The documents you order, and the question clients ask first
Titles, plans, dealings and historical searches ordered directly — plus a planning answer for the question that arrives before the survey does: how many lots will this land actually give me?
Registry documents
Ordered from the address or the volume and folio. Prices vary by state and are shown on the order page before you commit.
Certificate of Title
from $30Current title showing the registered proprietor and every dealing registered against the land.
Plan of Subdivision
from $20The registered plan — dimensions, easements and the restrictions created with it.
Instrument or dealing
from $20The document behind a covenant, easement or Section 173 agreement referenced on the title.
Historical Title Search
from $45Prior titles for re-establishment work and tracing how a parcel was created.
“How many lots will I get?”
Clients arrive having done the arithmetic themselves: area divided by the minimum. That is not the test, and the correction is worth making before anyone commissions a plan.
Every resulting lot counts, including the balance lot the owner keeps. Creating one additional lot means two lots, so it needs at least twice the minimum. On a 4,000 m² minimum, a 6,081 m² parcel yields nothing at all — comfortably over the minimum, and still not subdividable.
The minimum itself comes from the schedule to the zone, and the schedule overrides the standard default. Where a schedule specifies a single minimum for all land, connection to reticulated sewerage does not reduce it — a common and expensive assumption. It is lot-specific and council-specific, so a figure carried from the last job is a guess.
What the plan doesn’t settle
- A restriction on title. A single-dwelling covenant or a Section 173 agreement prohibits outright what the planning scheme permits, and survives planning approval. The instrument itself is the document worth reading, not the reference to it.
- Overlays. Heritage, bushfire, flooding, significant landscape and vegetation overlays apply to the land regardless of what the zone allows, and can require a permit for work the zone would exempt.
- Garden area on the resulting lots. A mandatory zone control on lots over 400 m² — 25% at 400–500 m², 30% at 501–650 m², 35% above — with no discretion to reduce it. It shapes what each new lot can actually carry.
- Whose land it is. In Victoria a permit application does not require the owner’s consent; where the applicant is not the owner the requirement is to notify them (Planning and Environment Act 1987, s 47). Useful when a client is testing feasibility before settlement.
Order documents, or check the planning first
Titles, plans, dealings and historical searches are ordered from the one page. Where a client’s expectations need testing before you start, the $39 Planning Insight reads the schedule for that lot and gives you a defensible answer to forward on.
General information about the Victorian planning system, not advice on a particular parcel. Minimum lot sizes come from the schedule to the zone and are lot-specific; document prices vary by state and are confirmed on the order page.