PropCode

🔎 More on our research series dual occupancy housing. 📰 Last week, Victoria announced ambitions to become Australia's townhouse capital. The images below show some stats relating to dual occupancy approvals in NSW. Diversity in housing types is important and it's great to get more people talking about this. 💡 I made the point last week that units make land more productive, but low-rise housing is generally cheaper to build. Getting low-rise moving means we get more housing in more places at more price points. There is a streamlined planning pathway for these types of homes. It can be quick because the stock is less complex to build. It's rules-based and well-suited to the use of digital tools. That's why there's so much potential for companies such as PropCode to do more to deliver faster approvals in the planning system.

💡 I was reminded yesterday of a very important point on housing. Taller buildings are not cheaper to build. Houses, dual occupancies, terraces, and townhouses are much cheaper ways to build floor space than tall buildings (let's call this low-rise - not to be confused with 👖). Tall buildings more efficiently use scarce, well-located land. We need them, lots of them, but they alone will only meet some of our needs. 🏘️ We also need more low-rise. A much more efficient development assessment pathway can be used for the much more efficient low-rise stock. ✅ Code assessment. Over the coming weeks, Astrolabe Group and PropCode will share insights on how codes are used and how they can be used more. Will Sullivan and Jonah Turnquist have developed great tools to help applicants, Councils, and certifiers better understand how to use this code pathway. ⚖️ It also frees us planners to work on more complex applications - like tall buildings. We'll share some data on this later this week.

We're glad to see people finding great use for our tools in their planning research! Checking the planning rules of off-market properties is the kind of work where you can't afford to spend a lot of time yourself, or money on professional fees, to get an answer. But with PropCode the answers are at your fingertips at super low cost! Our PropCode CDC tool instantly shows whether residential projects can be done as CDC on any NSW property. Our new Rapid Planning Report reads the LEP, DCP, and SEPP rules for you to prepare a detailed planning report in just a few minutes. Find out how easy planning research can be with PropCode! https://lnkd.in/gN9aF2ec

Imagine a future where, in just a few minutes, an automated tool finds and analyses the critical planning rules for your #DA project from among thousands of pages of local and state plans. That future has arrived today with PropCode’s new Rapid Planning Report! What used to take hours now takes five minutes and zero effort with our tool that writes a fully automated report to kick-start your #planning research. This tool produces much more than a simple list of planning maps, which has already been possible for years now with GIS systems. We have harnessed the new and mind-blowing power of #AI to directly read planning rules and work out logical answers. Project-specific rules for permissibility, maximum built quantity, key design requirements, and specific constraints are all found and analysed far quicker than any human expert could. For transparency, all rules referenced in the report have clickable citations to see the rule within its source document in the #PropCode Library viewer. Our tool goes well beyond simply checking planning maps for the #property. Special cases that only appear in rule text, e.g. lot width minimum or a special setback for corner lots, are picked up and analysed by our AI engine as well. A #planner recently told me that overlooking these rules on a project could represent a $10,000 cost to fix with the client. With our Rapid Planning Report available for under $100 and written faster than you can drink a coffee, it’s a no-brainer to come to PropCode first on a project. To celebrate our launch, we’re making it free to generate Rapid Planning Reports for the next few weeks, so please come check it out and give us your feedback! If your location is not yet covered, register for the waitlist to be notified when coverage expands. Check out Rapid Planning Report now: https://lnkd.in/gRfdEQzZ Will Sullivan Jonah Turnquist

You may have heard about a new “league table” ranking NSW councils’ DA assessment timeframes. At PropCode we’re debuting our own league table for a similar hindrance on property projects - DCP page count - which shows one #DCP far surpassing all others... In NSW a Development Control Plan contains granular rules for #property projects, and they are usually written at the local level by #Councils. A DCP usually has chapters for a wide variety of topics, zones, land uses, and special precincts, and some DCPs have over 50 chapters. PropCode has gathered all of these DCPs for our platform (from 128 NSW Councils) and counted a grand total of over 75,000 DCP pages across #NSW. With an average of around 260 words per page, PropCode calculates there are nearly 20 million words in NSW DCPs! 😵 Here are the top 10 longest DCPs in NSW by total page count: 3,762 Tweed DCP 2008 1,939 Sutherland Shire DCP 2015 1,753 Cessnock DCP 2010 1,715 Campbelltown (Sustainable City) DCP 2015 1,533 Penrith DCP 2014 1,498 Parramatta DCP 2023 1,465 Woollahra DCP 2015 1,456 City of Ryde DCP 2014 1,451 The Hills DCP 2012 1,422 Marrickville DCP 2011 The shortest complete DCP in NSW is Warren Shire DCP with just 7 pages! To see the entire PropCode DCP League Table, read here: https://lnkd.in/gStdNbRg PropCode’s #AI-powered technology is rapidly advancing to read and understand these DCPs no matter how long they are. Our innovative tools will save people heaps of time as they seek to understand the planning regulations for their projects. And of course if you want to avoid the DCP, check out PropCode CDC to see if your property is eligible for the CDC pathway. What are your horror stories of working with DCPs? Our platform will soon put those nightmares to rest at last!

PropCode has released an exciting AI-powered tool called PropGPT to answer questions about planning rules on any NSW property! Go here and click "Ask PropGPT": https://lnkd.in/dRaJy8rs PropGPT is a familiar chat interface that makes it easy to get an answer about #urbanplanning regulations. But it’s so much more powerful than simple Q&A. PropGPT includes document citations in its answers for transparency and assurance and will even show you the source text (including DCPs!). We’ve already seen some really interesting queries answered by #PropGPT, like: - “What is the total possible maximum FSR for residential accommodation?” - “What is the maximum height in metres?” - “Can I subdivide the lot?” - “Rear setback for B7 zones” - “External skylight exempt development or CDC” Looking ahead, we see lots of ways to use our AI engine beyond the (now ubiquitous) chatbot format. Please stay tuned to PropCode for news about another revolutionary AI-powered tool we will be releasing later this year… 👀

We have some exciting news to share about our PropCode CDC product, which has already proven valuable to architects and developers across the industry. The NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure has brought together an #AI Solutions Panel of suitable and mature software products for councils to use in the pre-lodgement stage of the development assessment process. After a competitive open tender process, PropCode CDC has been selected for the Panel due to its maturity and suitability for councils’ needs. We will be joined by Astrolabe Group who will help councils adopt our technology. We are all deeply honoured to be part of this critical opportunity to offer technology to solve big problems in urban #planning in New South Wales. We look forward to putting our technology in councils’ hands to empower council planners and applicants to quickly find the best approval pathway for small #residential projects. We will be demonstrating PropCode CDC to councils in the coming weeks. Council staff are welcome to join one of our virtual open drop-in sessions (with demos and Q&A) or separately book a dedicated session. If you're with a Council, please use this form to register your interest in meeting with us: https://lnkd.in/g6TnP4qb We are already working on our next product beyond NSW CDC, so stay tuned to follow our latest innovations! #property #proptech

It’s now been three months since we first heard of the various NSW #planning reforms, and people still have a lot of questions! One of the most common questions is: what do the proposed reforms mean for a specific #property? Depending on your appetite to check maps, look up Local Environmental Plans, or read Explanations of Intended Effect, you may feel confident or overwhelmed trying to answer this one. But thanks to all the analysis we've done at PropCode, we can give you an instant answer. And for a limited time, we are happy to show you a free glimpse of what our platform is capable of! Just enter your property of interest here (https://lnkd.in/gtt25tN3) and you’ll get an email summary immediately, detailing what the #reforms mean on that site. PropCode is going to do big things for #urbanplanning technology in 2024 and we hope you’ll follow our journey to transform the property industry!

Residents all across Greater Sydney are wondering what the recent NSW proposed planning reforms would mean for them. One big piece of uncertainty is the definition of a centre where higher density would be allowed away from any train station. Although commercial centres zoned E2 are definitely included, the proposal is unclear about which local centres zoned E1 or MU1 would be included. It would depend on whether such a centre contains "an appropriate level of goods, services, and amenities". We were pleased to provide detailed maps of the NSW proposed planning reforms to In The Cove, a high-quality community publication covering Lane Cove. Much of Lane Cove LGA is not within 800m of any train station, but Lane Cove town centre is right in the middle of the LGA. Our maps showed what the impact of the proposed rules would be if this centre were to be included in the reforms. See here: https://lnkd.in/g64fstYf If you need maps or analysis illustrating the proposed reforms for your area of interest, contact us! Jacky Barker

We are excited to read this morning that the NSW Govt is ready to use AI to start transforming its planning system! A panel of commercial AI products will be created for Councils to use in streamlining their development application process. https://lnkd.in/guM-pv84 At PropCode we learned about this initiative in November thanks to an invite from Ian Oppermann to pitch our platform. We have been eagerly awaiting the release of the application process and we will certainly be putting forward our products. Here's what we have already built using the latest #AI tech: - PropCode CDC: instantly learn whether a #property is eligible for the #residential CDC Codes across NSW - PropCode Library: read all planning #regulations in NSW and VIC, find which ones apply to a property, and conveniently search text across documents - PropGPT: our highly experimental (in alpha and still to be improved!) virtual consultant answering complex planning questions In addition to those exciting products, we are working hard on something greater that will powerfully solve the most frequently asked question in property development... Stay tuned! 👀