A corridor method gets you to the right few streets. These seven checks decide the individual block, and every one of them resolves to a public record you can pull yourself.
Request your free 15 minute strategy call →
By the Chase Wealth Australia advisory team.
A corridor method gets you to the right few streets. It cannot tell you one thing about the block you actually buy, and the block is the thing you own.
The nine signals Chase Wealth Australia publishes name seven things they deliberately do not cover: flood overlays, character and heritage zoning, the exact block, orientation, easements, the builder, and the contract. These are those seven, in that order, and the provenance is one click away on the nine signals page itself.
This is written to be run by the buyer. Every check below resolves to a public register, a document you can request, or a professional you are already paying. Take it to your conveyancer, your inspector and your broker, and hold whoever brings you a property to it.
Corridor risk is priced by the market. Property level risk is not, because it is discovered by whoever bothers to look, and it stays with whoever did not.
Two houses can sell in the same street in the same week off identical suburb data. One sits under a flood overlay that crosses the part of the block you would have built on. The other does not. No suburb level method separates them, because no suburb level method is looking at either block.
That is the argument for publishing this list rather than describing it. Anyone presenting a suburb level method as a complete buying process is skipping the half where the money is actually lost.
What it is. A layer on the council planning scheme recording that the land is exposed to flood, bushfire, storm tide, landslip or coastal erosion, which changes what you are allowed to build and what it costs to insure for as long as you own it.
Where you check it. The council’s online property or planning report, which most councils publish free for any address, read alongside the state planning and hazard mapping portal. Then get an insurance quote on that exact address before you go unconditional.
What a bad answer looks like. The overlay crosses the part of the block you intended to build on, so the slab has to be lifted and the site works re-costed, and the premium re-prices your holding cost every year you own it.
The qualifier. Reading “not affected” is the easy version. The real version reads which overlay, at what level, over which part of the block, because an overlay clipping a rear corner and one sitting across the buildable envelope return the same tick and describe two different properties. A block outside the mapped line can still be uninsurable at a sane price, because the map records the modelled event and the insurer prices the claims history of the street.
What it is. A planning control protecting the appearance or era of a building or a streetscape, which limits or removes your right to demolish, raise, extend or substantially alter what already stands on the land.
Where you check it. Three separate layers, all free: the overlay layer on the council planning scheme for that address, covering character residential, neighbourhood character, demolition control and design and development; the local heritage schedule inside the same council planning instrument; and the state heritage register for the state the property sits in.
What a bad answer looks like. You buy a tired old house intending to take it down or open up the rear, then find a demolition control requires the front of the dwelling to stay, so what you paid for was a plan you are not permitted to execute.
The qualifier. State listing is the rarest of the three layers and the only one most buyers think to look for. Most of the binding restriction in Australian cities sits in local character and demolition control overlays that blanket entire streets of otherwise unremarkable houses. Ask what the overlay permits, not whether the address appears on a list.
What it is. The physical facts of that specific parcel: registered area, frontage width, shape, fall from front to rear, soil, and where the buildable envelope sits once setbacks are applied.
Where you check it. The title search and the registered plan from the state land titles registry, which give you the legal dimensions rather than the marketing ones. The as constructed drainage plans from council or the water authority show whether water and sewer are already connected. If you intend to build, add a contour or survey plan for the fall and a soil classification from a geotechnical tester.
What a bad answer looks like. The block falls steeply from street to rear boundary, and every metre of that fall adds thousands of dollars of site works to a build budget you have already signed and financed.
The qualifier. Area is the least useful number on the listing. The same area on a wide frontage and the same area up a battleaxe handle are two different assets, because frontage, fall and shape decide what you can put on the land while area alone decides what fits in an advertisement.
What it is. Which way the living areas and the outdoor space face, which sets how much sun the house takes across the day and across the seasons.
Where you check it. The north point on the registered plan or the plan attached to the contract, not the north arrow on an agent’s floor plan, which is frequently absent or wrong. Confirm it against a satellite view and read it together with the floor plan.
What a bad answer looks like. The living area and the rear yard face west, the house is unusable from mid afternoon through the hot months, and it rents and resells behind an otherwise identical house one street over.
The qualifier. The orientation that pays you is the orientation of the living space and the outdoor area, not the street frontage. A north facing front on a south facing rear yard passes the lazy version of this check and fails the real one. It costs nothing and takes under a minute, which is why it should never be the one you skip.
What it is. Rights other parties hold over your land: a sewer, water or stormwater line running under it, a right of way across it, a utility’s access rights, a covenant restricting what you can build, or a caveat sitting on the title.
Where you check it. The title search and registered plan from the state land titles registry list the registered interests. A free enquiry with Before You Dig Australia returns the underground asset plans from every network operator in the area. Council or the water authority holds the as constructed sewer and drainage plans.
What a bad answer looks like. A sewer main runs through the middle of the block instead of down the boundary, so any extension or second dwelling has to bridge it, win approval to build over it, or pay to relocate it, and the redevelopment you paid a premium for stops being viable.
The qualifier. Almost every established block has services under it somewhere, so a yes or no answer tells you nothing. An easement along the fence line is a non event. An easement across the build pad is a different property at a different price. Read the plan, not the answer.
What it is. Two questions that get collapsed into one: whether the person doing the work holds a current licence for that class and value of work, and whether the company whose name sits on your contract is a solvent trading entity with something behind it.
Where you check it. The state builder licensing register for the state the work is in, searched on the licence number rather than the trading name. The ASIC company register for the entity on the contract, to confirm the ACN belongs to the licensed entity, see the directors, and see whether the company is under external administration. Then the state home warranty or domestic building insurance scheme, which tells you whether the job is covered and to what cap.
What a bad answer looks like. The licence and the reputation belong to one entity and the contract is signed with a newer company holding no assets, so when the job stops at lock up your claim is against a shell, and the warranty scheme rather than the builder decides how much of your money comes back.
The qualifier. Confirming a licence exists is not the check. The check is that the licence and the contract name the same entity, that the licence class and financial category cover a contract of that value, and that the directors do not sit behind a string of companies already wound up. A licence proves someone was assessed at a point in time. It does not prove the company you are paying is solvent this week.
What it is. The document that decides what you are buying, on what terms, what gets you out, and what you have to settle on regardless of what you find afterwards.
Where you check it. A solicitor or licensed conveyancer acting for you and only for you, reading the full contract and the vendor disclosure document required in that state, before you sign anything, including anything an agent describes as just an offer.
What a bad answer looks like. You sign the agent’s offer link on a Saturday, every trigger date starts running from that signature, and a standard building and pest condition leaves the vendor to decide whether a finding is significant, so a defect written up as minor still costs five figures to rectify and you settle and pay for it.
The qualifier. Having the contract reviewed after you sign is a different product from having it drafted before you sign, and only one of them can still change the outcome. The risk lives on the special conditions page, and the standard form is written for the vendor, so the value is in what gets drafted in on your side while everything is still negotiable.
Order them by what it costs to find out, divided by what it costs to be wrong.
Overlays, zoning, orientation and the registered plan are free, fast and disqualifying, so they come first and eliminate most candidates before you have spent a dollar or given an agent your name. Easements and service plans come next, because they cost tens of dollars and answer the one question that decides whether the plan you paid a premium for is legal. Then the contract, and the contract is not the finish line: your signature converts every remaining check from something you can take your time over into something with a deadline and a penalty attached. The builder and the physical condition of the block come last, not because they matter least, but because they are the only ones that cost real money to answer.
Reading any of the seven in isolation is how the expensive mistakes happen:
These are checks, not the professionals who answer them. Two of the seven have an answer that properly belongs to someone carrying professional indemnity, and both belong to the same person: your solicitor or licensed conveyancer owns the effect of a registered easement, covenant or caveat, because that is a legal opinion on what the title permits rather than a reading of a map, and they own the contract entirely. Never use a firm acting for both parties.
Two more professionals sit alongside the seven rather than inside them, and both come with a limit worth stating. A building and pest inspector owns the condition of what is standing on the block, and that inspection is non invasive: they cannot open walls to chase a reading, and the report is not a guarantee. A lender’s valuer is not a check you commission at all, it is the check run on you, and their number is what decides whether the deposit you budgeted is still enough at settlement. Where a council report is ambiguous about what an overlay actually permits, that question goes to a town planner.
This is the buyer’s method, not an account of anyone’s file. Chase Wealth Australia publishes it because a shortlist that cannot survive these seven is not worth handing over, and because the solicitor, inspector and broker you already trust should have a written standard to check it against rather than a conversation to remember.
Checks 1, 2, 4 and the plan reading half of 3 are free and take about twenty minutes, so run them before you contact an agent. Check 5 costs tens of dollars and is worth it only on a property you would actually buy. Check 6 is free and only applies if something is being built. Check 7 is a few hundred dollars and has to happen before you sign anything, including an offer. The physical inspection of the block comes last, because it is the only part that costs real money.
Three handoffs decide how much of this you actually get value from. Give your solicitor or conveyancer a written statement of what you intend to do with the property, because that is what the special conditions get drafted against and it is the thing buyers omit. Give your broker the address early rather than just your borrowing figure, because the security has to satisfy the lender as well as the borrower. Send the building and pest report to a property manager as well as reading it yourself, because they will tell you what is legally required to make it rentable and what will lift the rent, which the inspector will not.
Record which source and which date every answer came from. The registers update on their own clocks and they do not always agree, so an answer without a source and a date is not one you can rely on later.
Running all seven properly on one property costs hundreds, not thousands. Cost is not why buyers skip them. They get skipped because the free checks have to happen before the emotional commitment, and the contract review has to happen before a signature that feels like a formality.
Five of the seven are desktop checks that work identically from anywhere: overlays, character and heritage, orientation, easements, and the licensing and company registers do not care where you are sitting. What does not travel is the street. Interstate buyers are the group that most often ends up on a main road, backing a school, a cemetery or a sports precinct, because nobody drove it. If you cannot drive the street yourself, that job gets delegated to someone who will. It does not get skipped.
Length is normal, because the report is written defensively to protect the inspector. Skim it, then ring them and ask the three questions the document will not answer: what would worry you if you were buying it, what needs doing immediately, and roughly what does that cost. Send the same report to a property manager for the rentability answer. Walking away costs you the inspection fee, which is the cheapest exit available at any point in the process.
It is a skim, and the risk in a contract does not sit where a skim will find it. The real distinction is not free against paid, it is a review of something you have already signed against a drafting job done before you sign, and only one of those can still change the outcome. Engage someone acting only for you, and engage them before you make an offer.
Usually yes. The link an agent sends to submit an offer is very often a fully marked up contract of sale, and the moment your signature lands, every critical date inside it activates. Cooling off is narrower than most buyers assume: it varies by state, it carries a penalty calculated on the purchase price, and there is none at auction or in the days either side of one.
They are the seven property level items named in the nine signals method, which is the corridor selection method Chase Wealth Australia publishes in full and ungated. That page states plainly that it is a corridor method and not a property inspection, and it names what it leaves to this stage. These are the seven property checks Chase Wealth Australia publishes alongside the nine signals, so the two halves can be read together and checked against each other.
The seven tell you whether a property survives scrutiny. What they cannot tell you is whether it fits your position, because borrowing capacity, structure and timeline decide which properties are available to you at all.
Request a strategy call with Chase Wealth Australia. Fifteen minutes by phone, you leave with a written plan, and you keep these checks either way. The call tells you where you stand, not what to do.
