The Districts property due diligence method

Every property page runs the same ten checks, in the same order. The fixed list stops the research being shaped by the listing.

1. Development optionality of this lot. What the zone, overlays and parcel shape suggest about dual occupancy or subdivision: a screen, not an approval.
2. Nearby development pipeline. Development applications recorded within walking distance, grouped into projects, with status and distance.
3. Honest achievable rent. What the advertised rent, comparable listings and suburb aggregates actually support, labelled by source.
4. Rental supply pressure. How many comparable rentals are competing nearby and what the pipeline adds to that competition.
5. Price explanation. Whether constraints on the lot help explain why the ask sits where it does relative to land size.
6. Lot-level flood. Whether a mapped flood overlay intersects the official parcel, and what share of the lot it touches.
7. Catalyst exposure. Whether funded infrastructure catchments have been loaded for this location. Often unknown today.
8. This lot's DA history. Development applications recorded against this parcel itself, separate from what is happening nearby.
9. Statutory land value versus ask. How the official land valuation compares with the asking price, where a state series has been loaded.
10. Net yield / holding costs. Gross yield adjusted for the costs of holding, only where those inputs exist for the jurisdiction.

Each slot is marked on the ten-check sheet. This page names the stack. That page is the sheet.

Source data is quoted from a named record with its date. A Districts calculation is arithmetic on source data with the inputs shown. A Districts-derived indicator is an interpretation under stated rules. When none of those can be produced, the figure is unknown, with the reason, and it stays unknown. See facts, calculations and unknown.

Listing land size sits beside officialParcelArea. Listing flood or heritage mentions stay listing observations, separate from the official overlay. Advertised rent stays advertised. Where a listing source publishes an estimate range, it is shown as that source’s figure, not as a Districts figure. The separation is the test.

Planning, hazard and valuation data is held by states, territories and councils. A development application in one state is a planning permit in another. Districts loads what each jurisdiction makes available, lists it on coverage, and lets checks stay unknown where the source does not exist. The research coverage count reflects that ceiling, not the lot. See why coverage is not a score.

These mistakes treat the method as a rating.

• Reading research coverage as a property score.
• Giving a derived indicator the same weight as source data.
• Reading unknown as clean.
• Taking a listing source’s estimate range as a Districts figure.
• Expecting the method to conclude.

It cannot see the building, the contract, the strata records or your finances. It cannot know a council decision before the register records it. Where a state or territory publishes no property-level register, land-value series or hazard layer, those checks stay unknown for every lot there. That is a limit of the evidence.

If you need the order of research steps, open the research-property guide. If you need to mark pass, fail and unknown, open the ten-check sheet. If you need what the product refuses, open what Districts does not do. This page is only the stack.