---
title: Every Development Application in Brisbane, Ranked by Suburb: 8,751 DAs Mapped
date: 2026-07-27
canonical: https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/blog/brisbane-development-applications-by-suburb
section: Development & due diligence
---

# Every Development Application in Brisbane, Ranked by Suburb: 8,751 DAs Mapped

Published 2026-07-27 · [propertyxray.com.au](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/blog/brisbane-development-applications-by-suburb)

> Brisbane City Council received 8,751 development applications in the 12 months to 24 July 2026. I counted every one and ranked the suburbs three ways: raw count, primary applications only, and per square kilometre. Rochedale is first. The CBD is fourth. And the suburb with the most applications per square kilometre never makes the raw top thirty at all. Then which suburbs are getting knockdown rebuilds, and which are getting their blocks subdivided. Barely the same suburbs.

Brisbane City Council received 8,751 development applications in the 12 months to 24 July 2026. The suburb with the most of them was Rochedale, on 153, out on Brisbane's south-eastern edge where paddocks are turning into estates. Coorparoo is second on 141, Wynnum third on 131. The CBD came fourth.

The bigger surprise is whats underneath the top three. Ashgrove and Bardon, for two. Not new suburbs, pre-war ones, where somebody buys a tired timber house on a good block and the house does not survive the year.

A Carina local described the pattern on his own street better than I can: post-war houses getting knocked down, split and rebuilt. The register says his street is not unusual. Carina lodged 77 applications in the twelve months and another 37 next door in Carina Heights, and that is not even enough to make the top thirty.

The 8,751 are spread across 187 suburbs, up from 7,714 in the twelve months before that, roughly 13% more. Three of them sit on coordinates that fall outside every suburb boundary, so they are counted in every total on this page but belong to no suburb row, which is why the CSV sums to 8,748.

There are three rankings in this post rather than one, because there are three defensible ways to count this and they disagree with each other. Raw count first. Then primary applications only, which knocks Brisbane City from fourth all the way down to twelfth. Then applications per square kilometre, which drops Rochedale from first to 83rd and hands top spot to a suburb that never made the raw top thirty at all.

![Development application map of Coorparoo in Brisbane, an aerial view with the suburb boundary outlined in gold and dozens of orange pins marking individual applications lodged in the last 12 months, clustered along the suburb's residential streets.](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/images/coorparoo-da-map-hero.jpg)

*Coorparoo, second on the list with 141 applications. Every pin is one lodged development application. Suburb page map, propertyxray.com.au.*

## The leaderboard: 30 Brisbane suburbs with the most development applications

This is every application lodged with Brisbane City Council between 28 July 2025 and 24 July 2026, matched to a suburb by the application's actual map coordinates rather than by whatever got typed into the address field. Every category is in here, from a new house down to a retaining wall.

| Rank | Suburb | DAs (12mo) | Per sq km |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Rochedale | 153 | 10.0 |
| 2 | Coorparoo | 141 | 26.5 |
| 3 | Wynnum | 131 | 21.3 |
| =4 | Brisbane City | 125 | 60.7 |
| =4 | Camp Hill | 125 | 26.4 |
| 6 | Ashgrove | 120 | 20.6 |
| 7 | Bardon | 117 | 23.5 |
| 8 | Bridgeman Downs | 114 | 12.1 |
| 9 | Morningside | 113 | 21.9 |
| 10 | Paddington | 112 | 45.5 |
| 11 | New Farm | 110 | 53.4 |
| 12 | Toowong | 107 | 26.3 |
| 13 | Clayfield | 103 | 36.8 |
| 14 | Mitchelton | 101 | 23.5 |
| =15 | West End | 99 | 51.4 |
| =15 | Hamilton | 99 | 38.7 |
| =15 | Bulimba | 99 | 46.5 |
| 18 | Bracken Ridge | 96 | 11.8 |
| 19 | South Brisbane | 95 | 47.4 |
| 20 | Tarragindi | 90 | 19.8 |
| =21 | Brighton | 89 | 13.7 |
| =21 | Salisbury | 89 | 19.5 |
| =23 | Tingalpa | 87 | 9.4 |
| =23 | Kedron | 87 | 24.0 |
| 25 | Annerley | 85 | 29.6 |
| 26 | Ascot | 84 | 30.0 |
| 27 | Norman Park | 83 | 37.7 |
| =28 | The Gap | 82 | 6.6 |
| =28 | Indooroopilly | 82 | 11.9 |
| =28 | Wavell Heights | 82 | 20.0 |

*Development applications lodged with Brisbane City Council by suburb, 28 July 2025 to 24 July 2026. All categories included. Ranks marked with an equals sign are genuine ties. The full 187-suburb table is in the CSV.*

[Download CSV](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/data/bcc-da-by-suburb-2026-07.csv) (released under CC BY 4.0).

> How to cite this table: Property X-Ray, "Every Development Application in Brisbane, Ranked by Suburb", 27 July 2026. Data released under CC BY 4.0. Permalink: propertyxray.com.au/qld/blog/brisbane-development-applications-by-suburb#bcc-da-by-suburb-2026-07

[Rochedale](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/rochedale-4123) is a completely different animal to everything under it. Thats greenfield land turning into estates, big lots becoming many small ones, roads getting cut. Everything from second place down is the old Queenslander belt being rebuilt one block at a time.

[Coorparoo](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/coorparoo-4151), [Camp Hill](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/camp-hill-4152), [Ashgrove](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/ashgrove-4060), [Bardon](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/bardon-4065), [Morningside](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/morningside-4170), [Paddington](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/paddington-4064). Six of the top ten are pre-war suburbs, the timber-and-tin ones carrying character overlays over half their streets. Almost none of what gets lodged there is expansion. Its replacement.

The CBD placing fourth is the one I keep coming back to. In a city of well over a million people, the central business district is not where the most planning applications get lodged. [Bridgeman Downs](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/bridgeman-downs-4035), a suburb plenty of Brisbane people would struggle to point to on a map, is eighth.

The twenties are worth reading rather than skipping, because thats where the raw count starts to mislead. [The Gap](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/the-gap-4061) sits on 82 applications and [Tingalpa](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/tingalpa-4173) on 87, and both of them run under ten applications per square kilometre, because both are big suburbs way out on the edge. [Norman Park](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/norman-park-4170) is on 83, one more than The Gap, off 2.2 square kilometres. Nearly six times the intensity off one extra application. [Kedron](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/kedron-4031) and [Annerley](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/annerley-4103) land in between.

[Salisbury](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/salisbury-4107) and [Brighton](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/brighton-4017) are in there too, tied on 89, and [Ascot](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/ascot-4007) is 26th. All three come up again further down for their own reasons. None of them would have made a top twenty, which is the argument for running the table to thirty.

Two questions decide whether a count like this means anything, and both of them change the answer. I put the raw count on r/brisbane before writing any of this, on purpose, so people who live in these suburbs or work in planning could pull it apart before it turned into an article. They did. Thats why there are two more rankings below this one instead of just the leaderboard.

## One project can lodge three applications. Heres primary applications only

One project does not equal one application, and a town planner spelled out why. A material change of use for a townhouse block can spawn an operational works application, then a compliance assessment, sometimes a separate demolition approval. Three records, one building site. Count the records and what you have counted is the paperwork.

So I stripped it back to primary applications only. Out went compliance assessments, operational works and earthworks, design and siting variations, and plan sealings, which are just the closing paperwork on a subdivision that got approved earlier. What is left is 5,608 applications that each represent a real decision about what gets built.

| Rank | Suburb | Primary DAs | Raw rank |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Rochedale | 106 | 1 |
| 2 | Wynnum | 99 | 3 |
| =3 | Camp Hill | 83 | 4 |
| =3 | Bardon | 83 | 7 |
| =3 | Coorparoo | 83 | 2 |
| =3 | Paddington | 83 | 10 |
| 7 | Clayfield | 80 | 13 |
| 8 | Morningside | 79 | 9 |
| 9 | New Farm | 78 | 11 |
| 10 | Norman Park | 76 | 27 |
| 11 | Ashgrove | 75 | 6 |
| 12 | Brisbane City | 73 | 4 |

*The same 12 months counting primary applications only: compliance assessments, operational works and earthworks, design and siting variations and plan sealings all removed. 5,608 applications remain of the original 8,751.*

Two things happen when you do that.

Brisbane City falls from fourth to twelfth. Thats the tell. A big share of what gets lodged in the CBD is process rather than new buildings, because a dense inner-city site generates a lot of assessment steps per project.

And the character suburbs get stronger, not weaker. Camp Hill, Bardon, Coorparoo and Paddington all land on exactly 83, tied. If the paperwork theory had been the whole story those suburbs should have deflated. They didnt. Norman Park comes from nowhere, 27th on raw count and 10th here.

One honesty note on that table. There is more than one defensible way to define "primary". Tighten it further, to only the three formal decision streams (material change of use, reconfiguring a lot, and building work), and the order reshuffles, Paddington and Clayfield move up. But nine of the same ten suburbs are still there. The ranking is not an artefact of where I drew the line.

## Applications per square kilometre, because big suburbs have more dirt

The other question is about land. Rochedale is 15.37 square kilometres. Teneriffe is 0.64. Of course the big one lodges more applications, it has 24 times as much ground to lodge them on. A reader turned up with that homework already done, having divided the suburbs on my list by their own areas, and on his figures Rochedale slid from first to last.

He could only do that for the suburbs he could see, which was the top of my list. So here is the same twelve months divided by suburb area for all of them, using ABS boundaries. I put a floor of 40 applications on it, because otherwise a tiny suburb with nine DAs and no land looks like Manhattan. That leaves 104 suburbs in the running.

| Rank | Suburb | DAs | Area (sq km) | Per sq km |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Teneriffe | 50 | 0.64 | 77.6 |
| 2 | Newstead | 54 | 0.71 | 76.4 |
| 3 | Brisbane City | 125 | 2.06 | 60.7 |
| 4 | Kangaroo Point | 72 | 1.33 | 54.0 |
| 5 | Fortitude Valley | 70 | 1.31 | 53.6 |
| 6 | New Farm | 110 | 2.06 | 53.4 |
| 7 | West End | 99 | 1.93 | 51.4 |
| 8 | Highgate Hill | 56 | 1.18 | 47.6 |
| 9 | South Brisbane | 95 | 2.00 | 47.4 |
| 10 | Bulimba | 99 | 2.13 | 46.5 |
| 11 | Paddington | 112 | 2.46 | 45.5 |
| 12 | Hawthorne | 55 | 1.35 | 40.6 |
| 83 | Rochedale | 153 | 15.37 | 10.0 |

*Applications per square kilometre, restricted to the 104 Brisbane suburbs with at least 40 applications in the window. Suburb areas are ABS Suburb and Locality boundaries. Rochedale is shown at the bottom for contrast: first on raw count, 83rd of 104 on density.*

[Teneriffe](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/teneriffe-4005) is first in Brisbane. Fifty applications inside 0.64 of a square kilometre. [Newstead](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/newstead-4006) is right behind it. Neither of us could have found that from the raw list, because Teneriffe was never on it.

Which lines up with something three separate readers had already put to me: the apartment suburbs were missing, all the cranes are in Teneriffe and Newstead, where is that in your numbers. They were right. The fix turned out to be the ranking method, not the data.

And Rochedale? First on raw count, 83rd out of 104 by density. Both of those are true at the same time and they describe genuinely different things. Rochedale is where the most change is happening. Teneriffe is where change is most concentrated. Look at the two maps and it stops being an abstraction.

![Development application map of Rochedale in Brisbane, an aerial view with a large suburb boundary outlined in gold enclosing paddocks, bushland and a construction quarry, with application pins scattered thinly across roughly a third of the area.](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/images/rochedale-da-map-hero.jpg)

*Rochedale: 153 applications spread across 15.37 square kilometres, with large parts of the suburb still undeveloped. Suburb page map, propertyxray.com.au.*

![Development application map of Teneriffe in Brisbane, an aerial view of a small riverside boundary outlined in gold, packed edge to edge with application pins over dense apartment blocks and converted wool stores.](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/images/teneriffe-da-map-hero.jpg)

*Teneriffe: 50 applications inside 0.64 of a square kilometre, the highest density in Brisbane. Same scale as the Rochedale map above. Suburb page map, propertyxray.com.au.*

Wondering what is lodged around a place youre looking at? Check the address, free and no signup:

## So what are these 8,751 development applications, actually

A fair question, and I got it more than once: does this only cover houses, or are shops and childcare centres in here too? They are. Heres the whole pile broken up.

| What was lodged | Applications |
| --- | --- |
| Not reliably classified | 2,534 |
| New or replacement house | 1,502 |
| Compliance assessment | 1,319 |
| Subdivision, fresh split | 683 |
| Design and siting variation | 627 |
| Operational works and earthworks | 608 |
| Plan sealing (subdivision paperwork) | 589 |
| Commercial and industrial | 393 |
| Townhouses and units | 278 |
| Renovation or extension | 120 |
| Schools | 52 |
| Social housing | 46 |
| Total | 8,751 |

*Every Brisbane City Council development application lodged in the 12 months to 24 July 2026, grouped by what was being asked for.*

Two notes on that table, because the categories are not equally trustworthy.

That top row is the biggest one and I am not going to dress it up. Most of it is records where the council description is too thin to classify, plenty of them read as nothing more than "Carry Out Building Work" with no detail attached. It also absorbs a few hundred records that got sorted into the wrong category, because the sorting was matching the word "Park" in the address and quietly turning houses in Norman Park and Everton Park into parks. I found that while writing this up and folded them back into the unknown pile rather than publish a category I dont trust. Thats why you wont see a parks row. An honest unknown beats a confident wrong number.

"Design and siting variation" is the sleeper category and its worth understanding, because its where knockdown rebuilds hide. More on that shortly. And 393 commercial and industrial applications is not nothing, a warehouse or a supermarket lodging plans is a real signal about where a suburb is heading, arguably an earlier one than houses.

## Rebuilt or subdivided? Not the same suburbs at all

Two suburbs can post identical counts and be changing in opposite directions. One is getting its houses replaced. The other is getting its blocks cut in half. If youre buying, that difference matters a lot more than the total does.

Here are the suburbs where the most new or replacement houses were lodged:

| Rank | Suburb | New house DAs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| =1 | Bardon | 49 |
| =1 | Rochedale | 49 |
| 3 | Paddington | 48 |
| 4 | Coorparoo | 43 |
| 5 | Clayfield | 40 |
| 6 | Wynnum | 39 |
| =7 | Camp Hill | 33 |
| =7 | Windsor | 33 |
| =7 | Bulimba | 33 |
| =10 | Auchenflower | 31 |
| =10 | New Farm | 31 |

*Applications for a new or replacement dwelling house, 12 months to 24 July 2026. A replacement house is a knockdown rebuild. A brand new house on Rochedale greenfield land is not. This category counts both.*

### Which Brisbane suburbs are subdividing land, not just rebuilding on it

Now the suburbs cutting up the most land. These are fresh subdivisions only, one title becoming two or more. Plan sealings are excluded because those are older splits finishing their paperwork, not new ones starting:

| Rank | Suburb | Fresh subdivisions |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Salisbury | 20 |
| =2 | Upper Mount Gravatt | 15 |
| =2 | Bridgeman Downs | 15 |
| 4 | Acacia Ridge | 14 |
| 5 | Rochedale | 13 |
| =6 | Aspley | 12 |
| =6 | Carina | 12 |
| =6 | Stafford | 12 |
| =6 | Camp Hill | 12 |
| =10 | Indooroopilly | 11 |
| =10 | Zillmere | 11 |
| =10 | Wynnum | 11 |
| =10 | Morningside | 11 |

*Fresh subdivision applications (reconfiguring a lot) by Brisbane suburb, 12 months to 24 July 2026. Plan sealings excluded.*

Barely any overlap at the top of those two. Bardon and Paddington are being rebuilt house by house and almost never split, Bardon had 49 new house applications against 4 fresh splits all year. [Salisbury](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/salisbury-4107) lodged 20 splits, the most in Brisbane, off only 10 new houses.

Thats two different futures. In one the streetscape changes but the bones of the suburb hold. In the other the lot pattern itself gets rewritten, and that one does not go back. If you want the mechanics of how a split actually plays out, we pulled apart [what happens when you subdivide a Queensland block](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/blog/subdivision-data-queensland-what-actually-happens) separately.

## Suburb by suburb: Wynnum, Bulimba, Brighton and eight others

These are the suburbs people asked me to look at by name, mostly people who live in them. Where a resident described something happening on their own street, I have gone and checked whether the register backs it up, and said so either way.

[Wynnum](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/wynnum-4178), 131. Third overall and up 58% year on year, the biggest jump of any top-ten suburb. 39 new house applications, 11 fresh splits, 7 townhouse or unit applications. Council adopted the Wynnum centre renewal changes in May 2026 and almost none of that shows up here yet, a zoning change takes a year or two to turn into lodged applications. So this is the before picture, not the after.

[Bulimba](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/bulimba-4171), 99. One reader said every street in Bulimba has a builder on it. 33 new house applications, a third of everything lodged there, and only 3 fresh splits all year. Bulimba is being renewed rather than carved up. Which is exactly why it feels like a construction zone and still looks like Bulimba.

[Brighton](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/brighton-4017), 89. A local up that way said every homeowner who doesnt already have a front carport is building one, and wondered whether it was a hail thing. Brighton has 19 design and siting variations, the most in Brisbane. Heres the mechanism: a carport closer than 1.5 metres to a side boundary busts the standard setback, so a private certifier cant just wave it through and council has to assess a siting variation. The carport theory checks out in the data.

[Tarragindi](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/tarragindi-4121), 90, with 9 fresh splits and 9 siting variations. That ridge is being subdivided steadily rather than dramatically. Neighbouring [Moorooka](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/moorooka-4105) sits at 59 and leans more rebuild than split.

[Graceville](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/graceville-4075), 48. Somebody who had just bought there asked what they had walked into. 19 new house applications, a big share for 48 total, and exactly 1 fresh split all the way through the year. Houses getting renewed, blocks staying whole.

[Acacia Ridge](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/acacia-ridge-4110), 64, and the biggest surprise in the dataset. Only 3 new house applications. 13 commercial and industrial, and 14 fresh splits. I got asked about boarding houses and NDIS accommodation out there, and I have to be straight with you, most of that does not need a planning DA, so its invisible here. What the data does show is that the money going into Acacia Ridge is industrial, not residential.

[Chermside West](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/chermside-west-4032), 29. A resident said knockdowns had only just started on their street. Zero standalone new house applications, 8 siting variations, 6 compliance assessments. Thats a suburb at the very start of the cycle, and those 8 siting variations are almost certainly the knockdowns they are watching.

[Wavell Heights](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/wavell-heights-4012), 82. 14 siting variations, 11 new houses, 5 fresh splits and 5 plan sealings, so the subdivision pipeline is running at both ends up there, new ones starting while older ones finish.

[Coorparoo](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/coorparoo-4151), 141. 43 new houses, 14 siting variations, 19 compliance assessments. Next door, [Greenslopes](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/greenslopes-4120) is at 70 with 25 new houses and not a single withdrawal. Same wave, one step behind.

[Camp Hill](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/camp-hill-4152), 125, and [Carina](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/carina-4152), 77. Camp Hill is doing both at once: 33 new houses and 12 fresh splits. Carina has only 9 new houses but 12 splits and 11 plan sealings, which says Carina is further through the cycle, the splits from last year are completing about now. And [Carina Heights](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/carina-heights-4152) next door adds the other 37 I mentioned up top.

### Four more that got asked about: Indooroopilly, Oxley, Wilston and Teneriffe

[Indooroopilly](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/indooroopilly-4068), 82. One reader could not believe it ranked so low. Its 28th equal in the table up top, tied with Wavell Heights and The Gap, so their ears were not lying, it just isnt top ten. 11 fresh splits though, which does put it inside the top ten for carving up land.

[Oxley](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/oxley-4075), 68. 8 fresh splits, 8 siting variations, only 6 new house applications, plus 2 social housing. The rooming-house conversions people describe out there sit largely outside this dataset.

[Wilston](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/wilston-4051), 43. Small number, but 16 of the 43 are new house applications and exactly 1 is a split. Pure character-suburb rebuild.

Teneriffe, 50, and Newstead, 54. Covered above: Teneriffe is first in Brisbane per square kilometre and Newstead second. Newstead is interesting for a different reason though, zero new house applications and 9 commercial. Nobody is building houses in Newstead. Thats not what Newstead is anymore.

## Does council ever actually say no? The Brisbane DA approval rate

This question sits underneath every argument about development I have ever read, so lets settle it with the register.

Of the 8,751 applications lodged in the window, 6,108 have been approved and 10 have been refused. Another 156 were withdrawn, 164 have no decision recorded, 18 sit as decided without a recorded outcome, and 2,295 are still under assessment. So among the applications that have actually been approved or refused, the refusal rate is under two tenths of one percent.

That is not a scandal on its own, and its worth understanding why. Most applications are code assessable, which means if you meet the rules council does not have the discretion to refuse you. A lot of the real negotiation happens through information requests before any decision gets recorded, so plenty of applications get reshaped rather than rejected. And an applicant heading for a refusal will usually withdraw first, which is why the withdrawal count is fifteen times the refusal count.

But if youre waiting to find out whether the townhouse block behind you gets knocked back, the honest answer is that it is almost certainly getting approved. Objecting changes conditions far more often than it changes outcomes.

## Where development applications moved most, year on year

| Suburb | Last 12mo | Prior 12mo | Change |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Hamilton | 99 | 41 | +141% |
| Upper Kedron | 74 | 40 | +85% |
| South Brisbane | 95 | 52 | +83% |
| Greenslopes | 70 | 42 | +67% |
| Runcorn | 56 | 34 | +65% |
| Ascot | 84 | 51 | +65% |
| Darra | 67 | 41 | +63% |
| Teneriffe | 50 | 31 | +61% |
| Wynnum | 131 | 83 | +58% |
| Annerley | 85 | 54 | +57% |

*Suburbs with at least 40 applications in the last 12 months and at least 20 in the 12 months before, ranked by percentage change. Brisbane City Council only.*

[Hamilton](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/hamilton-4007) more than doubled. Wynnum, [South Brisbane](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/south-brisbane-4101), Greenslopes and [Ascot](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/ascot-4007) all up more than half. Worth saying that a rolling-year comparison is a blunt instrument, one large staged project can move a small suburb on its own, so read this as direction rather than gospel.

## What this data cannot see, and why that matters more than the rankings

This is the part most write-ups leave out, so let me be blunt about it. Every number above is a floor, not a ceiling.

The private certifier blind spot is the big one. In Queensland the assessment manager for most residential building work is a private certifier, not council. Council only enters the picture as a referral agency, when something specifically needs its say-so: a siting relaxation, a character overlay, work tight to a boundary. Nearly half of Brisbane's twelve-month pile, 4,159 of the 8,751, are records where council was acting in exactly that referral role. Which means a straight knockdown rebuild that breaks no rules and needs no relaxation never appears in this data at all. Not once. Same goes for a lot of the rooming and boarding conversions people keep describing on their own streets.

One application is also not one dwelling. A single application can be an entire apartment tower. Another can be one carport. Counting them as equals understates the tower suburbs badly, which is why South Brisbane and [Toowong](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/suburb/toowong-4066) look moderate here despite producing far more actual dwellings than a house suburb on the same score. If you want dwelling counts, this is the wrong dataset.

And lodged is not approved is not built. Assessment can run a year. Once approved, an applicant typically has two to four years to start work, and extensions are common. Apartment lead times run another 18 to 24 months on top of that. The cranes you can see out your window today were mostly lodged before this window even opened.

Rebuilds also do not add housing. A three bedroom house replaced by one large house is one dwelling in, one dwelling out. This dataset counts activity, not net supply, and to get net you would need the demolition side too. The net figure would be a lot lower than any number on this page.

Character overlays inflate the counts, which cuts against the headline. In a pre-1946 character area, work that would be a certifier stamp anywhere else becomes a full council assessment. Ashgrove logged 23 compliance assessments, Coorparoo 19. Part of the reason those suburbs rank high is simply that the same job generates more paperwork there than it would in Bracken Ridge.

And the thing everyone actually worries about is not in here at all. Road capacity, stormwater, sewer headroom. When these numbers went out in public, hardly anybody argued about which suburb came first. They argued about roads. The line that stuck with me described the approach out at Rochedale as develop the daylights out of the place, but leave the roads exactly how they were when it was farmland.

Someone else in the same conversation laid out the stormwater version of it, and its the clearest explanation of that problem I have read anywhere: a 700 square metre block with a 400 square metre house on it becomes a 680 square metre house, the rain has nowhere left to soak in, and it sheets into pipes that were sized for a different suburb. A development register cannot tell you whether thats happening on your street. What it can tell you is how many new roofs are about to arrive uphill of you, which is a start, and then [Brisbane's worst flood-risk streets](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/blog/brisbane-worst-flood-risk-streets-2026) is the other half of that conversation.

Last thing, scope. This is Brisbane City Council only. Not Logan, not Moreton Bay, not Ipswich, not Redland, not Gold Coast. Anyone quoting these as numbers for "Brisbane the region" is quoting them wrong.

> How this was counted: every application lodged with Brisbane City Council between 28 July 2025 and 24 July 2026, taken from the council's own public [development application register](https://developmenti.brisbane.qld.gov.au/), assigned to a suburb by the application's own map coordinates rather than by its address label, then counted three ways. Suburb areas come from the [ABS Suburb and Locality boundaries](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/australian-statistical-geography-standard-asgs-edition-3/jul2021-jun2026/non-abs-structures/suburbs-and-localities), so the per square kilometre column can be checked against the same published boundaries I used rather than against a number of mine. The first version of the raw count went out on r/brisbane in July 2026 under the title "I mapped every development application lodged in Brisbane this year", and the two questions that produced the other two rankings are in that thread.

## Common questions about Brisbane development applications

### What is a development application?

A development application, or DA, is a formal request to a council for permission to change how land is used or what gets built on it. In Queensland the common types are a material change of use (changing what a site is used for), reconfiguring a lot (subdividing), operational works (earthworks, drainage, roads) and building work. Councils publish every one of them on a public register.

### Which Brisbane suburb has the most development applications?

Rochedale, with 153 lodged in the 12 months to 24 July 2026. Coorparoo is second on 141 and Wynnum third on 131. Measured per square kilometre instead, the answer changes completely: Teneriffe is first with 77.6 applications per square kilometre, and Rochedale drops to 83rd of the 104 suburbs with at least 40 applications.

### Do I have to be told about a development application next door before I buy?

No. A contract of sale has to disclose what is already approved and registered against the property youre actually buying. A neighbouring application, whether lodged or approved but not yet built, is not something a seller has to volunteer. Its public information, but you have to go and look for it yourself.

### How do I find out what is being built near me in Brisbane?

Brisbane City Councils own register, [Development.i](https://developmenti.brisbane.qld.gov.au/), is where to start. You can search it by address or by suburb, or open the map view and look at what is pinned around a street. Two things to know before you trust what comes back. Applications sit on that register for months while they get assessed, so most of what you find is what is coming rather than what is going up. And the register only holds what council assesses, so the straight rebuild two doors down that a private certifier signed off will not be on it at all.

### Does a knockdown rebuild need a development application in Brisbane?

Often not. Most residential building work is assessed by a private building certifier rather than council. Council only gets involved as a referral agency when something needs its judgement, such as a siting variation for building closer to a boundary than the standard setback allows, or any work inside a traditional building character overlay. That is exactly why a suburb can be full of building sites and still post a modest DA count.

### How many Brisbane development applications get refused?

Very few. Of the 8,751 lodged in the 12 months to 24 July 2026, 6,108 had been approved and 10 refused at the time of counting, with 2,295 still under assessment and 156 withdrawn. Most applications are code assessable, so where a proposal meets the rules council cannot simply refuse it.

### How long does a development application take in Brisbane?

There is no single answer, and the register shows you why. Of the 8,751 applications lodged in the 12 months to 24 July 2026, 2,295 still had no decision recorded when I counted them. Thats a bit over a quarter of a full year of lodgements still sitting open. A lot of that time goes on information requests bouncing back and forth before any decision gets recorded. And approval is not the finish line either: once it lands, an applicant generally has two to four years to start work, and extensions are common.

## Check the development application map for your own street

Every suburb named above has its own page with the map and the pins on it, and the same data sits behind any Brisbane address. If you want the street-level cut of this instead of the suburb one, we mapped [which Brisbane streets get the most development applications](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/blog/brisbane-development-applications-streets-suburbs-2026) separately, and if youre watching the buying side rather than the building side, the weekly [Brisbane price cuts and days-on-market read](https://propertyxray.com.au/qld/deals) is the other half of the picture.