Development Applications in Riverstone, NSW

Development activity in Riverstone

Look, if you’ve been working the residential building scene in Riverstone as long as I have, you’ll know it’s a suburb that’s been chewing through change faster than a bobcat on a wet clay pad. The old Riverstone — the one with the meatworks and the pub on the corner — is still there underneath, but you’re seeing more fresh concrete than you are heritage brick these days. The housing stock is a real mixed bag. You’ve got your Federation-era weatherboard cottages from when this was a proper country town, then a scattering of mid-century brick veneers, and now these massive new estates pushing out toward Schofields and Box Hill. The streets around the town centre still have that old rural feel, but drive five minutes north and you’re in a sea of colourbond roofs and render. That’s the Riverstone builders are dealing with right now.

The local council has a pretty straightforward approach to DAs, but don’t mistake that for fast. Right now there are about seven development applications lodged in the suburb, which sounds low for an area that’s growing this hard, but that’s because most of the heavy lifting is being done through precinct plans and complying development. If you’re doing a knockdown-rebuild on a standard R2 lot, you’ll get through quicker with a CDC than a DA every time. The council’s turnaround on a full DA is sitting around four to six months for a straightforward job, longer if there’s a tree retention condition or a flood overlay. And there are flood overlays in parts of Riverstone, especially closer to Eastern Creek. Don’t get caught out. The council also has a thing about driveway gradients and stormwater detention. Every second condition I see is about overland flow paths. Know your site before you lodge.

The most active project types in Riverstone right now are new home construction, duplex and dual-occupancy builds, and what the stats call “other” — which usually means granny flats or secondary dwellings. That makes sense when you look at who the clients are. You’ve got young families moving out from the inner west and Parramatta, chasing a four-bedder on a 400 square metre lot for under a million. They want open plan, a butler’s pantry, and enough room for a trampoline. Then you’ve got the upsizers — locals who grew up here and are knocking down the old fibro shack their parents built in the seventies to put up a double-storey brick home with a pool. And you’ve got investors, buying up the duplex sites near the train station. The train line extension to Tallawong has changed everything. A block that was worth $600,000 five years back is now pushing $900,000 if it’s dual-occupancy zoned.

Duplex and dual-occupancy builds are where the real action is. Riverstone has a lot of R3 medium density zoning creeping in along the main roads and near the town centre. Builders who know how to work a battle-axe block or a rear lane access are cleaning up. The typical client there is a mum-and-dad investor who wants one side to live in and one to rent, or a developer flipping both. The margins are tighter than they were two years ago because material costs have gone stupid, but the demand is still there. The council’s minimum lot size for a dual-occupancy is usually 600 square metres, but check the DCP because it varies by street. And they’ll want two car spaces per dwelling, which can be a headache on a narrow frontage.

The new home construction side is all about slab-on-ground, single or double storey, with a lot of Hamptons-style facades and grey roof sheeting. Nobody’s doing pitched tile roofs out here anymore. It’s all Colorbond in Monument or Surfmist. The soil classification is mostly M to H, reactive clay, so you’re speccing a waffle pod slab with a bit of extra steel. The tradies are hard to get — framers and chippies are booked out three months in advance — and you’ll be paying a premium for a decent concreter. But the work keeps coming. Riverstone’s population has jumped over 30% in the