Subdivision in Brisbane in emerging community zone

Hi guys,

I have just joined your forum looking for some advise. Let me start with saying that I have never invested in property and have never done subdivision myself.
However looking for a house for myself in Brisbane I have found one house on a huge block of land over 4000 sqm.
The house is very old but livable and I believe the owner is asking a reasonable price. It is still over 150-250K over our budget but that big piece of land made us thinking that we can buy it, split the land and sell new blocks leaving just one for us.

We have a bit more than a half in cash and we will need to borrow the remaining balance to purchase it. So me and my wife started thinking about buying it and subdividing it into possibly 4-6 new blocks, selling all of them but one. I have done some research regarding subdivision in Brisbane and found out that this land is in “emerging community” zone and required so called “impact assessment”. That zone name does not give a clue about how easy to subdivide it but based on what I read “impact assessment” is a complex process which may cost much more than subdividing a block in Residential Zone. There is no certainty how small new blocks can be in this zone(I will contact council) and most important how much this subdivision cost. Some people(on the Internet) say it may cost over 100-150K just for subdivision and it will take a few months. However they do not say if it is cost per each new block or just for splitting one big piece of land into small ones.

So my first question, does cost of subdivision apply to each new block or it is just cost of splitting big land?
The other question is, does the council approve subdivision before all infrastructure(driveway, sewage, water, electricity) is built for new blocks or after it? This one I can ask in other words, do we need to be involved and finance all infrastructure building for new blocks or we can just subdivide, get titles for new blocks and sell them as raw blocks?
I know we can make a lot more profit on subdivision, building new houses and selling them as complete packages but that will require a lot of investment, time and involvement in the process. Time and involvement are not a problem but borrowing a lot for building 4-6 houses is a problem.

If it matters the block has about 40m at the front and about 100m deep. It has quite a big slop going down from a street and a lot of big trees at the backyard. Basically it is a small forest at its backyard. I believe this block was even bigger before but was subdivided into this big block and two small blocks at the back(they have access from a different street. Also based on what I can see on Brisbane city plan it seems that some nearby blocks have been subdivided before.

Thank you in advance.
P.S. I am not trying to make a decision based on the information I can get from the internet and I will look for a professional help if we decide to start this project. However before I start calling professionals I would at least like to get some advise on these two questions I have asked above.

• This topic was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by  LMike.