Pattern Book Manor Homes 01: the NSW manor house design explained

There are two versions of the design. Inside a low and mid rise (LMR) housing area the compact version needs a lot at least 15 metres wide and 625 square metres. Everywhere else in NSW the standard version needs a lot at least 18 metres wide and 840 square metres, and the lot must also meet the minimum lot size in your council's local environmental plan. Lot width is measured at the front building line.

The building itself is the same either way: 26.1 metres deep and 11.35 metres wide. What changes is the land around it. The compact base pattern sits on a 15 by 41.6 metre lot with a 9.5 metre front setback holding two open car spaces and a 6 metre rear setback. The standard base pattern sits on an 18 by 46.55 metre lot with a 5 metre front setback, a driveway down one side and a 15.45 metre rear setback holding a four space car park.

Those minimums assume four 2 bedroom apartments. Adding 3 bedroom apartments lengthens the building, so the lot has to be longer too. All 17 official siting and orientation examples are below: eight for LMR housing areas and nine for the rest of NSW, covering mid block, corner and rear lane lots and every frontage orientation.

Type your address to load your actual block from the NSW cadastre, including its boundaries, zoning and planning layers. Dudils screens lot size, orientation and slope to find patterns that could work. It does not complete a planning eligibility assessment. Dudils screens slope from the national elevation model, which is indicative and not a survey, so confirm the fall across your site against the limits below. Also check council and State mapping to confirm the land is not bush fire prone or on excluded flood prone land. Heritage items and conservation areas, landslip risk land, land affected by a registered easement, coastal hazard land, foreshore land and unsewered land can also rule the pattern out.

A manor house or 2 storey residential flat building under this pattern is permitted wherever that development type is already permitted with consent in NSW. Which version you use depends on where the site sits. The Low and Mid Rise Housing Policy applies in selected residential zones within an 800 metre walk of town centres and stations, and those areas are called LMR housing areas. They get the compact 625 square metre base pattern. Every other location uses the 840 square metre base pattern with its extra parking. You can look your address up on the NSW Planning Portal map, or type it above and the lot finder checks it for you.

The fast tracked pathway is a complying development certificate under the Pattern Book Development Code, which sits in Part 3BA of the Codes SEPP. Like any complying development, it is not available on high risk or constrained land. Bush fire prone land and certain flood prone land are excluded, and pattern book complying development is not permitted on heritage items or in heritage conservation areas.

If the land is excluded from complying development you can still propose the pattern, but it has to go through a standard development application instead. The fast track your planning approval page sets out both routes.

The building reads as one house from the street. A recessed communal entry leads to a central lobby and stair, with one apartment either side on each level. Because the plan is only four apartments around a single core, every apartment has windows on three sides, which is what gives it the daylight and cross ventilation of a detached house.

Each ground floor apartment opens onto a private open space of about 5.4 by 3.2 metres with a garden beyond, and each first floor apartment opens onto a deep covered balcony under the raked ceiling. High window sills and vertical blade walls control overlooking between apartments and to neighbours, and a privacy screen is drawn beside the ground floor terraces.

The roof is a single skillion falling 12 degrees, with a raised element over the lobby falling 15 degrees. It carries a marked photovoltaic panel zone, four skylights over the internal bathrooms and a roof access panel. Two 4,000 litre rainwater tanks collect roof water for the gardens and can be plumbed to toilets and washing machines, and the apartments are all electric with ceiling fans and provision for heat pump hot water.

The complete drawing sequence below covers both site plans, the ground floor, first floor and roof of the base pattern, and the typical short and long sections. Note that this is a Class 2 building under the National Construction Code, not the Class 1a of the semi detached and terrace patterns, which brings extra fire and compliance requirements.

These are the areas published on the pattern drawings. The 2 bedroom apartment is the base plan and the 3 bedroom apartment is formed by extending the building, which is why the longer mixes need a longer lot.

The official design page publishes a rounded floor area of 83 square metres per dwelling and lists bedrooms per dwelling as 1 to 3, while the pattern's own selection options are a 2 bedroom or a 3 bedroom apartment. Treat the drawing figures below as the accurate ones and confirm the area of your chosen mix from the licensed drawings.

The pattern is a fixed design with a defined set of options rather than a starting sketch. What stays fixed: the recessed front entry, the skillion roof at 15 degrees, windows on three sides of every apartment, the covered balconies and outdoor spaces, and the integrated privacy screening of high window sills and blade walls.

What you can choose: the mix of 2 and 3 bedroom apartments across five published combinations, whether the ground floor apartments are built to the gold livability standard, a garage instead of open car parking, level changes for a sloping site, the facade options for glazing, screens and balcony privacy, and one of two material palettes. The apartment above must match the apartment below it, so the mix is chosen in vertical pairs.

The five combinations below set the lot each mix needs, from four 2 bedroom apartments on a 15 by 41.6 metre lot in an LMR housing area up to four 3 bedroom apartments on a 15 by 47 metre lot. Outside LMR housing areas the same combinations need 18 by 46.55 metres up to 18 by 51.95 metres. Every option you select has to be declared in the design verification statement lodged with the application, and you cannot modify an option beyond the published design.

Brick is the primary material, used from the front fence through to the garden walls, with charcoal fibre cement hoods over the windows, a corrugated steel roof, off form or skim coat concrete to the balcony profiles and dark powdercoated frames and railings. There are two neutral palettes: cream, and cream with brown.

The elevations below show where each element lands before the two palette renders show how they read together. Choose the palette that suits the character of your street, and pair it with a site specific landscape plan prepared against the NSW Housing Pattern Book Landscape Design Guide.

Dudils screens lot size and orientation to identify patterns that could work. It does not complete a planning eligibility assessment. Before buying a site, taking an option on it or buying the pattern licence, check the current State and council mapping and get professional advice.

Check the survey contours first. The development standards page of the pattern says the design accommodates internal stairs and adjustments of up to 2.5 metres front to back and 2.1 metres side to side, and the official design page publishes a site gradient front to back of 0 to 2.5 metres. The design overview page of the same document says the site can slope 4 metres front to back or 3.3 metres side to side depending on the site width and depth, and the slope adaptation sheet is dimensioned to 4.06 metres along the site and 3.3 metres across it. Those larger figures include the fall across the driveway and car park, not just the building, so Dudils screens against them. On a site steeper than 2.5 metres front to back or 2.1 metres side to side, your designer has to take up the difference across the driveway and the car park rather than inside the homes. Remember Dudils only screens slope from the national elevation model, which is indicative and not a survey.

The pathway does not work on bush fire prone land, even at the lowest rating of BAL 12.5, or on excluded flood prone land. Heritage items and heritage conservation areas, landslip risk land, registered easements that cross the proposed building area, coastal hazard land, foreshore land and unsewered land also need to be ruled out, and a battle axe lot has no street frontage so the pattern cannot be sited on it.

Two things are specific to this pattern. It is a Class 2 building, so the Design and Building Practitioners scheme applies and the fire, acoustic and certification requirements are heavier than for the semi detached and terrace patterns. And on the sheet for sites outside LMR housing areas, the rear lane examples are drawn on lots of 15 and 16.5 metres wide and 665 and 730 square metres, which are smaller than the 18 metre and 840 square metre development standard for those areas. Confirm which figure applies with your certifier before relying on a smaller lot.

Outside LMR housing areas the lot has to satisfy your council's minimum lot size for this development type as well as the pattern minimum, and the front setback may have to match the average of the two nearest houses. A site north of existing homes can overshadow neighbours to the south, and every pattern book development has to show that adjoining living rooms and private open spaces still get reasonable solar access, so test shadows early.

We recommend asking Good Architect to undertake a site feasibility study before buying the land or the pattern licence. The study can test the planning constraints, the contours and the proposed building envelope before you commit.

Before you commit to this pattern, understand what its building class costs you. A manor house stacks four homes in one building, so under the National Construction Code it is a Class 2 building. A townhouse or terrace, where each home sits on its own patch of ground with nothing above or below it, is Class 1a.

Class 2 buildings carry the rules NSW brought in after the apartment defects of the last decade: registered design and building practitioners, regulated designs declared before construction, fire and acoustic separation between homes, and compulsory insurance. Class 1a carries none of it. The same rules come back every time the building is altered later, so a bathroom renovation in a manor house is a bigger job on paper than the same work in a townhouse. Expect a higher build cost, a longer documentation program and a smaller pool of builders willing to quote.

So if the block also suits a townhouse pattern, we would look there first. On a 15 metre frontage that means Pattern Book Terraces 01 or Pattern Book Row Homes 01, and on a narrower block Pattern Book Semis 01 or Pattern Book Semis 02. You give up a dwelling or two, and you get a much simpler building to deliver, insure and change.

There are good reasons to build one anyway. A manor house puts four homes on a single suburban lot at the scale of a large house, keeps every home single level, and suits a site where four smaller dwellings work better than three larger ones. If that is your site, we can help: Good Architect is a registered design practitioner for Class 2 buildings under the Design and Building Practitioners Act, so we can prepare and declare the regulated designs the pathway requires. Start with a feasibility study and we will compare the manor house against the townhouse patterns on your actual block before you spend anything.

These are the numeric controls specific to this pattern, taken from the official pattern document. They apply where the design is proposed as pattern book complying development under the Codes SEPP.

Using the pattern starts with the NSW Government licence. On 6 August 2026 the official shop listed Pattern Book Manor Homes 01 at $1,000.00, badged as subsidised for the first six months, and it was available to buy. Price and availability can change, so check the shop before you rely on that figure. The licence covers a single site.

The fee buys the technical drawings in PDF and DWG formats, a BASIX information sheet for the pattern, an editable design verification statement template, the pattern book landscape guide and a unique identification number to quote in your application. Files are delivered electronically within five business days and you have 30 days to download them.

You then engage an architect or accredited designer to adapt the drawings to your site and prepare the application. The design verification statement must be completed by an architect on the NSW Register of Architects or by an accredited designer, who must state their professional registration.

The application is lodged as a complying development certificate with a council or a private certifier. The NSW Government has said a pattern book complying development is assessed in 10 days, against 20 days for ordinary residential complying development. The launch announcement and the guidance for low rise pattern book users set out the process.

The pattern drawings are an indicative design for the planning application, not construction documents. You still need construction documentation, engineering, a BASIX certificate and a NatHERS thermal assessment, a survey, a landscape plan and a stormwater design. Because the manor house is a Class 2 building you must also engage a practitioner registered under the Design and Building Practitioners Act scheme, which is an extra cost the low rise Class 1a patterns do not carry.

Before committing to the land, the licence or the application, start with Good Architect's site feasibility study so the pattern can be tested against your block first.