New housing developments are approved by the local council as a part of a master plan. The master plan includes the proposed roads, services, parks and facilities. Once this master plan is approved, the developer will undertake the earthworks for new roads and install the services such as electricity, water and sewerage.
Once complete, the developer applies applied to the council to subdivide the existing lots into residential sized allotments. These lots are registered with the Land and Titles office and the individual titles are now in existence. At settlement, you have purchased the block of land and your name will now be on the title.
Your builder will now lodge the plans for your property with the council for approval. Building plans need to be approved in the light of the overall design criteria of the master plan.
If you are using a specialist builder that build specifically for investors, you will usually find that this process takes no more than 4 to 6 weeks as they have a suite of home designs to suit variations in different sizes of blocks.
However, if you have designed the property yourself, this process can take many weeks or even months.