Pattern Book Semis 02: the NSW dual occupancy design explained

There are two base versions of the design. Inside a low and mid rise (LMR) housing area the minimum lot is 12 metres wide and 450 square metres. Everywhere else in NSW the minimum lot is 15 metres wide and 650 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.

There is also a wider version for LMR housing areas, called the base pattern plus, which needs a lot at least 13.5 metres wide and 510 square metres. That extra 1.5 metres of width buys wider hallways and a covered car space, which is what lifts the homes to the gold level of the livable housing standard.

The base pattern is drawn on a lot 37.5 metres deep, with each home 4.9 metres wide and 22.35 metres deep: 13.05 metres of two storey building at the front, a 3 metre courtyard in the middle and 6.3 metres of single storey building at the rear. The pattern suits mid block, corner and rear lane lots. On a corner lot the secondary street setback is at least 2 metres, parking moves to the rear and driveways sit at least 6 metres from the intersection. On a rear lane lot parking can come off the lane, which lets the front setback drop to 4.5 metres. All 12 official siting and orientation examples are below, six for LMR housing areas and six for the rest of NSW.

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 above. 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 dual occupancy under this pattern is permitted wherever dual occupancy development 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 smaller 450 square metre base pattern. Every other location uses the 650 square metre base pattern. 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.

Each home enters from the street into a hall that runs the length of the plan. At the front is a room you choose: a flexible room that can be a second living space or a ground floor bedroom with a full bathroom beside it, or an integrated garage. Behind that sits the stair and the laundry, then the kitchen, then the courtyard, and then the dining and living room, which opens through a covered area onto the private rear garden.

The courtyard is the move that makes the plan work. It sits between the kitchen and the living room, so both rooms get a second wall of glass, daylight reaches the middle of the house and air can cross the plan. A skylight over the centre of the upper floor brings light down into the stair and landing and lets hot air purge in summer.

Upstairs the LMR base plan has two bedrooms in each home with a bathroom and a separate WC. Outside LMR housing areas the extra lot width gives three bedrooms per home with an ensuite and a family bathroom, plus a wider kitchen, dining and lounge downstairs.

The roof is a low pitched form at 13 degrees over the two storey front section, with deep sculptural hoods over the windows and doors that shade them from sun and rain. It carries a photovoltaic panel zone and a 2000 litre rainwater tank sits at the rear of each home. Both homes are all electric with ceiling fans, and an allowance is made for a heat pump hot water unit and for an electric vehicle outlet in the garage. The complete drawing sequence below covers the site plan, ground floor, first floor and roof for both base patterns, and the front and rear elevations.

These are the figures published for the base patterns. Both homes have the same width and depth, the options are chosen separately for each of them, and the dual occupancy is suitable for Torrens title subdivision so the two homes can be sold separately.

The official design page publishes 120 square metres per home. The pattern documents also publish base floor space ratios of 0.56:1 in an LMR housing area and 0.47:1 elsewhere, which work out at about 126 square metres per home on the minimum LMR lot and about 153 square metres per home on the wider 650 square metre lot. Treat these as indicative and confirm the areas for your chosen options 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 external materials and the way they are arranged, the stepped street facade and its two colours, the sculptural hoods over the windows, the low pitched roof, the courtyard between the kitchen and living room, and the two storey front and single storey rear.

What you choose, separately for each of the two homes: the front room as an integrated garage or as a flexible room with a bathroom beside it, the upstairs bedroom layout, the upstairs bathroom layout, the kitchen shape, a skylight, and one of four material palettes. Two of the bedroom options are only available on a lot at least 13.5 metres wide, and no more than one of the two homes may have an enclosed garage; the other parks on hardstand.

On a lot at least 13.5 metres wide you can also use the base pattern plus, which widens each home to 5.1 metres, widens the hallways and adds a covered car space so the homes meet the gold level of the livable housing standard. On a lot at least 15 metres wide the kitchen and living rooms get wider again and a third bedroom fits upstairs. Extending the courtyard is possible too, but it makes the building longer, so the site has to grow to suit. 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.

There are four colour palettes: green, terracotta, creamy and grey. Each of the four published material palettes pairs two of them, one per home, so the two houses read as neighbours rather than as one long building. Every palette uses the same construction: a brick base to the ground floor, painted fibre cement sheets above, a prefinished metal roof, anodised aluminium window frames and painted or powdercoated metalwork.

The bricks change with the palette, in either a stretch or a stack bond: off white with the green palette, red with the terracotta palette, cream with the creamy palette and grey with the grey palette. Choose the combination 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 design can absorb a fall of up to 1.4 metres front to back and 1.4 metres side to side using internal level changes, and Dudils screens slope from the national elevation model, which is indicative and not a survey. A steeper site puts the pattern out of reach.

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.

Outside LMR housing areas the lot has to satisfy your council's minimum lot size for a dual occupancy as well as the 650 square metre pattern minimum, and the front setback may have to match the average of the two nearest houses. Every pattern book development also has to show that neighbours keep reasonable solar access as defined in the Low Rise Housing Diversity Design Guide, so a site north of existing homes can overshadow the neighbours to the south and needs shadow diagrams 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.

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 Semis 02 at $1,000.00, marked 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 in the statement.

The application is lodged as a complying development certificate with a council or a private certifier. The pattern document states that an accelerated 10 day approval timeframe applies to pattern book complying development certificates, against 20 days for standard 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, a stormwater design and a driveway crossing approval. Because these homes are Class 1a rather than Class 2, the Design and Building Practitioners scheme does not apply to them the way it does to the manor house pattern.

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.