Pattern Book Small Lot Apartments 03: plans, lot sizes and apartment yield

This is a pattern for an ordinary suburban infill block with one primary street frontage. The official development standards say it can only be used on a mid block site and is not adaptable to corner lots, and battle axe lots are excluded. The smallest block that works is 16 metres wide and 40 metres deep, which is 640 square metres.

The pattern is built on a bay grid, so lot width is answered in two steps rather than continuously. A two bay plan suits lots 16 to 16.8 metres wide and a three bay plan suits lots 19.8 to 21 metres wide. Lot width is measured at the front of the building line. Length runs from 40 metres up to 65 metres, and the base pattern can also stretch from 40 to 45 metres without adding a module.

The eight cards below are the official adaptability sheets: both plan widths at 40, 50, 57 and 65 metres of site length, from 640 square metres up to 1,287 square metres. Each card reports the yield, car parking and gross floor area the sheet gives for that complete building. The three largest conditions all reach 24 apartments because that is the maximum the development standards allow, not because the site ran out of room.

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, and check State and council mapping to confirm the land is not flood prone or bush fire prone. Even the lowest bush fire rating of BAL 12.5 is not compliant. Heritage items and conservation areas, landslip risk land, land affected by a registered easement, coastal hazard land, foreshore land, unsewered land and battle axe blocks do not comply either.

The mid rise patterns only apply in the areas the NSW Government has opened up for more homes: low and mid rise (LMR) housing areas under section 163 of the Housing SEPP, and transport oriented development (TOD) housing areas under Chapter 5 of the same policy, where a residential flat building is permitted with consent. You can look these areas up on the NSW Planning Portal map, or type your address above and the lot finder checks them for you.

The policy does not apply to land it identifies as unsuitable. That includes bush fire prone land, certain high risk flood prone land, State heritage items, local heritage items and heritage conservation areas. The full list of exclusions sits in Chapter 7 of the Housing SEPP.

Where the pattern does apply, its development standards and location requirements prevail over inconsistent controls in another environmental planning instrument or a development control plan, so the lot size, height and setback numbers on this page hold even where a council plan says otherwise. Landscape still has to respond to the NSW Housing Pattern Book Landscape design guide, including tree canopy.

On the base pattern lot of 19.8 by 40 metres, which is 792 square metres, the building is six storeys and holds 17 homes: 3 studios, 4 one bedroom, 4 two bedroom, 5 three bedroom and 1 four bedroom apartment. Floor to floor height is 3.25 metres and gross floor area is 1,794 square metres, a floor space ratio of 2.27 to 1.

Two apartment modules sit either side of a central lift and stair core. The flexi space, a flexible communal room, sits beside the core on every level and opens onto the rooftop at the top of the building. Because one and two storey apartments are stacked together, a single level can hold the lower half of one two storey home and the upper half of another, which is why the plans below look different from floor to floor.

The basement holds parking for 5 cars, 1 motorcycle and 20 bicycles with EV charging, resident storage, the rainwater and cold water tanks, the electrical switch room and the fire tank and pump rooms. The ground floor has the residential lobby, the garbage and bulky waste rooms, a communal garden and three apartments with private gardens. The sixth floor plan is the communal rooftop level, and the roof carries two indicative arrays of 17 solar panels.

These are the internal areas from the official apartment type sheets, with ceilings of at least 2.7 metres in habitable rooms. Every apartment has a balcony or a private garden at ground level, and every apartment meets the ABCB Livable Housing Design Standard. Four types, the studio type 1, the two bedroom type 1, the three bedroom type 3 and the four bedroom type 1, can also be adapted to the Australian Standard for adaptable housing, AS4299, for residents who want to age in place.

The pattern is a kit with rules, not a single fixed building. What you can change: the number of bays across the frontage, the module length along the site, four or six storeys, basement or on grade parking, the unit mix within the published module layouts, mirroring, and which of the three material palettes you use. Bay width itself can grow by up to 400 millimetres per bay in Module A.

Orientation is handled by rotating and mirroring the whole plan. The base pattern is drawn for a western street frontage; it rotates clockwise for a northern frontage, rotates anti clockwise and mirrors for a southern frontage, and mirrors for an eastern frontage, always so the flexi space and the lift and stair core face the aspect that keeps sun in the apartments. Irregular lots can be used, other than battle axe lots, as long as the minimum setbacks are still met.

The five combinations below are the official base pattern adaptations on the 19.8 by 40 metre lot. They show how much the yield moves with storeys, parking and the chosen mix, which is why a bare apartment count is never the whole story on this pattern.

Three external palettes are published, and they share a common base: white concrete blockwork, off form and precast concrete, semi transparent glass block at the core, textured render soffits, prefinished galvanised steel framing to the facade, anodised aluminium windows, powder coated solar hoods and balustrades, and a stainless steel cable mesh at the flexi space.

What changes between the palettes is the main wall and floor finish, the interior tiling of the flexible rooms and the soffit colour. Substitutions still have to hold the intended colour, profile and finish relationships set out in the material and finishes schedule, and any change must be declared in the design verification statement.

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 current State and council mapping, the title and a current survey, and get professional advice.

The pattern does not comply on bush fire prone land, even at the lowest rating of BAL 12.5, or on excluded flood prone land. State and local heritage items, heritage conservation areas, landslip risk land, registered easements that cross the proposed building area, coastal hazard land, foreshore land, unsewered land and battle axe blocks all need to be ruled out separately.

Check the contours from a survey, not from a map. The pattern only carries 2.25 metres of rise from the street to the rear, or 0.65 metres of fall, and Dudils screens slope from the national elevation model, which is indicative and not a survey. Also check where the sewer runs, because a six storey building with a basement sits hard against services and easements, and confirm the driveway crossing is clear of street trees, poles and bus stops.

Overshadowing is the constraint that most often shortens a building like this. Neighbouring sites must keep at least 3 hours of sun to half their private open space between 9am and 3pm on 21 June, evidenced with shadow diagrams. A block sitting north of existing houses can easily push past that, so the workable storey count may be lower than six. We recommend asking Good Architect to undertake a site feasibility study before buying the land, taking an option or purchasing the licence, so the constraints, the shadows and the likely yield can be tested together.

These are the numeric controls specific to this pattern. They sit in Chapter 7 of the Housing SEPP and prevail over inconsistent local controls where the pattern applies.

The design data lists the standard licence as licence from $15,000 per lot. On 6 August 2026 the official shop showed a subsidised price of $1,500 against the regular $15,000, described as subsidised for the first 6 months, and the listing was marked sold out. Price and availability change, so check the shop before you plan around a number.

The licence buys the technical drawings in PDF and DWG formats, technical guidance, an editable design verification statement template, the landscape guide and a unique identification number for your application. We recommend a feasibility study before buying the site or the licence, so you know the pattern works on the block first.

You then engage a design team to adapt the drawings to the site. The design verification statement must be completed by an architect registered by the NSW Architects Registration Board, so on the NSW Register of Architects, confirming every fixed and adaptable feature of the pattern is carried into the application. Every change, even one inside the allowed range, has to be declared in that statement.

Reduced assessment removes the slow parts of a normal apartment development application because the design questions are already answered: no reassessment against the Apartment Design Guide or the Schedule 9 design quality principles, and fewer requests for further information. Every application still has to demonstrate BASIX and NatHERS compliance, and every apartment meets the ABCB Livable Housing Design Standard.

The pattern drawings are indicative designs for a planning application and are not construction drawings. After consent you still need full documentation capable of National Construction Code compliance, engineers, and for a Class 2 building a practitioner registered under the Design and Building Practitioners Act.