Granny flats and dual occupancy in SEQ: rules by council (2026)

In most of South East Queensland you can add a granny flat — a secondary dwelling — without a development application at all, provided you meet the accepted-development criteria in your council's planning scheme. And where a DA is needed, the odds are good: dual occupancy is code assessable in the standard residential zones of all eight SEQ planning schemes Casa Intelligence indexes, and councils decide these applications relatively quickly — the Sunshine Coast approved 93.6% of 2,900 decided dual occupancy applications at a median of 41 days. Since a 2022 change to the Queensland Planning Regulation, secondary dwellings can also be rented to anyone, not just family. Here is how the rules and the real outcomes differ council by council.

Key facts before you start

Granny flat vs dual occupancy. A secondary dwelling (granny flat) is a smaller, subordinate dwelling sharing a lot with a primary house — one title, one letterbox. Dual occupancy is two full dwellings on one lot — a duplex or two detached houses — and is the pathway that can later support separate titles.

Renting is allowed. Since the Queensland government amended the Planning Regulation in September 2022, a secondary dwelling may be occupied by anyone, including paying tenants unrelated to the household. The old "member of the same household" restriction is gone statewide.

Most granny flats need no DA. Built to the accepted-development criteria — size, siting, setbacks — a secondary dwelling typically needs only building approval, not a planning approval. Exceed the criteria and you fall into assessable development.

Dual occupancy is code assessable across SEQ residential zones. In every one of the eight SEQ schemes we index, dual occupancy is code assessable in the standard residential zones and impact assessable in the Rural zone. No public notification, no submitter appeals — provided your site and design comply.

Approval rates are high but not universal. Casa Intelligence analysis of decided applications categorised or described as dual occupancy: Sunshine Coast 93.6% of 2,900; Logan 91.6% of 997; Moreton Bay 96.3% of 300; Brisbane 91.8% of 184. Past decisions do not guarantee your outcome.

Do you need a development application for a granny flat?

Usually not — and that is the single most useful fact in this topic. Each SEQ planning scheme sets accepted-development criteria for secondary dwellings covering maximum floor area, siting relative to the primary dwelling, setbacks, and site cover. Stay inside them and you go straight to building approval through a private certifier; the planning system never sees you. Step outside them — too big, too separate from the main house, on a constrained lot — and you need a DA assessed against the dwelling and zone codes.

Because compliant granny flats never generate an application record, DA data understates how many are being built. What the applications that do exist show: Casa Intelligence analysis of decided applications mentioning a secondary dwelling found Logan decided 620 (88.2% approved, median 32 days), Moreton Bay 482 (99.2% approved, median 43 days), and the Sunshine Coast 308 (81.8% approved, median 67 days). The Sunshine Coast's lower rate is worth reading correctly: these are disproportionately the non-compliant cases — the ones that needed an application precisely because they exceeded the accepted criteria.

The criteria themselves differ by scheme — floor-area caps in particular vary by council and lot size — so verify your council's current provisions before designing. Getting the size right on paper is the difference between a certifier sign-off and a six-month planning exercise.

The demand is real and geographically lopsided. Counting every application in our dataset that mentions a secondary dwelling, Logan leads SEQ with 645, ahead of Moreton Bay (502) and the Sunshine Coast (318), with the Gold Coast and Ipswich barely registering — a pattern that tracks where larger suburban lots meet rental demand from priced-out Brisbane households.

What does dual occupancy approval look like, council by council?

The structural rule is consistent SEQ-wide: code assessable in the residential zones, impact assessable in the Rural zone, with each scheme's dual occupancy and zone codes governing design. The volumes and speeds differ. All figures are Casa Intelligence analysis of decided applications categorised or described as dual occupancy or duplex; medians are elapsed days, lodgement to decision.

Sunshine Coast. The most active dual-occupancy market in our dataset: 2,900 decided applications, 93.6% approved, median 41 days — with 794 of those decided since January 2023. Minimum parent lot for the dual-occupancy pathway in the Low Density Residential zone is 600m² per our scheme review.

Logan. 997 decided, 91.6% approved, and the fastest median in SEQ at 28 days. Logan is also SEQ's most active secondary-dwelling application market (620 decided). Minimum parent lot 600m² in the Low Density Residential zone.

Moreton Bay. 300 decided, 96.3% approved, median 65 days. Consistently high approval odds at a middling pace; minimum parent lot 600m² in the residential zones.

Brisbane. Lower volume than you might expect — 184 decided, 91.8% approved, median 113 days — largely because Brisbane's planning scheme accepts or code-assesses much small-scale housing without generating contested applications, and because character provisions push the harder cases into longer assessment. Brisbane's Low Density Residential zone supports the dual-occupancy pathway from a 400m² parent lot per our scheme review — the most permissive threshold in SEQ — but Character Residential areas require 600m² and carry demolition controls.

Gold Coast. 448 decided dual occupancy applications with no refusals recorded in our dataset. Treat 100% as an upper bound — legacy Gold Coast records do not reliably capture withdrawals or lodgement dates — but the direction is clear: compliant dual occupancy on the Gold Coast is a well-trodden path. Minimum parent lot 600m² in the Low Density Residential zone.

Ipswich, Redlands and Noosa. Our decided-outcome data is thin for these councils (fewer than 30 clearly classified dual-occupancy outcomes each), so we will not quote approval rates. The scheme structure matches the region — code assessable in residential zones — with Ipswich requiring a 600m² parent lot in Low Density Residential per our review.

Lot-size figures are from Casa Intelligence's review of each scheme's acceptable outcomes and are the standard case, not the exception — precincts, local plans, and overlays modify them. Verify against the current scheme before contracting.

What constraints catch people out?

Four, repeatedly. First, overlays: flood, bushfire, character, and landslide overlays add assessment layers, specialist reports, and sometimes outright siting restrictions — a code assessable use on an overlay-heavy lot can still be a hard application. Second, access and frontage: dual occupancy needs two driveways or a shared access arrangement that satisfies the transport code, and narrow frontages kill more duplex concepts than zoning does. Third, site cover and private open space: two dwellings must each meet the zone code's amenity standards, which is where undersized lots fail even above the minimum area. Fourth, infrastructure charges: a second dwelling is a new demand unit, so councils levy charges on it (less the existing-use credit) — capped by the State at $36,670.70 for a three-plus-bedroom dwelling and $26,193.40 for one-to-two bedrooms (2025–26). Budgeting zero for charges is the most common feasibility error we see on duplex projects; the full picture is in what a development application really costs in SEQ.

What does approval actually cost for a granny flat or duplex?

For a compliant secondary dwelling needing no DA, the approval-side costs are modest: building approval through a private certifier, plus any hydraulic and energy-efficiency documentation — typically a few thousand dollars, dwarfed by construction. Whether a council levies infrastructure charges on a secondary dwelling varies by council and by the dwelling's size, so confirm the current adopted charges resolution before you assume zero.

A dual occupancy DA is a different budget. Expect a town planning report, DA-standard drawings, a survey, and usually a stormwater response — commonly $25,000 to $45,000 of application costs on a clean site — and then infrastructure charges on the net additional dwelling, capped at $36,670.70 for three or more bedrooms (2025–26). Overlays add specialist reports on top. On tight duplex feasibilities the approval stack, not the build cost, is frequently what decides whether the project clears its margin, which is why we recommend pricing it before contracting the site rather than after.

Which council is the easiest place to do this?

On the numbers, Logan is the fastest (28-day median across 997 decided dual-occupancy applications) and among the most active for secondary dwellings, while the Sunshine Coast is the highest-volume dual-occupancy market with strong approval odds (93.6% of 2,900). Moreton Bay pairs the highest measured approval rate (96.3%) with a slower 65-day median. Brisbane offers the lowest lot-size threshold (400m² in Low Density Residential per our scheme review) but the slowest median at 113 days, reflecting its character-housing overlay load.

Read those differences as texture, not as a ranking to shop by. You develop the block you have, in the council it sits in — and within any council, the spread between a clean lot and an overlay-constrained one is bigger than the spread between councils. The council comparison is most useful when you are choosing between candidate sites, which is exactly when suburb- and address-level data earns its keep.

Can you split a dual occupancy into two titles?

Often, yes — and it is the reason dual occupancy is the workhorse of small-scale development. The typical sequence is a material change of use for the dual occupancy, then a reconfiguration (subdivision or building-format plan) to put each dwelling on its own title. Resulting lots via this pathway can be significantly smaller than the standard subdivision minimum — as small as 200 to 300m² in several SEQ schemes per our review. The economics and per-council lot rules are covered in our guide to subdivision across SEQ, and the assessment mechanics in code vs impact assessment in Queensland, explained.

How do you check your own block?

Three questions decide most cases: what zone (and overlays) apply to your lot; whether your lot area and frontage clear the dual-occupancy or secondary-dwelling thresholds; and what comparable applications nearby were approved, conditioned, or refused. A $150 Preliminary Planning Report answers all three for any SEQ address — zoning, overlays, pathway, comparable decided DAs, and the consultant disciplines your site would need — prepared by a qualified development professional (Master of Architecture) and delivered in minutes. You can also explore DA activity by suburb to see how your area behaves.

If the report stacks up and you want to proceed, the $1,999 DA Project service prepares, reviews, and lodges the application with council, coordinating any specialist consultants your site requires.

Caveats

Every figure above is either Casa Intelligence analysis of council application records (sample sizes stated) or a published statutory amount; historical approval rates and medians describe past decisions and do not guarantee any future outcome. Council record-keeping varies — Gold Coast legacy records in particular lack dates and may under-report withdrawals. Scheme provisions, lot-size minimums, and accepted-development criteria change with amendments: verify against your council's current planning scheme before buying, designing, or lodging. This is general information, not legal or financial advice.