Vass Stammes: splitter blocks, town planning traps and smarter due diligence

Our ep 06 guest is Vass Stammes - the founder of VMS Town Planning and the creator of PropCheck.

From working on major projects like West Village, to helping everyday mum and dad developers split a block in Brisbane, Vass knows the ins and outs of Queensland town planning for property development!

George chats with Vass about how to pick a splittable block, hidden things to watch out for that can increase costs, and the process / timeline of splitting, and rough costs. 

If you’ve ever thought about splitting a block, doing a subdivision in Brisbane, or just want to understand town planning rules in QLD, this one’s for you. 

Transcript

Welcome to the Raising the Bar podcast, where we story tell excellence in Queensland Property. I'm your host, George Sourris from Empire Legal.

Hey Vass - welcome to the Raising the Bar podcast. 

Thanks George for having me. 

Good to see you again. You've been on tour to all of our offices over the years. Yeah. Offices. This was the first time in Spring Hill.

Talking to you about that before.

Went to saw at the Burleigh office first. I think I worked there for a day. Yep. We did our own little video down at Manly. We did and made the trifecta now made it to Spring Hill, even though it's the closest one to me. The big smoke mate in the big smoke in the CBD. Yeah. 

Close to your office as well.

Yeah. Well mate, VMS town planning how long you been around now? It's been a few years. Yes. 

This is actually our fourth year in business. Yep. So but been a planner for probably 12 years now. 

Yeah, man. I remember when we, we reconnected after high school, went to high school together, actually a bit of a fun fact. And we're from the same Greek island as well, which is pretty cool. Shout out to Kythira. I remember you were working on some big projects, man, didn't you do, did you work on West Village? Yeah, yeah. 

We were working as the planners and the surveyors at my previous firm, but obviously as a planner on all of the West Village master master plan. So from, pretty much from the very beginning. Yeah. With the, with the overarching master plan. Yep. And then all the subsequent approvals after that, the towers, the commercial, heritage buildings, you know. Yeah. And the like, so. A whole lot of different 

things. There's not just resi, there's commercials, park, green space, all sorts of stuff.

Yep, yep. There's a lot, 

lot going on there. 

You've done stuff of that size, literal tower developments right down to mum and dad splitter blocks. Yeah. Yeah. 

Character houses and carports even. Yeah. So, but yeah, splitter blocks as well. So yeah, typical 800's of sorts. Splitting into 400's, 10m frontages.

Hold that thought actually, we'll jump into that. That's one of the topics I want to talk with you about today. Look guys, Raising the Bar podcast, storytelling excellence in Queensland property - we think you're pretty excellent. Appreciate that. Didn't know that was the name of it, but yeah.

Yep, yep. We're storytelling excellence. Some people may also know of PropCheck. Vass also created PropCheck a few years ago, which is a tool to help buyers do due diligence in an easy, comprehensive report. How long's that been around? Three, four years as well? Yeah, 

similar.

So we launched it not too long after launching VMS. Yeah. But obviously it was an idea and in the works for quite a number of years before that. But yeah. Awesome idea, mate. Thank you. Considering, 

we'd be doing Dial Before You Digs and waiting for maps to come and Yeah. It's a very, very cool product.

At Empire we use PropCheck whenever we can. So, cool news, I hear you're expanding beyond Brisbane City Council, mate, I hear that's close. 

We are. We've we've got Logan City Council ready to go, just doing some final tests.

Awesome. And what we're going to do is, because we're so close on Gold Coast as well, yes as the region, we're going to launch Logan and Gold Coast together. Awesome. Hopefully by the end of the month is, is, we're waiting mate. Keen. We're very keen. 

For those that may have no idea what a PropCheck means because this isn't the goal of today, but it is important.

Maybe just 30 seconds on what PropCheck does, and then we'll jump into your town planning side of things. 

Yeah, look it it's sort of what I do by just a lot quicker. We've automated all the town planning searches I would normally do for a client. From state government searches, council searches, infrastructure searches, so that's zoning, easement, flooding, things like that. Yeah. Heritage Protection zones, and it's all with a nice pretty map. It 

shows where the property is, where the assets are, explains what's going on, so it, it tells you all that information in relation 

to your property, a bit of context around the property, you can see what's going on.

Shows you where all your services are as well. Your sewer, your water, your storm water, all the important things. Whether you're developing or just, looking to buy or sell. Yeah, true. Could even 

be, I want to put a pool in, is there going to be an asset in the way, like an easement or a storm water or something?

That's, 

that's exactly right. Yeah. So we've just packaged it up nicely into a pretty good looking report. 

Everyone likes to see their own house on a map. Yeah, that's exactly right. And, I've used it for my personal purchases, and we use it as Empire. We're a partner with PropCheck.

Every opportunity we get to use one, we give that to our buyers, because obviously knowledge is power, and as part of that due diligence process, that makes it nice and easy. 

And I appreciate the support as always.

Well let's jump into the town planning side.

I want to talk about a couple of different topics. We'll try and sandbox them to about 10 minutes each. And obviously the goal here is just to add value for whoever may be out there listening. I do have a little cheat sheet down here That's so I am going to get down and have a little look.

Oh, you didn't bring me a cheat sheet. 

You don't need to mate. You know this stuff like the back of your hand. Alright. Let's talk about Town Planning. Majority of clients that come through the Empire Legal audience are just regular mums and dads. Yep. We obviously help people buy and sell across Queensland.

A really hot topic is - a splittable block. We always hear, especially within the, the Greek communities that we're in as well, everyone wants to buy a chopper block, a splitter block. Yeah. Something where they can chop, develop, make money. Yeah. Let's zoom right out and go, what is a splittable block?

Yep. I know that's a very broad question generally, but let's throw over to you.

Well, just at a really high level for just really quickly if people didn't know, Yeah. Town Planning is legislated at a state level. Mm-hmm. So if you can do, town planning or developments in Brisbane, you can do it in any council in Queensland, because the hierarchies from the state level.

Okay. So with that being said, they are trying to standardise to a certain degree across the councils with their zonings and, and the like. Mm-hmm. But every council has things that are different, so you're not going to get coastal hazard issues in Toowoomba. 

True. True.

But it all comes from a state level. Correct. And what, then the local governments 

has their planning rules as well. Okay. So you've got the state legislation and and mapping. 

Yep. 

Council specific zoning and and overlays. And neighborhood or local plans as well that can dictate things. 

Okay. And they're all different based on the councils and they're sort of tying together.

That's right. Okay. Yeah, so, 

Generally in Queensland, and we might be more specific in probably Brisbane just for this example. Okay. So let's stick 

with Brisbane City Council for that. Yeah, because, 

and this will apply in terms of the general rules across the councils, but we'll use Brisbane as an example.

Okay. Cool. You start sort of with your zoning mm-hmm. In terms of looking to subdivide, looking for a splitter block. Yep. Because the zoning will dictate the minimum lot size. So what that means is, what is the minimum land area you can subdivide the block down to.

So low density residential, which is your normal suburban residential areas mm-hmm. Is generally a minimum of 400 square metres, and the other aspect to that is frontage width or lot width, so, oh, okay. Yeah. 400 square metres of land and 10 metres of frontage. So when looking for a splitter block, for example, you'd be generally looking for an 800 square metre block. 

Or more. Yep. So this is the formula so, if it's less than an 800, chances are to probably not going to be splittable. Highly 

unlikely. There are instances mm-hmm. That you can, okay. So generally, 800 square metres, 20 metre frontage.

Is the rule of thumb in lowdown city residential. Yep. There are some different rules around, say a character zoning it, it talks about 450 square metres. Okay. Opposed to 400. Yeah. But the frontages remain the same. 

Just to be clear, an 800 block with a 20 metre frontage could turn into a 400 block with a 10 metre frontage.

Correct. As a general rule of thumb. As a general rule of thumb. Okay. So that's what developers and mum and dad people are looking for, generally looking 

for. Yeah. 

But then you've got a whole string of issues, I guess if there's a house with a character overlay That's right. Can do you move it, can you demolish it?

Yeah. There's a whole nother different level there, isn't there? That's 

right. So the zoning generally would dictate land size and frontage width. Yep. You then have to obviously look at what overlays, does it flood? Are there any easements that impede potential development? Can flooding affect 

being able to split?

Definitely. Yeah. It's one of the biggest ones and it's probably in Brisbane and Logan in particular has gotten. There's obviously been some new flood mapping released. Yep. And it's yeah significantly impact subdivision. So we're doing, because we don't 

want to develop on a block that's going to potentially flood.

Yeah. It's, is that the idea? It's also 

the risk of persons living there. Mm-hmm. In a flood effected block. The theory of this understanding from council is that we don't want to create additional parcels of land that create risk for additional people living on that block.

Purely subdivision, when there's flooding. There are different levels of flooding, where it is acceptable and you can get it across the line. Highly recommend talking to a flood engineer. Yeah. And, and look in, in development, you consultant team is so important.

Yeah, of course. As, as I'm sure in your field as well, the team around you is the most important thing. Yep. I won't dive into too much into the details because I'm not a flood engineer, but just generally, subdivisions are harder to get across the line with a flood overlay. Okay. Because the main reason is council have to assume that block of land is going to be subdivided and never built on.

Because they're assessing and approving a subdivision. They're not approving built form. That would be a separate application. Sometimes where you can, you would apply for the houses or townhouses or whatever the built form might be at the same time. So then council can approve it together and put conditions around, well, we accept this because we can do a suspended slab with the construction and the flows can still, you know, go where they go and not, but this sounds expensive, right? Like this is, it can be, it can be, yeah. At a splitter level, yeah it's normally a deal breaker more often than not.

Yeah. Because you're turning one into two or whatever. That's right. By the time you get a flood engineer and put the house on stilts, if the council even lets you do it, there's a whole lot of barriers to entry, there's a lot of barriers, yeah And 

like you mentioned before, that you've got character overlays Yeah.

And things like that. So it might be. An 800 square metre block, 20 metre frontage, but the existing house's character might need to stay. If it had extensions to it and things like that over time, there's partial demolition you can do, but generally speaking, it would need to stay.

We had a recent example where the house itself is 10 metres wide, but that wasn't taking into consideration your setbacks to boundaries. Ah. So generally you need a metre on the side boundaries each. So we actually needed 12 metres to actually subdivide that 20 metre frontage block, yes, we were creating lots less than 400, and creating a block that was less than 10 metres wide. So, again, that makes things a lot more difficult and sometimes becomes a deal breaker. I was going to ask, it's 

not always a deal breaker though, right? Say it's slightly under or it's, can there be relaxations?

There can be. With all planning schemes in Queensland, they are performance based planning schemes, and what that means is if you don't meet the tick and flick acceptable outcomes. You move over to the performance solutions, and generally that's a design solution or an engineered solution of sorts where, hey, we might not meet the 10 metres, but this is why the eight metres are still acceptable in this scenario.

Right. So you go from the cookie cutter doesn't pass, you basically pitch to the council saying, this is why you should let us do it. Is that basically the score? That's right. 

There's still criteria that we got to still justify and meet and the performance outcome. So it's not as always as, oh, we can't do it, but let's just do a performance solution.

Yeah. Because sometimes we can't meet those performance solutions. Examples of that might be, there's lots in the street that are eight metres wide and 300 square metres, or there's an established lot pattern in the street. Oh, okay. It's like a precedent that's been set, the precedent that's been set for, for whatever reason.

So why can't I, why, why can't we? Because we're, we're maintaining the established expectation in the street. And that's what it's all about. So there's a lot of a community expectation as well from council. They've got to say, well, if I'm going to approve this for you, I've got to think about a thousand others to come.

because now I'm setting a precedent for this. They've got to be very rigid with how they assess their applications within the planning schemes. More often than not, and general rule of thumb, if you can get 10 metre frontages and 400 square metre lots resulting, you'll be okay.

Then we've got to dive into what other overlays and other things that are there, 

which I think we'll actually jump into that in, in a sec. Okay. Yep. I, I, when you were talking about the, I don't know if it must be the zoning something that springs to mind is say Belmont, Chandler, which we're both from that side of town, so for anyone that may not know it, these are larger lots.

They can't be split to a size that small as far as I understand, right? The town plan actually says no at the moment. 

We spoke about earlier, I'm glad I brought it up, how everything starts at a state level. Yep. At a state level, there's a zoning of sorts, they are land use categories,  and there's, there's three of them.

 There's the urban footprint, which most people know, if I'm in the urban footprint, I can do some sort of development. 

Which is what, like in the, in the city area, not in the bush, or not pretty much the country, pretty much. That's right. Yeah. 

Then you've got rural living, which is generally rural residential areas.

So you're 4,000, 8,000, 10,000 square metre blocks. 

Right. Huge. Yeah. 

Where, you can subdivide at a council level, as long as you're in the rural living and you meet the lot sizes. So there's some strict rules around what you can and can't do in those areas, and then there's the regional landscape and production area. So that's on a map, that's the green area. So that's, everyone relates that to being outside of the urban footprint. Okay. So outside of the urban area, which is the pink mapping. Yep. Yep. Those areas in Belmont that I think you're talking about, and Chandler are outside the urban footprint. So then the green mapping. Really? Yeah. I wouldn't have guessed that. Yeah, they're in the, the old back in the day before my time of being a planner, that was the old green belt around Brisbane they wanted to make. Right. Which is pretty much all, that's what's left of it other than that, that guard it's, and those sort of 

areas.

Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking big blocks of land. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what the minimum size is. I don't know if, yeah. 

Well the minimum size as subdivided is 100 hectares.

 It's totally different to you look at now, most people are building on 400 blocks, aren't they? If you're in Brisbane City Council, and you can find yourself one of these splitter blocks and chop it. 

Yep. 

You're building on a 400 block. I mean, if you've got any real grass in your backyard these days, you're probably, pretty well off, or you're living way away from Brisbane City? 

Well, we actually did a split over our own and we've got 350 square metre blocks. Yep. And I can explain that, because that was in low density residential. We've got 10 metre frontages. Yep. But we're also 350 square metres.

We got astro turf at the back and then tiles around the pool. Greek style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just hosing the concrete. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. So there are some exceptions to the rules, just jumping back to that, and, and a lot of that is around walking distance to centres, shopping centres.

Yep. And. It's becoming more common knowledge around these. There are some very specific rules around, is it like 300 

metres or something like that? Yeah. So 

200 metres walking distance. There you go. 200. Yeah. And, and the walking distance is a defined term.

Back in the day, it used to be as the crow flies. Mm-hmm. And you could cross Logan Road, four lanes just at any point. Yep. And jump the fence in the middle. Yep. So now it's from a safety perspective, council saying, well, okay, you can't just cross a busy road. If it's a lower order road, no worries, you can cross at a point. But those ones you've got to go to, the lights come back. Oh, wow. And that, 

that's a longer route. That's right. So then some 

of those blocks that you thought might be sub dividable, not necessarily based on that rule. Not necessarily. So look, the general rule of thumb with those ones is it's around the zoning, not necessarily whether there's shops or not.

There are cases where there's existing shops and the two houses next door in, in, in the same zone. Even though they're not shops, it's all in the zoning, so they can be developed as commercial. Right. That combined area of commercial space, centre zoning, needs to be a minimum 2,000 square metres before it even qualifies. See, there's guys, there's so much to this. It's so, so much. Yeah. 

And this is where, I guess to a, probably a, a small extent, the PropCheck might be a good start, right? That's right. So I, if you are a mum and dad, what I'm trying to get at here is we look at these splitter blocks, it's not as easy as it sounds, right?

That's sort of the angle that I've personally taken is, everyone wants to be a developer and chop up a block and look. I, I live in property. I do it all day and night. I'm a property lawyer. Yeah. Even some of this stuff you're saying, my eyes are starting to glaze, I'm like, man, what is he talking about?

Well, it's a hard thing and this is what you live and breathe. Right? There's so many bits of law, legislation that goes into being allowed to do this. 

Yeah. I've had clients and friends go, can you give me like a, a cheat sheet or what to look for? I mean, this is what this podcast is about today, and I'm trying my best to, to give that.

Yeah. But it's 

not that simple. It's 

not that simple. Yeah. And you're a professional, you've 

gone to university to become a town planner. Yep. To give this advice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

But look, there are starting points and general rules of thumb. We speak about 800 square metres, 20 metre frontage, start with that. There's exceptions to the rule, so we could subdivide down to 300 square metres. So we split a 700 into two 350's, with that walking distance rule. Other zonings, like low medium density, where you'd typically see units and townhouses, you can actually go down to 260 square metres and a seven metre frontage.

Wow. Wow. That's all around density. So that's different dwelling typologies. So instead of the unit development or townhouse might not be feasible, but I'm going to split into three, 260 square metre blocks, and build, you know, your free standing townhouses. Yeah. Okay. So there's different rules and different things to look for, and like you said, bit of a plug, but the first, the first check I get a lot of my clients to do, all my clients is, can you download the PropCheck report? It'll give you a very quick snapshot on zoning, all those rules, all those things to think about. 

Like zoomed out. And you can That's right.

You can understand what's going on sloping. Exactly. Right. 

Yeah, cut it, if it's not eligible, we can quickly bin it and look for something else. And 

that's cost saving for the client, right? Yeah. Because I imagine you'd get every day of the week, and I'm guilty of this too, emailing Vass, hey mate, what about this property?

And you actually said to me, do the PropCheck. Do the 

PropCheck. Yeah. 

And, and that's a really good start, isn't it? Yeah. It's not cheap to engage someone that does professional services. No. At the end of the day. You need to have a semi-qualified property to look at, or at least help educate your clients down the path of what to look 

for.

Yeah. We provide  detailed town planning investigations off the back of a PropCheck report. Which obviously at a higher price, PropCheck's $49 a report. Yeah, no town planner is working for $49. No, including me. No, and fair enough, mate.

But look, what I do for my clients is, download the PropCheck report. Yeah. It'll give you the snapshot. It'll also enable me to give you quicker advice. Send the report to me, then we can have a discussion about it. Yeah.

And for $49, I'm not charging you for our phone call. You know what I mean? So it's a bit of a give and take. And my clients obviously respect that and they'll get the report. We've had a look at it, tell me what you think, we have a quick chat. 

Yeah. And then you might have a quick look and go, floodplain, forget about it.

Yeah. All these are things we need to 

consider, or, hey, yes, we can do it, but this is where I think the costs are going to go a bit higher or, dive into the next layer. I can dive into the next layer. Exactly right. Yeah. We qualify it basically, or you know, bin it, or disqualify and move on to the next one. Or let's look at the next steps. Speaking 

of moving on, I'm just conscious of our time. Yes. Let's wrap up that first splittable blocks. Yep. Little segue. What is the "M" for in "VMS"? Is it your middle name? 

No it's not. No, no. It's actually my wife's name. Ah, that makes sense.

Okay. I was thinking about that this morning. I think I know what the V and the S stand for. Yeah. What's the M? 

Yeah. Melina Melina There you go. So, VMS - a little shout out to her 

Vass and Melina Stammes. There you go. Alright, cool, now, next thing I've got is - hidden things to watch out for that can increase the costs, for example, slope of land, connection of services, heritage, et cetera. So I'm an everyday Joe, I'm thinking of splitting a block. I've never done this before. What am I looking out for? I'm guessing it's probably the things that pop up in your report. 

The main sort of things generally that stick out, right?

Yeah. So, where do people come unstuck? I've heard stories of people, they've bought these two blocks next to each other. This is a real story, clients of ours in Moorooka 

Yep. 

They bought two blocks. I think they were trying to turn two into three. The problem being there was a crazy slope or something, and they, for whatever reason, couldn't get the services on their properties.

Yep. They had to use the neighbour's property. Neighbour told them no. That's it. They, they, they, they got no option. Stop there. That's it. It's as simple as that. So it stopped them. How in future do you prevent that disaster from happening? Is this something that if someone comes to you and says, Hey, I'm thinking of buying these two blocks Yep.

Et cetera. Do, 

do your due diligence before you buy. As you would do all your searches, you would do your advice to your clients and the rest of it. Yep. In the, in the same vein, I guess the starting points PropCheck report, but then we'd give that advice going, OK, well like you said, if it's sloping, I guess an easy one to think about is yeah, what are the main one?

Like what pops up all the 

time? What do you 

see as 

pg? Don't I? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. We assume they're at least 18. Who? Whoevers listening to us. Oh yeah. Yeah. You 

can't push shit uphill. 

Yeah, yeah. That's 

fine. That's fine. So naturally - gravity. 

Oh, like quite, quite literally. You're talking literally gravity.

Quite, quite literally. Yeah. You're talking about like sewer drainage and correct. Yeah. Yeah. Right. 

Okay. So if a block's sloping towards the street, and your sewer connection, your water connection, your stormwater connection, are in the street or across the road, but in the same street and the blocks heading towards those services. 

Never actually thought about that there. There you go. A good, that's a good thing. That's a really good thing, right, right, right, right. 

Because your sewer especially, and your stormwater are going that way in 

the right direction. Yep. 

So that example we had at Moorooka, I'm going to say, was probably their stormwater connection or their sewer connection.

I believe it was stormwater. Yeah. There was an issue with 

stormwater. 

Yeah. So there's two options there. And the second one's really expensive and creates other issues. So if the block sloping away from the street, and even if there is sewer and stormwater and water, you know, water's okay. You can, you can get a water connection because you're getting the water to the house.

Sewer and stormwater. You're getting that stuff off, off the, off the. Yeah. Yeah. And if it's you're going 

the wrong way, it's probably, 

yeah. You could say, look at a, you know, the PropCheck report and say, all right, well, yep. It's got services in the street. Cool. And I've, I've checked all the other requirements.

Cool. One of our pages that we do have on there is the contour of pages. Yeah. Which way is it sloping and, sometimes it's hard to read. You might not be able to actually read a contour. So obviously go out and inspect the property and see, see which way. Yeah. You know, because it's what you do for a living.

That's right. But say your average 

Joe, looking at the report or the, I don't know, which way is it sloping? Who cares? You can say 

where all the services, Cool. Everything else checks. Go and inspect the property, obviously. Yeah. You can see it sloping away from the street. Yeah. That's a little red flag to say.

Okay. If I'm looking to subdivide this property mm-hmm. How am I going to get connections to water, sewer, stormwater especially.

That's a huge one. Like I said, I've been in property for quite a while now and that's not something that I, I've never chopped a block up.

Mm. I've never actually consciously thought about that going, yeah, you actually need to go and look at it, find out where the services are and is that sloping the right direction? Because if not, it's either a showstopper or it sounds like there's an expensive solution to work around.

Is there? 

That's like, sometimes it's like sloping, maybe a metre front to back, so you'd look at retaining and filling the block up and tipping it back to the street. That can, that's expensive. That can be expensive, yeah. When it's obviously a more significant drop and you, you looking to do that, you get retaining walls over a metre, over two metres high. Mm-hmm. That's a separate approval for one, but it can create sort of amenity issues with the neighbours, and you don't want massive retaining walls, you know, as a neighbour. So council conscious obviously of that as well. And it's an expensive exercise.

Oh, retaining walls is, it's not thousands, it's tens of thousands. Yeah. And you're fill on the block compacting. It, it's, 

it's generally, you know, for a splitter it tends to be, you know, it makes a project unfeasible. Yeah. So, and 

traps for young players or new players is they may just think, oh yeah, yeah, this is an 800 block with 20 metre frontage.

Go, go, go, go buy it. 

Yeah. 

Maybe they don't get a conveyancer that asks the right questions. It's tricky for us as well, right? Because at the end of the day, no one wants to waste money on searches. Everyone wants to save money. 

Yeah. 

It's our job to ask questions, say you are not on the scene.

Someone comes to us, they want to buy this block of land. We ask a few exploratory questions. Yeah. What, what? Why do you want to buy this property? What's important to you? Do you want to develop it? 

Yeah. 

And that's where we can talk with our partners and go, hey, well, have you spoken to a town planner?

Yeah. Or have, have you done a subdivision before? Yeah. Only because at the end of the day, we're engaged to convey the transfer of land. 

Yeah. 

That's, it's, it's just a legal process. And we will do that for them. We don't, you go 

above and beyond though. I, I know you do. To, to, to ask those extra questions and provide that extra information.

because you see past this transaction, you see in three years time when they want to refinance and do a subdivision. Yeah. 

And then at that point they're going to be like, what do you mean I've got these issues with the storm water or the neighbour won't let me use their block. Why can't I subdivide it? Exactly. All this stuff.

If we can catch that early, we might actually save that client tens of thousands or even, even more. Even more. It can stop the whole project. 

Well if you're buying it with the price, say that it's a subdividable block. 

Yeah, correct. And it, and it can't be 

then it can't be you, you're you.

Yeah. Yeah. So 

spend the money up front, the professionals and, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Alright. I have here - Soccer coach at Brisbane Olympic. 

Yeah. Still doing that or not doing that 

anymore? I know there was a period in time where you were 

so. Obviously running two businesses and 

family man, a couple of kids, two kids under 

three and a half.

Three and a half year old, and a one and a half year old. Both boys. Yep. So yeah, I'm doing late nights as it is. Yep. So, yeah, as of last year, 2024 I didn't, coach. You guys got 

through to a final from memory? I came and watched a game. Yeah. With you guys a few years ago. Yeah. With Peter Drac. The 

last, the last two years I coached the second last year we won the grand final.

Yep. 

And finished second in the table and the last year I coached, we finished top of the table with six games to go. Had a very good team. Wow. So you went 

out with a 

bang mate? Went out with bang. We went out 

with the top, but we didn't 

win the grand final. 

That was a childhood club for myself and a lot of the Greek community.

So That's pretty cool, mate. Yeah, I don't know how, I don't know how you found the time to do that. I actually don't understand. Yeah, that's part of the 

reason. It was obviously, unfortunately is my passion, but it's the thing I had to give up. Later in life, mate, later, later in life. That's all right. My eldest will be playing soon, so I'll give me an excuse to go back down there, but yeah, there you go.

I'm still somewhat involved in the club. Great memories and can't wait for my kids to go and play. Yeah, me too 

mate. Me too. The next circle of life, eh? That's 

it. The next gen. 

Alright, let's jump into the last topic I've got. I have process / chronology / timeline of splitting and rough costs. I know this is a huge, how long's a piece string question and we 

spoke about things like retaining and all the rest of it. And just quickly going back to that point of, if you can get the neighbour to give you permission, they might go, well, what's in it for me?

Right. Then we're talking about easement documents, definitely formalising that. Yeah. All of that. So you might have 

to pay compensation. That's exactly right. Yep. 

So general splitter, in terms of process and we're talking generally here very generally, yeah. Yeah. 

Just generally speaking, if someone's like, I want to do a chop, how much does it cost?

How long does it take? 

Yeah. And I get the question every week. Yeah, there you go. So I'm sure you get some of it too. Yeah, I tell them to call you. Yeah, that's, I've got no idea about. I understand now.  Do your DD before you even buy it. Yeah, try and get a DD clause, or do it while you're negotiating or putting in an offer or inspect before you're too excited and get it under contract.

Too excited. Yeah. Yeah, because those sorts of things you can start to look for - obviously land zoning, land size frontage, then, where are your services? Which way does the block slope? Is there street trees? So subdividing into two, you've got to put two new driveways. 

Oh. And what if you've got a tree that can't be removed?

You've got a problem. 

We've done that bef there's so much to think about. There's so much to think about. We've done one in Carina actually. Yep. Carina Heights where he thought about sub and again, he did, he did everything right, this is sort of out of his control. He did all his research up front.

Two years later, he came to me and said, let's subdivide. But also Vass, council just recently installed a bus stop in front of my house,

that wasn't there at the time. It wasn't there at the time of the advice. Shocker. So, 

obviously update your advice if you're going to be waiting years, or if you get a letter of that nature, talk to your town planner straight away and say, hey, what does this mean? Does that change anything? 

Can you get a DA in and get it approved, and then if that was the case, they may not have put the bus stop there or not necessarily? Correct. If it was already, and this is a thing, if that was the in, it would've been okay.

Yeah. So, yeah. Interesting. 

You could, he could have potentially gone and got the approval. 

Yep. 

Because subdivision approvals last four years. So in terms of, we'll get to the costing, but the DA cost, obviously it's the most important part, because it lock locks in your, that's the go ahead for the, yeah. The project.

But it's probably your smallest cost in the actual getting to Titles and everything between. Yeah. Yep. So he could have gotten the approval and council might have put the bus stop somewhere else. Or we could have engaged earlier with council and say, this is what we're thinking of doing.

Can we move it, make it smaller, whatever it might be. But in that scenario, we had to be a bit clever and actually use his existing driveway. And we actually implemented an access easement over the front eight metres of both blocks. So cars could use the same driveway maneuver in that concreted area at the front, which had an easement, and then the houses got built back behind it, so we were still able to subdivide it. 

And there's still two separate title two separate lots. Correct. And there's just that shared easement. Easement. Okay. So that's the way around it. So it's not a, not a duplex or anything like that. There's still separate, still freehold.

Yep. But obviously not as ideal as two blocks with separate access and no easements. Yeah. So, it might hinder some of the value there, but it's still Carina Heights.



 

Do due diligence upfront, and if time passes check in, you know, hey we're still thinking of doing this. Mm-hmm. Has anything changed? Or anything of that nature. And sometimes it changed for the better. Sometimes zoning's changes and, I can do three blocks now.

Yeah. 

Okay, cool. I've bought it as a splitter, 

but now the zoning's changed. I can do three lots, which may be like, say we're 

talking about Chandler before, that Belmont area there, there may be people out there that have got blocks of land. 

Yeah. 

Sitting, waiting, hoping that this huge parcel of land can be chopped up.



Potentially. Yeah. But

obviously council's got no immediate plans to do that, but as the city grows, who knows down the track they may, they could change that, right? They could, but theoretically 

you've got better luck in areas like Rochedale and Pallara. Which, yeah. Okay. That happened. Yeah. I, I guess to look for that as a side note is those Chandler properties are environmental management zones.

They're outside the urban footprint, so way more 

barriers to entry. Way more barriers. Big problems are highly 

unlikely things will change. Right. If you're coming across larger properties to potentially land bank of sorts, you want to look for sort of emerging community properties.

What that means is, it used to be called Future Urban. It's the step before it becomes low density residential. Right. Generally it's still emerging community because the main services aren't there. You have major trunk, sewer, water, et cetera. So it's future planning for 5, 10, 15 years.

We're talking 

big blocks. Might have like a farm, not a farmhouse, but big blocks of land. That so Rochedale. Yeah. Okay. That was all emerging community.  

All been chopped up. Gotcha. That's right. Gotcha. And they normally put structure plans and neighbourhood plans over them to dictate what goes where. But they've got blocks in there at 300 square metres.

And things like that. So, 

and no of the what was that overlay you said with Chandler know, like environmental, environmental management. So that's a major showstopper. 

That's a major shows stopper. Yeah. And I think those Chandler areas, it might change in the future, but yeah, I think it's more of a lifestyle property now.

Like where can you buy acreage? Oh man, that close to the city I've got relatives from Melbourne going, how close are you? Yeah, my cousins. How close to those blocks? Yeah. My cousins, 

they had a place at old Cleveland Road at Belmont there, and man, we used to go there every weekend and we built BMX tracks.

Yeah. It was huge. Next to the old Tommy's egg farm. It was, yeah. It was awesome. So much land and I think now if you've actually got real grass in your backyard, you're doing well, yeah. So, wow. And that's, you know, that's changed in 20 years. Yeah. My, 

my in-laws are at Burbank, jump on the motorway and i'm here in 20 minutes. It's incredible. But they've got six acres. Yeah. Wow. But can't do anything with it because of that environmental management zone. Yep. But it's a lifestyle thing. So I think those pockets, probably even in our lifetime, I don't know what will change, but who knows. Who knows?

Who knows. Yeah. Yeah. But cost and process obviously. Do your DD up front. Yes. When you're sort of ready to then hit the trigger, you've got some consultant costs up front. We always recommend the very first thing you do is engage a surveyor. We want get a detail and contour survey.

So what that is, is it picks up the levels of land, that are obviously accurate, but because they go out there with the staff and, you know, do the actual, actual, actual survey of the block. Location of existing house, trees, services, all of that information, which becomes the base plan of our subdivision plan, of our engineers plans, all of that going forward.



And that'll be not hundreds, that'll be thousands, right? It depends. Two to three grand, depending on the size of Okay. So you need to budget a few grand for that. At least two grand for that.  

Yep. And then obviously your town planner's costs depending on, on the project, DA could be around that probably five grand mark.

And that's assuming it's pretty vanilla, right? Yeah. Obviously if it's a difficult one, it's going to cost more, it's going to be more work. It could be harder. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But 

just looking at a splitter block that's generally straightforward, could potentially go down the fast track path in council.

We've actually got the fastest subdivision approval in Brisbane last year. I didn't even know. There you go man. So I saw it pop up on LinkedIn and got tagged in it and oh, we got a, how fast? Seven, seven days.

Oh my gosh. Which 

was to do what? Like chop a block? One into two lot 

subdivision. In seven days. Seven days from from lodgement. 

That's not the standard, guys. Don't bank on that. No, it's not the standard. That's a record. That's cool. 

Yeah. I'll go one step further, it was actually seven days from lodgement, but council take three to five business days to give you the invoice to pay their fee.

Huh. So it was actually two days when we paid the fee. 

And is that because everything you'd submitted was like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, Mickey Mouse compliant? Yeah. You've given them all the data they need just to approve it. 

And when I talk about that fast track process, we're accredited consultants in the risk smart team, is what they call it.

We take the role of obviously the town planner for our client, but we put the council hat on as well, so we do more of the work up front on our end. Mm-hmm. So when we're lodging it, council is just reviewing, double checking and it's for low risk applications like a two lot subdivision. It's nice, 

tidy, clean, nice, tidy clean, 

no flooding, no whatever.

Yep. Very simple. Just to, you know, get things moving along. But generally if it's a standard subdivision application, the DA, I would allow a month for your consultants to get your survey, your town planning report. The civil engineering report if you need one, and then once you've lodged probably a two to three month process.

Oh, I thought you were 

going to say way longer. 

No, no. For Okay. For a splitter, look, we're obviously doing them a lot quicker, but, 

and we're talking like again, a, a pretty vanilla split, right? That's right. Nothing with dramas. So was soon as two to four months, you could theoretically have an approval. 

Yeah. Okay. And then once, I'd say two to three months. You're 

approved, 

then you've got four years to actually, undertake that approval. So the approvals come with, okay, so you've got time with approved plans and conditions. 

Yep. 

So up subdivisions up, up to four years without any extensions. 

Can you apply for extensions? You can, 

but it's a cost as well. Yeah. Okay. 

So if you're running out of time, you just pay more money and you get another four years or something. Two years at a time, generally. Okay. Cool. 

During COVID, the state government stepped in and actually gave automatic extensions for approvals because you know to, yeah. So there's a lot of approvals lapsing that now have an extra one or two years on them. Mm-hmm. Which is a really good thing. So that was an automatic extension for all those approvals. We still recommend to our clients, we always just get some written advice from council, to say, hey this approval lapses soon, or it's going to lapse, or it already has lapsed potentially, depending on when the client comes to us. 

There was three different COVID extensions. We believe all of them apply, or two of them apply, or one of them apply for, for whatever reason. Can you just confirm, do they apply to this approval? And can you confirm the actual expiry date? So we just get that in writing from council. It's nice and tidy. just so there's no Exactly right. Yeah. So yeah, there's, there's opportunity to extend 

as well.

Okay. So would it be pretty fair to say that within a six month window, all going well, people could be approved. Provding there's no dramas. Yeah, if there's dramas, obviously it's a whole different story. Something 

straightforward if you're doing it in six months, I mean, that's, for me, that's way too long. It should be three months. 

These people would be like, developers, these guys are like, this is what they do.

Right. And this is the other thing, like they want it fast. They've got to get out of the ground. Yeah, 

that's right. So that's, that's getting your approval, I'd say probably three months for a sub, so one into two, three to four, including your time, prior lodging, is a very standard timeframe.

That's way faster than I thought. For code assessment, which means obviously we're not publicly advertising, it's a different ball game and your general splitters aren't doing that. So Yeah. Is 

public that, that'd be like a bigger project.

Right. A bigger project. It might affect the community or people want to have their say. That's right. So in the, not just a mum and dad chop. That's right. Yeah. 

I'd say three to four months for your approval process. And then there's conditions that come with those approvals and you've got to go and meet those things.

So for example, Urban Utilities look after water and sewage in Brisbane and Ipswich and a few other council areas. You then need to go and get water and sewer approvals for that. So the property might already have one water connection, one sewer connection, but each block has to be serviced individually. So it could be subsequent approvals after that.

Oh, so it's 

like a "subject to" okay, you're approved subject to, subject 

to meeting these conditions. Gotcha. Yeah. These conditions are making sure each block has water, sewer, stormwater, power. And if there's demo of the house, you can't have two lots with a house straddling the boundary because of the encroachment.

So the house would have to be demolished before they give you titles, when you have that end of the process. So there's a few things to do post DA, to meet the conditions of approval. Once they're all done, and a lot of that's on site - site works are clearing the site. If there's any retaining or fill or cut or anything like that to do, services - making sure it's all connected. You got to get the surveyor back out there to peg the new blocks and draft a new survey plan. Any easements that they need to peg as well. Any easement documents that probably a lawyer would need to draft. Or if it's easement and gross easements, but then always get our clients to get their solicitor review it.

And then you've got to 

look at even consent from the mortgagee as well, right? Correct. If there's a bank involved, you've got to get permission and this, this, this part takes time. This, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. This part takes time. 

A lot of that post-approval stuff can happen concurrently. Yeah. So if you're prepared to move quickly, and part of our service is a project coordination fee.

We obviously look after your DD and your DA, but we don't say thank you very much, good luck after that. We want to see the project through. Especially on those smaller scale sites and even up to 10 lots subdivisions, but definitely on your one into two's, one into threes, we offer that project coordination. So what that means is we assist in getting those post DA approvals with urban utilities. Getting new quotes with electrical consultants because they got to get Energex approvals and NBN, you know, talking to people like yourself.

Yeah. Working with the conveyancer working with the conveyancer, working with the surveyors, getting quotes from consultants. To help manage. It's a lot of moving parts. It's a lot of moving parts. Yeah. 

Guys, if you are just thinking about splitting a block, there's a lot involved. There's a lot involved. We've unpacked more stuff than I'd thought about, because there was a time in my life where I was considering it and I spoke to a mate of ours, Kos Comino, shout out to Kos, he gave me a lecture for about an hour. How unless you're a developer or you're experienced or you've got a bit of resilience. There's a lot of hurdles. Like even what you were talking about services that have to be connected after, that's not five minutes work, and that's not $5. There's power, there's water, there's sewer, there's, I don't know, there's more.

Well think about 

every block's going to be serviced and ready to build. Basically, you're, you're getting the block ready to be given to someone to build. I've had clients say, oh, once we get DA, can I sell the block? No. because there's conditions of that approval.

Can't the future owner do that? No, before council give you what's called planned sealing approval, which is basically them saying, provide us all the evidence that you've met the conditions of approval. Yes. You've gotten everything in order, everything on site connected, et cetera. New survey plan, submit it to us. We review it. We approve it, sign the survey plan as well as a cadastral surveyor. Which then those survey plans would come across your desk, to go to the Title's office to issue the title. Before someone can take ownership of that new block, you've actually got to create that new block. And that comes with those conditions of providing all those things, and that's where the 

uplift is. It's great to have a DA in  . Yep. But there's still a few steps that have to happen to actually get that uplift in the property's value. 

That's right. You will see uplift in with an approval, even with a two lot subdivision.

But I think the greater rewards is actually delivering that development. Yeah. Well, that's cool 

to know that you guys do that service with you actually work with the clients to get that done. Well, the 

main reason we want to do it is because a lot of the clients, especially in the smaller projects, are mum and dads or smaller developers. Well use me as an example, 

I could fumble my way through it, but it's not going to be as efficient as the guy that does it for a living and, and knows who to talk to and what to do. Yeah. Yeah. And 

look, and part of the reason why, obviously it was a good opportunity for us personally to do our own subdivision.

And we are living there currently. Yep. But I wanted to do it myself, run the process. And I've done a couple now. Yeah. How cool is that? Run the process. Yeah. Yeah. And so I've done this. I can help, I can help my clients. I live in my subdivision. How cool is that? Yeah. Literally, there's no point going, hey I can help you with this, but I've never done it before.

It is like when you hire a fat personal trainer, it's like, come on, mate. We might wrap it up there just for time sake, just my last comment is, I go to a studio at Wooloongabba, and every time I leave there, I see your car out the front of your office.

It doesn't matter if it's in the afternoon, the early evening. Props to you. You're a bloody hard worker. You built a couple of amazing businesses. You've done some good stuff for the property industry so far in Brisbane now expanding to Logan, Gold Coast and beyond, which is very, very cool.

Yep. Thanks for being one of the first guests on the show. 

Thanks for having me. Thanks for thinking of me. 

Of course. And guys, if you need help with any town planning stuff, like I said, Vass is awesome. His team's awesome. And check out PropCheck, I think PropCheck's a really cool thing in the industry that helps buyers.

Yeah, we've 

got huge changes coming with disclosures and whatnot later in the year with the Property Law Act. So, if you're thinking of buying a property, it's a really cool tool to help you understand a bit more about it for a really good price. 

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks mate.

 Props to all your clients mate, he's there working. He's literally, some days I finish and it's like 6.30-7.00pm, and I pull out and I'm like, man, his car's at the front still.

I, he must be getting something approved for something. Hey, a little shout out to Daniel Zullo as well, 

because 

he 

is always there with me. In the trenches. In the trenches. 

Good architect. 

Awesome architect. Yeah. Great architect.

Thanks guys. See you on the next one. Thank you.