About PlotDetect

PlotDetect assembles the planning answer for a NSW property — the rules that apply and the physical facts of the site — for developers, architects, planners, conveyancers and buyers.

The problem

Development Control Plans run to hundreds of pages. Finding the provisions that apply to a specific property means cross-referencing zone maps, heritage registers, and precinct boundaries. Then searching PDFs for keywords that may or may not match council terminology. And the rules are only half the picture — what's actually on the site, and what's being approved around it, live in other systems again.

Property professionals spend hours assembling research that could take minutes with the right tools.

What we built

The front door is the Intelligence Brief: enter an address and get one document covering planning controls, council DCP provisions cited to clause and page, hazards, nearby applications and the site read from satellite imagery — each claim traced to its source.

Behind it sits the workbench — Scout to explore the map, Verify for the exact rules, Validate for approval activity — and packaged reports for specific jobs: the Conveyancer report for pre-exchange due diligence, plus flood, bushfire, solar, granny-flat, overshadowing and development-monitoring reports. Homeowners reach the same engine through canibuildit.com.au.

We started with the most complex inner-Sydney councils and now cover Greater Sydney — from the established inner and north-shore areas to the western growth corridors. The detailed council layer is hand-verified, not scraped, so we deepen it council by council, prioritising where transaction density, property value and planning complexity justify the work.

Company

PlotDetect is based in Sydney. We're a small team focused on making NSW planning data more accessible.