the checklist raises a question you can't answer yourself, that is exactly what a Preliminary Planning Report is for.