Planland

16/06/2026

"Can I do a dual occ on my block?" I get this question almost every week now, and the answer changed more than most people realise.

Under the Low and Mid-Rise reforms, dual occupancies are now permitted in R2 Low Density zones across NSW on lots from 450sqm — not the 600–700sqm minimum most councils used to enforce. That single number quietly turned thousands of "single dwelling only" blocks into two-dwelling sites.

But permitted isn't the same as feasible. Before anyone gets excited, I'm still checking the things that actually kill these projects: site cover and landscaped-area controls, the cross-fall, sewer and easement locations, and whether the streetscape character clauses are going to bite at assessment.

The blocks that work usually share three traits — a regular-ish shape, a workable fall, and services in sensible spots. The ones that don't tend to fail on the boring stuff nobody checks until it's too late.

If you own an R2 block and you've been told "single dwelling only," it's worth a second look. The rules moved.

Contact: [email protected]

11/06/2026

Have you been told your block is too small for a granny flat?
If your site is under 450m² — particularly if it's a battle-axe lot in Leppington, Austral, Oran Park, or the broader South-West Growth Area where the driveway handle eats 60–80m² of your developable area — chances are a builder, certifier, or online guide has told you it can't be done.
Here's what most of them don't explain: the 450m² rule only applies to detached granny flats (the standalone backyard kind). The NSW Housing SEPP allows secondary dwellings in three configurations, and only the detached one is locked out on smaller sites.
There's a staged Complying Development strategy that opens it up:
🏠 Stage 1 — Build your main home as CDC, designed with a self-contained wing or lower level that has its own entrance, plumbing rough-ins, separate metering, and proper acoustic and fire separation.
🏠 Stage 2 — Once it's built, lodge a second CDC to activate that wing as a secondary dwelling within the home. Because no new building is going up, the 450m² test doesn't bite.
Result: two legal tenancies on a block the "450m² rule" had supposedly ruled out.
We recently used this approach on a 478m² battle-axe lot in Leppington with a 30m driveway handle — developable area of 403m². Two-storey home, self-contained lower wing, both stages approved as CDC.
If you own one of these tight sites and have been told "you can't have a granny flat," it's worth a second opinion.
Full how-to 👇

Your block is under 450m² and you've been told no granny flat. It's not true — here's the two-stage CDC strategy that actually works in NSW.

08/06/2026

Same question, two very different answers — where should you put $250K of equity?
Option A: A Sydney investment unit in Western Sydney, ~$600K. Yield around 4–5% citywide. After strata, rates and management, the net cashflow is often modest. The upside is capital growth and a separately titled, separately saleable asset.
Option B: A two-bedroom granny flat in your own backyard, $180K–$260K all-in. Yield of 9–14%. No stamp duty. No strata. No body corporate dramas. Rent of $480–$600+/week — about $20,000–$22,000/year in your pocket after costs.
So why doesn't everyone just build a granny flat?
The catch is the granny flat can't be sold separately from your home. The capital growth it adds to your property is real, but typically only 20–30% of the build cost — so you don't fully recover the construction outlay through resale value. You're trading capital growth for cashflow.
That trade-off makes the granny flat the right answer if:
✅ You already own the land
✅ Your goal is income, mortgage offset, or covering household costs
✅ You don't need the dwelling to be separately tradeable
The 2026–27 federal budget changes (negative gearing now limited to new builds from 1 July 2027) push the granny flat strategy harder still — a purpose-built granny flat qualifies as a new build; buying an established unit after Budget night doesn't.
For owner-occupiers with a block over 450m², it's worth running the numbers honestly before defaulting to "I'll buy a unit."
Full breakdown 👇

Sydney granny flat yields hit 9–14%. Units sit at 3.9–4.1%. A side-by-side comparison of yield, capital, cashflow, tax, and risk for 2026 property investors.

05/06/2026

The biggest shake-up to Australian property tax in over twenty years was handed down on 12 May 2026. Worth knowing where you stand.
The headline changes (from 1 July 2027):
🏘️ Negative gearing — limited to new builds for properties bought after 7:30pm on 12 May 2026.
📈 The 50% CGT discount — replaced with a cost-base indexation system and a 30% minimum tax rate on capital gains.
What stays the same:
If you already own an investment property, you're grandfathered — same tax treatment as today, right through until you sell. First-home buyer concessions, Help to Buy, and the main residence CGT exemption are all unchanged.
The key detail — what counts as a "new build":
The policy lever is whether the project actually adds a dwelling to the housing stock.
✅ Knockdown-rebuild that replaces one house with a duplex
✅ Building on vacant land
✅ Buying an off-the-plan apartment
✅ Purpose-built granny flat or secondary dwelling (legislation pending)
❌ Knockdown-rebuild that replaces one house with one bigger house
❌ Extending an existing property to add bedrooms
❌ Buying an established house or unit after Budget night
Combine this with the NSW LMR reforms — which have made duplex development permissible across virtually every R2 block in the state — and the message is pretty clear: the policy environment is now structurally pushing investor capital toward duplex and small-scale multi-dwelling builds on suitable land.
If you own a Sydney block that might qualify, the next 12–18 months is the window to plan and lodge.
Full breakdown 👇

Negative gearing limited to new builds from 1 July 2027. What counts as a new build, what's grandfathered, and why duplex KDRs are now structurally favoured.

03/06/2026

Your Sydney block might quietly have become a duplex site — and you might not have noticed.
Two waves of planning reform have rolled through NSW in the last 18 months. The headline:
🏡 From 1 July 2024 — dual occupancy is now permissible in pretty much every R2 zone in NSW, including in councils that previously banned it.
🚉 From 28 February 2025 — if your block is within an 800m walk of one of 171 designated train stations, light rail stops or town centres across Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, the Illawarra or the Hunter, you may now be able to build:
– A duplex on as little as 450m² with a 12m frontage
– A manor house (3–4 dwellings that look like a single large house) on 600m²
– A terrace row from 500m² and 18m wide
– A small apartment building on 500m² in some R1/R2 areas
The 800m is measured along walking routes, not in a straight line — so it's worth checking properly rather than guessing.
Plenty of older Sydney blocks that were locked out of duplex development by council width minimums of 15m or 18m are now in scope at the new 12m threshold. If you've owned your block for a few years and assumed it was a single-dwelling site, that assumption may no longer be true.
Full breakdown of who's eligible, what's permitted, and the catches around DA vs CDC, heritage areas and bushfire land 👇

Stage 1 + Stage 2 LMR reforms explained — dual occ at 450m²/12m, manor houses, the 800m catchment. What's permitted on your Sydney block in 2026.

01/06/2026

How often do you actually use your formal dining room?
In Sydney's 2026 custom build market ($2,800–$4,200/m²), that room is costing you somewhere between $80,000 and $150,000 to build — plus heating, cooling, cleaning and maintenance for the next 30 years. Same goes for the formal living room, the fifth bedroom that's really a storage room, and the over-large media room.
The default brief on most renovations is still "maximise the envelope." But the 140m² gap between a 180m² home and a 320m² home is now a $600,000–$800,000 decision — and that money, redirected, buys better finishes in the kitchen and bathrooms you actually use, passive design that genuinely lowers your bills, a proper alfresco, and a much calmer build experience.
Sometimes the bigger house is the right answer. But it should be a deliberate choice, not the default.
New piece on the blog 👇

Sydney custom builds now sit at $2,800–$4,200/m². A 320m² home costs $600K+ more than a 180m². When does maximising the envelope actually make sense?

01/06/2026

"What's it going to cost?" is the first question almost every homeowner asks at the start of a renovation. It's also the hardest one to answer at the early stage — before a designer has assessed the site, before a builder has seen the drawings.
Here's something useful: AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are now genuinely good at giving you a ballpark range for a renovation — if you ask the right way.
A vague prompt ("how much does a first-floor addition cost in Sydney?") gets a vague answer. A structured prompt — one that includes your suburb, your existing house, the size of the addition, your finish level, and any known structural issues — gets a much sharper response.
We've put together four copy-and-paste prompts for the most common project types:
🏡 First-floor additions
🔨 Knockdown rebuilds / new builds
🏠 Secondary dwellings (granny flats)
🏘️ Dual occupancies (duplexes)
Each one asks the AI for a construction cost range, design and approval fees, the key cost drivers, and a total project cost — so you walk away with a usable indicative number before you spend a cent on design.
A few tips for using them:
✅ Run the same prompt through ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini and compare answers
✅ Use the midpoint of the range, not the bottom
✅ Update the prompt as you learn more about your site
✅ Bring the result to your designer — don't use it instead of one
AI knows market rates. It can't tell you whether your project is approvable, whether your existing structure can take an upper level, or whether there's a sewer easement under your back garden. That's still what a proper feasibility assessment is for.
All four prompts, free to copy 👇

One of the most common questions we hear from homeowners at the start of a project is: "What's it going to cost?" It's also one of the hardest questions to answer accurately at the early stage — before a designer has assessed your site, before a builder has seen the drawings, and before

29/05/2026

Hiring the wrong building designer is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make on a renovation. Most homeowners pick on portfolio and gut feel — but neither tells you how a designer will perform when something goes wrong.
Ten questions worth asking before you sign anything:
1️⃣ Can I see projects similar to mine that have been approved and built — not just rendered?
2️⃣ What's your feasibility process before design starts?
3️⃣ How do you handle my budget — and what if early builder estimates come back over?
4️⃣ Who actually does the work — you, or junior staff?
5️⃣ What exactly is included in the drawings the builder will quote from?
6️⃣ How many projects are you running at once right now?
7️⃣ Have you worked with my council before?
8️⃣ How do you handle Requests for Information from council?
9️⃣ Are you available during construction to answer the builder's questions?
🔟 Can I speak to a recent client?
A good designer will answer every one of these without hesitation — and provide client references willingly. If a designer dodges, deflects, or makes any of these sound difficult, that's information too.
Why these matter: most renovations don't go wrong during design. They go wrong during documentation, council assessment, and construction — the stages a glossy portfolio doesn't show you.
Full breakdown of why each question matters and what a good answer sounds like 👇

Choosing the right building designer is one of the most important decisions in your renovation project. The right designer will save you time, money, and stress. The wrong one will cost you all three. Most homeowners assess designers based on portfolio and gut feel — both of which matter, but neit...

18/05/2026

A second rental. A self-contained space for aging parents. A teenage retreat that pays its own way one day.
For owners of small NSW lots, all of those plans tend to die the moment someone mentions the 450m² threshold for secondary dwellings.
They don't have to.
If the principal dwelling is designed from day one to accommodate a future within-dwelling secondary dwelling — self-contained wing, separate entrance, plumbing rough-ins, BCA Class 1a separation — a second CDC post-OC activates a second legal tenancy without another shovel in the ground.
We've published the full strategy, including what Stage 1 needs to get right so Stage 2 doesn't unravel:
📖 https://www.planland.com.au/new-blog/2026/4/24/how-to-get-a-secondary-dwelling-on-a-site-under-450m-in-nsw

11/05/2026

Own a battle-axe lot in Leppington, Austral, Oran Park or anywhere in the South West Growth Area?
Here's the problem you've probably hit: the access handle eats 60–80m² off your lot area, your developable land drops below 450m², and suddenly every granny flat quote turns into a "sorry, can't be done."
It can be done. Just not the way most builders are pitching it.
Our latest article walks through the exact Complying Development pathway — two CDCs, staged — that delivers a principal dwelling and a secondary dwelling on sub-450m² developable sites. Plus what Stage 1 has to include so Stage 2 actually gets signed off.
Worth a read before you settle on that block 👇
https://www.planland.com.au/new-blog/2026/4/24/how-to-get-a-secondary-dwelling-on-a-site-under-450m-in-nsw