Think you’re ready to lodge your DA?
The temptation is to use a Builder or Architect to lodge your property development application for you because then there’s only the one throat to choke. By which I mean, as a property developer, you only have to deal with one key person in the early and middle stages of your development and you can credit them with everything that goes to plan and blame them for anything that goes wrong.
I know the argument: It’s cheaper and easier to just use your Builder or Architect. They tell you “We’re going to do the design, we’re going to do the construction, we’re going to do it all in-house and we know exactly what to fight for.”
But the problem is, they become a jack of all trades and the master of none.
Find out why I strongly suggest you use a Town Planner to lodge your DA, read on...
Here’s the thing. While Architects and Builders know a truckload about design and building, they simply don’t put the number of applications into Council that would allow them to become super-familiar not just with what the rules are, but also a Council’s flexibility on those rules.
Sometimes Councils can be very rigid and sometimes they can be very loose. If you’re only putting in a handful of applications each year you’re not going to have that volume to give you insight, or the relationships with the Town Planners who are assessing the application.
You’re not going to understand the political influences coming into an election. An election can have a big impact on what you’re able to get approved: at some points of the year you’ll get something that pushes boundaries through and at other times you won’t.
When you use a Town Planner, you’re using an expert who specialises in property development applications. They have those relationships established, they deal with hundreds of applications because it’s not just you they’re lodging an application for, it’s a whole long line of other homeowners and property developers. This means you’re able to use other people to push the boundaries for you and to help you to understand where the line is.
If you are trying to push the line, you can have a much better-informed conversation with the Town Planner than you can with your Architect or Builder.
You can ask them what the likelihood of success is, whether you’re pushing too hard on your development site or perhaps not hard enough. Maybe there’s more room for improvement in your proposal.
That ability to fine-tune your DA to maximise both your development and your chances of a successful application is very under-estimated.
We tend to be penny-wise and pound-poor. We want to spend less money by having one consultant and keeping it in-house but the problem is we often don’t get the efficiency of outcome we’re expecting. In fact, it ends up hurting us with holding costs because we get rejected or we cap our profits because we don’t get that extra dwelling on.
Build a team of experts
I’m going to use a favourite saying of mine to help you understand the importance of building your own team of experts:
A champion team will always beat a team of champions.
The saying basically means that a team of good players who have played together, bonded and share a common team goal will defeat a team of assembled superstar players who prioritise their individual goals over those of the team.
When it comes to property development, you can have a team of champions – people who are top dogs in their field – and still not get the outcome you’re looking for. But if you invest time in forming a team of individuals who work cohesively together, who don’t beat each other up, you’re in much better shape.
And the Town Planner should be one of the first people on your team.
To optimise your Property Development outcomes, your Town Planner has to be a specialist and an expert in your area. Anyone can read the rules and figure out, in theory, what can and can’t be done.
What we’re looking for is someone who does lots of successful applications to Council for your type of development strategy. This person will deal with that one Council all the time and knows the personalities within that Council.
This area expert will know where Council is flexible and where it’s not, they’ll know the idiosyncrasies of twisting a property development a little bit this way or that to get it across the line.
If there are a few Town Planners to choose from, narrow down the field by identifying who is lodging the most applications, and who has successfully pushed the boundaries.
How to find a Town Planner
Where do you start? Look on Council websites. There are quite a few – although not all – that allow you to track DAs.
Brisbane City Council is a great example. You can find out what the application is for, where the applicant is trying to push boundaries, what their arguments are. You can see requests for information where Council isn’t happy, and the response to those requests, then you’ll see the determination.
So you’ll get to see the entire storyline. That paints a picture that shows that this Town Planner knows what to do and what to argue for and where there are exceptions. They’ll know instinctively, even if they didn’t lodge the DA, that hey, somebody up the road asked for that outcome and they got it, so they may be able to demonstrate precedence for your project.
If your Council doesn’t have public records of DAs, ask your shortlist of Town Planners to produce multiple examples of where Council has approved a potentially contentious development thanks to their skills in understanding and moulding an application.
Keep interviewing candidates until you find a Town Planning expert with that rich experience, with their finger on the Council pulse. Someone who’s connected enough to know when politicians are coming up to an election and what topics are sensitive, when they’re looking for economic growth and what are the drivers they’re looking to see.
You’ll sometimes find teams of Town Planners comprising of a senior planner and three junior planners, each specialising in certain types of applications. That kind of depth of detail can really play into your favour.
Your Town Planner is going to be instrumental in assessing whether or not the development site you’ve found is developable, and keeping you up to speed with how Council will assess your application when you actually get to the point of lodgement.
They'll look at the zoning, they'll look at the site constraints, they'll help you with your due diligence and feasibility. They'll look at overlays and neighbourhood plans and LEPs and all of those sorts of things. They’ll be across any state-based legislation that might apply and they’ll be able to measure the likelihood of your success in actually achieving that project.
After lodging your application, your Town Planner will respond to any questions that Council may have. If your DA is accepted, they'll go through your approved conditions and potentially negotiate with Council if some of those conditions aren't necessarily favourable. And if it's been rejected, then they'll be trying to come up with arguments to overturn that decision.
Exceptions
It’s worth noting that you wouldn’t engage a Town Planner for a fast-track property development. In these circumstances, where there is full compliance with the rules, you can use a private certifier. (Different states have different terminology for fast-track development. For example, in NSW it’s called a Complying Development, in Victoria VicSmart and in Queensland it’s called Risk Smart.)
But as a Property Developer, we often want to push boundaries because it gives us a better quality product. We get to use the space more, we get to add an extra dwelling, or we get the maximum coverage on the development site assuming that’s what the market is looking for.
With a top Town Planner doing your DA, your property development journey is likely to be both smoother and more profitable.
The temptation is to use a Builder or Architect to lodge your property development application for you because then there’s only the one throat to choke. By which I mean, as a property developer, you only have to deal with one key person in the early and middle stages of your development and you can credit them with everything that goes to plan and blame them for anything that goes wrong.
I know the argument: It’s cheaper and easier to just use your Builder or Architect. They tell you “We’re going to do the design, we’re going to do the construction, we’re going to do it all in-house and we know exactly what to fight for.”
But the problem is, they become a jack of all trades and the master of none.
Find out why I strongly suggest you use a Town Planner to lodge your DA, read on...
Here’s the thing. While Architects and Builders know a truckload about design and building, they simply don’t put the number of applications into Council that would allow them to become super-familiar not just with what the rules are, but also a Council’s flexibility on those rules.Sometimes Councils can be very rigid and sometimes they can be very loose. If you’re only putting in a handful of applications each year you’re not going to have that volume to give you insight, or the relationships with the Town Planners who are assessing the application.
You’re not going to understand the political influences coming into an election. An election can have a big impact on what you’re able to get approved: at some points of the year you’ll get something that pushes boundaries through and at other times you won’t.
When you use a Town Planner, you’re using an expert who specialises in property development applications. They have those relationships established, they deal with hundreds of applications because it’s not just you they’re lodging an application for, it’s a whole long line of other homeowners and property developers. This means you’re able to use other people to push the boundaries for you and to help you to understand where the line is.
If you are trying to push the line, you can have a much better-informed conversation with the Town Planner than you can with your Architect or Builder.
You can ask them what the likelihood of success is, whether you’re pushing too hard on your development site or perhaps not hard enough. Maybe there’s more room for improvement in your proposal.
That ability to fine-tune your DA to maximise both your development and your chances of a successful application is very under-estimated.
We tend to be penny-wise and pound-poor. We want to spend less money by having one consultant and keeping it in-house but the problem is we often don’t get the efficiency of outcome we’re expecting. In fact, it ends up hurting us with holding costs because we get rejected or we cap our profits because we don’t get that extra dwelling on.
Build a team of experts
I’m going to use a favourite saying of mine to help you understand the importance of building your own team of experts:
A champion team will always beat a team of champions.
The saying basically means that a team of good players who have played together, bonded and share a common team goal will defeat a team of assembled superstar players who prioritise their individual goals over those of the team.
When it comes to property development, you can have a team of champions – people who are top dogs in their field – and still not get the outcome you’re looking for. But if you invest time in forming a team of individuals who work cohesively together, who don’t beat each other up, you’re in much better shape.
And the Town Planner should be one of the first people on your team.
To optimise your Property Development outcomes, your Town Planner has to be a specialist and an expert in your area. Anyone can read the rules and figure out, in theory, what can and can’t be done.
What we’re looking for is someone who does lots of successful applications to Council for your type of development strategy. This person will deal with that one Council all the time and knows the personalities within that Council.
This area expert will know where Council is flexible and where it’s not, they’ll know the idiosyncrasies of twisting a property development a little bit this way or that to get it across the line.
If there are a few Town Planners to choose from, narrow down the field by identifying who is lodging the most applications, and who has successfully pushed the boundaries.
How to find a Town Planner
Where do you start? Look on Council websites. There are quite a few – although not all – that allow you to track DAs.
Brisbane City Council is a great example. You can find out what the application is for, where the applicant is trying to push boundaries, what their arguments are. You can see requests for information where Council isn’t happy, and the response to those requests, then you’ll see the determination.
So you’ll get to see the entire storyline. That paints a picture that shows that this Town Planner knows what to do and what to argue for and where there are exceptions. They’ll know instinctively, even if they didn’t lodge the DA, that hey, somebody up the road asked for that outcome and they got it, so they may be able to demonstrate precedence for your project.If your Council doesn’t have public records of DAs, ask your shortlist of Town Planners to produce multiple examples of where Council has approved a potentially contentious development thanks to their skills in understanding and moulding an application.
Keep interviewing candidates until you find a Town Planning expert with that rich experience, with their finger on the Council pulse. Someone who’s connected enough to know when politicians are coming up to an election and what topics are sensitive, when they’re looking for economic growth and what are the drivers they’re looking to see.
You’ll sometimes find teams of Town Planners comprising of a senior planner and three junior planners, each specialising in certain types of applications. That kind of depth of detail can really play into your favour.
Your Town Planner is going to be instrumental in assessing whether or not the development site you’ve found is developable, and keeping you up to speed with how Council will assess your application when you actually get to the point of lodgement.
They'll look at the zoning, they'll look at the site constraints, they'll help you with your due diligence and feasibility. They'll look at overlays and neighbourhood plans and LEPs and all of those sorts of things. They’ll be across any state-based legislation that might apply and they’ll be able to measure the likelihood of your success in actually achieving that project.
After lodging your application, your Town Planner will respond to any questions that Council may have. If your DA is accepted, they'll go through your approved conditions and potentially negotiate with Council if some of those conditions aren't necessarily favourable. And if it's been rejected, then they'll be trying to come up with arguments to overturn that decision.
Exceptions
It’s worth noting that you wouldn’t engage a Town Planner for a fast-track property development. In these circumstances, where there is full compliance with the rules, you can use a private certifier. (Different states have different terminology for fast-track development. For example, in NSW it’s called a Complying Development, in Victoria VicSmart and in Queensland it’s called Risk Smart.)
But as a Property Developer, we often want to push boundaries because it gives us a better quality product. We get to use the space more, we get to add an extra dwelling, or we get the maximum coverage on the development site assuming that’s what the market is looking for.
With a top Town Planner doing your DA, your property development journey is likely to be both smoother and more profitable.
