Development site screening

Site acquisition is a filtering problem that most teams solve one browser tab at a time. You know the criteria. Applying them means opening the planning portal, then the flood map, then the sales history, then the aerial, for each candidate — and by the time you have done forty lots the market has moved.

The per-site lookup tools are genuinely good, and this is not trying to replace them. The gap is the step before: narrowing a whole LGA down to the twenty lots worth opening a tab for.

A screen, not a lookup

Acquisition prompt

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In Blacktown and Cumberland, find every R2 or R3 parcel over 700 square metres within 800 metres of a TOD precinct station, outside the flood planning area, with no recorded sale since 2019.

Parcel	Zone	Area	Station	Last sale
Lot 4 DP 219884	R3	1,040 m²	412 m	2016
Lot 17 DP 30117	R2	892 m²	640 m	2011
Lot 2 DP 771043	R2	735 m²	780 m	None recorded

The parcels above are illustrative rather than real listings. The result is a table you can hand to an analyst, with the parcel identifier that lets them go straight to the title. Just as useful is the count that did not make it: how many parcels were in the zone, how many of those cleared the area test, how many were knocked out by the flood layer. That tells you whether the criteria are too tight before you conclude the market is empty.

The layers underneath

Cadastral parcels are the unit of analysis, with G-NAF addresses as the way in when your input is a street address rather than a lot and plan. Onto that sit NSW land zoning, flood planning areas and the land constraint layers, transport-oriented development precincts, transit stops, the road network, aircraft noise contours, and Valuer General sales history.

Hazard layers are the same ones used for climate work — bushfire prone land, flood extents, coastal recession and heat projections. A site screen and a climate risk assessment are the same join with different criteria, which is why a feasibility question and a due diligence question do not need two vendors.

Development activity

Screening for sites is one half. The other is reading what is already happening: approvals lodged, what got refused, how long determination is taking, where the activity is concentrating. NSW publishes lodged development applications through its online DA service, and ABS building approvals give the LGA-level series behind it. Both are being connected now; the parcel and zoning layers they attach to are already in place.

What it does not do

There is no feasibility model here. Yield, cost, and what a planner will actually approve on a specific lot are your judgement and your consultants. This is the part that comes first and currently takes the longest — reducing a region to a defensible shortlist, with the filter that produced it written down.