The Feasibility Brief

Most people find out what a property allows after they own it. The zoning turns out to be tighter than the listing suggested. The setback eats the extension. The use they had in mind needs an approval nobody mentioned.

By then the money is committed and the options are whatever’s left.

A feasibility study before you renovate, sign a lease or buy a property helps you understand those restrictions before you commit. I research the site, the planning controls and the approval pathway, and I write down what I find.

The brief helps you see both the limits and the possibilities, so you can decide which ideas are worth pursuing before you invest in design.

You want to know what you can do on your block. How far you can extend, what the controls will and won’t allow, and whether there’s more in the site than the renovation you came in asking about: a duplex, a secondary dwelling, a subdivision.

Better to know that before you plan around an assumption.

You’re looking at a space to lease or buy and you need to know whether your business is a permitted use there, what the landlord’s requirements will actually cost you to meet, and what approvals sit between signing and opening.

Before you commit to a lease, it’s worth checking that the premises can accommodate your business.

• The zoning and the planning controls that apply to your site, at state and council level.
• The planning and title restrictions that affect your site, including setbacks, height and floor space limits, easements, and any applicable heritage, flood or bushfire constraints.
• The approval pathway your project would actually run through, including whether a route like the Housing Pattern Book or the Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy applies to your site.
• The development options the controls permit, including the ones you haven’t asked about.

A written brief. It sets out what the site allows, what it doesn’t, and the realistic next steps in the order they need to be taken.

It’s a document you can hand to someone else: a bank, a business partner, a board, a landlord, a solicitor, or the next architect if that turns out not to be me. That’s the reason it’s written down rather than talked through over coffee.

There’s no meeting and there are no drawings. This is research, delivered as a document.

If you want the research and a long session working through what to do with it, that’s The Decision Session.

If what you need is my eyes on the property rather than my read on the controls, that’s The Site Visit.

• Whether the project you have in mind is permissible, and on what terms.
• Which approval pathway you’re dealing with, what it asks of you, and whether a faster or newer route is open to you.
• The constraints that will shape the design before a designer touches it.
• Whether the opportunity you’re paying for is the one that’s actually in the site.

$1,500 + GST.

That covers the research and the written brief.

The fee isn’t credited towards later work. You’re paying for a written brief you can use whether you continue with me or take it to another adviser.

It’s worth paying for when there’s a real decision in front of you and a date attached to it.  A settlement, a lease, a renovation in your plans or a builder waiting on a brief.

It isn’t worth paying for while you’re still browsing.

If you have a property decision to make, book a Clarity Call and we’ll work out whether the Brief is the right next step.