Get Property Developments Approved In Just 2 Weeks (Not 6 Months)

If you’re looking at developing medium density property this one is for you. Recently there has been new rules introduced that make getting approval for medium density dwellings easier. Instead of 6-12 months for approval this new process could get you approval in as little as 2 weeks.

This is exciting stuff for developers and today I have Luke Durack from http://www.durackarchitects.com/ to discuss this new approval process and how you can take advantage of it.

0:00 – Introduction
0:43 – What is this new process?
2:23 – Difference between this and DA approval
4:00 – What developments does this code apply to?
6:08 – Does this apply to granny flats?
6:40 – Will this code become more commonly used
8:37 – The pros and cons of taking this avenue
11:15 – How can people find out more about this?
12:45 – How to get in contact with Luke
13:15 – Will all architects know about this?

Recommended Videos:

The Complete Guide To The Development Approval Process: Part 1/2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZaxtl-1daQ

A Better Way To Get Development Approval – Compliant Development Code – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUtkZFlh01s

Transcription

Ryan 0:00
If you’re looking at developing property, then the development approval process can be an extremely difficult and arduous process that can take an extremely long period of time with setbacks and knock backs and going back to Council and this whole process, but there’s actually been introduced a new are easier and faster way in order to get development approval done for medium density. So today I have with me, Luke, jack, from jack architects. Hi, Luke, how’s it going? Good, I run good. And today, we’re going to talk about this new process and how you could potentially use it if you’re doing some property development yourself. So Luke, do you want to kind of give us the rundown? What is this new process? What’s it called? Why is it better faster than, you know, going through a DA and going through counsel?

Luke 0:52
Okay, I’ll I’ll try and keep it simple because it’s, it is simple in nature, but it’s quite, it can get quite complicated quite quickly. Basically, as we, when we last spoke, we spoke about compliant development as it relates to houses. So an approval pathway that bypasses council essentially, this new part of the code, which is still compliant development, relates to medium density housing, and it’s called the low rise housing diversity code. And it’s specific to development types, such as dual occupancies terraces, and what they call Manor houses. And essentially, like, like it is for houses. It’s a fast track way of getting through accounts. And so you don’t, you’re not getting held up by councils having their own particular biases or objections. You go straight through a certifier, you still needed, you’d still need an architect to draw up all your drawings and get all their reports done. But you’d have to worry about neighbor objections, because they can’t have any size. Basically, as long as you tick all the boxes, you can have, in theory, your development approved in a couple of weeks, as opposed to if you go through Council, six months a year, go the landmark or whatever. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a great, it’s a great if you can if you can get your development to work within this pathway. It’s a bit of a no brainer, in many ways.

Ryan 2:22
Yeah. So we actually talked about the development approval process and how all of that works a couple of years ago. So I’ll link up to that down below. But basically, going through that DEA process, Yeah, you do. There’s obviously guidelines you have to stick within, then there’s a period where neighbors can put up rejection objections, and you know, if it doesn’t get approved, you might have to make changes, etc. Then the difference with this, from my understanding is that it’s more black and white. Whereas with DEA approval, sometimes you’ll step outside of what you’re meant to and the council needs to approve it or not. With this, you need to take every single box, otherwise, you kind of put into the regular development approval process. Is that right?

Luke 3:05
Yeah, yeah, straight back into di land. So if you’re if the setback requirements for this new code, three meters from the boundary, and you’re, you’re just 200 mil less than that, you potentially are straight back into the AI lab.

Ryan 3:21
Yeah. So you have to take every single box that’s required in order to go through this type of process, which is why it’s quicker because they know that, okay, you’re doing everything correctly, like the way we want it done.

Luke 3:34
Yes. And it’s one of the objections from people who, because there’s been a lot of objection to it, because it’s people as objecting to it on the basis that it’s, it’s a, it’s a one size fits all, so it doesn’t, there’s no specific relationship to context or size, it’s meant to be a set of rules that generally can apply across the board.

Ryan 3:57
Can you give an idea of what some of those rules are? Obviously, we won’t go into all of them. I’m sure there’s, you know, hundreds of 1000s of

Luke 4:03
rules, but yeah, yeah, well, look, they these, the developments that this new code applies to, as I mentioned, geolocations is what they call Manor houses, which are essentially a duplex one on top of the other or two apartments at ground level, and two apartments above, and then and then terraces. So they’re the three development types. What’s the terror so terrorist is a small infill building. According to the code about six and a half meters wide, so you might have a dozen of them all lined up right next to each other. So you see a lot of them in Paddington in Sydney, for example. Yeah. And so but for example, for geolocation says, you know, then they’d have a minimum lot area 400 square meters, the site has to be between 12 and 15 meters depending on a couple of constraints. And then that’s limited, they’re limited to eight and a half meters in height. So you can only get two storeys that the couple of the implications and then stepping back a little bit the reason for the code, the reason the code has come about is basically essentially saying that, yes, we understand that planning is to understand that not everyone can afford to buy a home. Not everyone wants to live in an apartment. So it’s offering a greater choice and diversity. And essentially, it’s meant to translate into affordability. So increased density, reducing the price.

Ryan 5:49
Yeah, so to make it easier for people to build medium density dwellings or occupancy dwellings, make it easier for them so that we got more housing available in New South Wales. Now I understand this is for New South Wales, specifically, but other states have their own codes as well. Yeah. Granny Flats like separate standalone granny flats. So say you’ve got an existing house and you want to build a granny flat out the back, does that fall under this code? Or is that something separate?

Luke 6:18
No, that’s part of the that would fall in the other component development code, which we’ve spoken about previously. So I’ll

Ryan 6:27
link up to that one as well below because that was for residential housing. And that was a couple of years ago, when I remember in that video, I remember because I watched it before we recorded this. I remember you talked about not many people were really using it yet. So you want to shed some light on it. How has that changed over the years? I think it’s been three or four years now since we recorded that. Is this code for residential housing now more common? And do we expect? You know, over time, will this get adopted for medium density and become more common as well?

Luke 7:02
Well, definitely the the house compliant development code as it relates to houses, which includes granite flats, has definitely been adopted across the board. And it’s being used all the time. As a standard approach. Now, I mentioned it to all new prospective clients as an avenue pass through. It’s great for small internal renovations to apartments or houses. So it’s it’s definitely being used across the board, I would expect that this medium density code will be adopted in the same way, however it is. It is probably a development type that’s more suited to developers. So they rely on you know, in many, in many cases maxing out size as much as possible. In some in some ways, in some circumstances, you can get an outcome that is better than a DUI in some situations, but but it’s all about getting getting all the different rules to work together. I think that in summary, I think basically Yes, it will get adopted across the board in a much large fashion. There’s even talk about this, the next card being being adopted to accommodate mid rise apartments, up to six six storeys. So there’s a there’s a plan to keep it on the head,

Ryan 8:34
keep rolling it out to higher and higher densities is the challenge. Yeah, this code for developers and people who trying to develop in then obviously, like flip or rent out their properties, make money from development is the difficulty with this, that giving you have to take every box developers are more inclined to kind of, I guess, stretch the boundaries of what is possible, or what is technically allowed. You know, they need to get council approval to do something bigger than what they might otherwise under this code, like is that gonna hold some developers back from using it because they want to maximize their return on investment.

Luke 9:11
I would say in some situations, that definitely will. But in other situations, that will mean that developers don’t have to worry as much about holding costs and so forth and interest on their repayments, because they know that, you know they could potentially have a delayed settlement while after they’ve purchased the property, get that compliant development done within, you know, as quick as they can, can do it and they don’t have to worry about six months in Council. So you know, there’s a real, there’s a real cost benefit just in those in those time otherwise,

Ryan 9:47
well, that’s it if you’re spending hundreds of 1000s or probably millions of dollars on blocks of land or existing houses that you’re going to knock down and then you’ve got a if you’ve got a loan on them and you’ve got to hold them for six to 12 months. You’re going down To pay the mortgage and interest rates on that for that six to 12 month period, which, over time can add up to quite a significant amount of money, especially if you paid a lot for the property. So I can understand how shortening that process from six to 12 months to you’re saying, like two weeks, then you know, you can organize that while you’re going through settlement. And then once you settle, you’re so much closer to the build process to getting complete and then to on selling those properties or renting them out.

Luke 10:30
That’s right. And in addition to that, there’s also the uncertainty of going to Council, there’s no, there’s no guarantee that you will get your approval in the manner that you have submitted it. So there’s also that risk, which is not there with this compliant development.

Ryan 10:49
Yeah. So if you tick all the boxes, you basically guaranteed that you can go ahead. Yes, yeah. So that’s pretty good. I can imagine for developers as well to have that guarantee that yes, I can build what I want to build just takes out one level of risks from the project.

Luke 11:07
That’s right. And at the end of the day, it’s all about mitigating risks. Yeah, exactly what you’re after.

Ryan 11:12
And so okay, how can people find out more about this? How can people start to apply this to their developments, if they’re interested?

Luke 11:24
Well, the short answer is, give me a call that I can send you some links, if you want to put on the website that the code sits under something called the exempt and compliant development code, which is a statement state Environmental Planning policy. It’s very wordy, it’s not easy to understand. You can you can direct your clients and to that, but it is quite a tricky thing to get everything to marry up. So I would suggest

Ryan 11:56
reading that you can do on a Sunday afternoon.

Luke 11:59
No, I don’t even know.

Ryan 12:01
So really, for most people, I’m guessing it’ll come down to talking to the architect that they’re working with to say, you know, here’s the block of land that I bought, here’s what I’m looking to build, can we go through compliant development? Or do we need to go through da, and then you can have that discussion with the architect.

Luke 12:20
Yeah, and, rightly or wrongly, this is a development type that requires an architect or orange buildings on it to undertake, it’s not something that can be done by a builder, or draftsman, for example, as an architect, I have to sign off on that it meets all the criteria. And that’s not something that just anyone can do.

Ryan 12:42
Okay, so if someone is interested in finding out more, how do they get in contact with you?

Luke 12:49
Give me a call, or you can go directly to my website, jerk architects.com. Yeah, look,

Ryan 12:58
just or just Google direct architects is what I recommend, is, sometimes I spell your name wrong, I forget to put the C in there. So I mean, just Google jack architects, you’ll find Luke his phone number, and everything will be on there. Unless and at this point in time, given that it’s so new, we’ll all architects know about this, and how to use it and apply it to development.

Luke 13:22
Well, it is a code that’s finally finally been given the green light as of last July. I know a lot of my peers are still getting their head around it. Some, many architects, guys don’t know, it even exists. So you’ll find some people who know a little bit some people know a lot. So there’ll be a real range of skill level in there, I would say.

Ryan 13:48
So. So why Why are you so interested in this just out of personal curiosity, that kind of you know so much about this, whereas other projects might not?

Luke 13:58
Well, I’m particularly interested in this scale of housing, this medium density scale of living, you know, impacts on a larger group of people, I love houses. But this is, you know, you can really impact on people’s lives through this, this scale of development. And I can say there’s a real growth market. Given it’s, it’s in many ways, it’s no brainer approach. So yeah, that’s

Ryan 14:22
cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on and sharing this information. Again, guys, if you want to get in contact with Lou to talk more about this code, talk more about medium density development, and things like that. Just google doc architects, and you can find him over there. Is there anything that we’ve missed that you think we should discuss?

Luke 14:41
No, I don’t think so. I mean, there are details but that’s, that’s just

Ryan 14:47
awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on. Again, I wish you guys out there, the absolute best in your developments, whether you’re doing low density, medium density, high density, I wish you the best of that and until next time, Stay Positive