Due Diligence

"Seeking town planning advice at an early stage can be invaluable in quantifying the development potential of a site and potentially avoiding costly errors and omissions."

We provide professional town planning advice on development options and statutory constraints to clients during due diligence for site acquisitions and determining the development potential of existing landholdings.

Our experienced town planners have a clear understanding about the complex nature of statutory provisions and development processes, enabling us to identify potential issues from the outset.

If your site acquisition is for a first home, it pays to do your research!

Knowledge is power, and never more so than in the context of purchasing a property.  After all,  buying a property is often one of the largest investments you'll ever make.... Don't Mess it up. 

For the purposes of illustrating the importance of doing planning searches and the like, we’ll focus on residential property sector.  Most people hit open houses with an idea of what they are looking to buy. Their top priorities might be 4 bedrooms, a pool, or perhaps a nice yard with room for a shed.

Once you find the home that ticks your boxes, at the price you want to pay, you may think it’s time to make an offer. Whilst you can make offers subject to conditions, it pays to do a little extra research to make sure there are no hidden surprises.

Planning, zoning and overlays can have a major impact on what you can, or cannot, do with a property. Therefore, you want to be sure that whatever applies to your property is workable for your plans today, and into the future.

A little research into building or planning approvals can help you avoid: spending money to bring the property up to code; issues with insurance; and impacts to property value or resale potential. Of course, rules and regulations do change over time and you can’t future proof against that, but you can check what currently applies to the property.

Most Local Council's provide a fee for service known as a 'Land Record Search'. These searches provide information on various aspects that relate to a property (i.e. water meter reads, rates search, swimming pool compliance, building permit search, plumbing permit search, flood zone and storm tide information etc.)  More importantly they provide the option to obtain varying types of 'Town Planning Certificates'. 

To find out more about these searches and how they may apply to your property, please send us an email to admin@uitownplan.com.au