Development site screening

Site acquisition is a filtering problem. Most teams apply the criteria one site at a time: the planning portal, then the flood map, then the sales history, then the aerial, for each candidate. Forty lots takes days.

The per-site lookup tools do that job well and this does not replace them. This covers the step before: narrowing a whole LGA down to the twenty lots worth opening in a per-site tool.

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, not real listings. The result is a table with the parcel identifier, so an analyst can go directly to the title. The output also reports the counts at each stage: how many parcels were in the zone, how many cleared the area test, how many were removed by the flood layer. That shows whether the criteria are too tight before you conclude the market is empty.

A published run

A full run of this shape is published: a last-mile depot brief with eight constraints, narrowed to 145 eligible industrial lots and then to a ranked top twenty by drive-time catchment. It includes the prompt, the map, the Python the agent ran, and the reason eighteen of the twenty could not be cleared for flood. Shortlisting last-mile depot sites in Sydney.

Layers

Cadastral parcels are the unit of analysis. G-NAF addresses are the entry point when the input is a street address rather than a lot and plan. Joined to the parcel: 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.

The 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.

Development activity

The other half of screening is reading current activity: approvals lodged, refusals, determination times, and where activity is concentrating. NSW publishes lodged development applications through its online DA service, and ABS building approvals give the LGA-level series. Both are being connected now. The parcel and zoning layers they attach to are already in place.

Limits

There is no feasibility model. Yield, cost and what a planner will approve on a specific lot are for your judgement and your consultants. This tool reduces a region to a shortlist, with the filter that produced it written down.