Low and mid-rise housing is arriving. What happens to the family home?

The family home in Sydney is no longer assumed to stay one house on one lot. Since 28 February 2025 the NSW Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy has made dual occupancies, terraces and, in the right zones, apartment buildings much easier to approve near nominated stations and town centres. Dual occupancies are now permitted with consent in R2 Low Density Residential across the state.

That is the policy. The question on DC jobs is more local: what happens to the house that is already there — the backyard, the tree, the fence, the winter sun — when the lot next door, or this lot, becomes two dwellings?

This post is a landscape contractor’s reading of the rules, not planning advice. Check the Housing SEPP map, your LEP and a duty planner before you draw a second kitchen.

What “low and mid-rise” actually mean

Low-rise is dual occupancy, terraces, townhouses and two-storey apartment buildings (manor houses).Mid-rise is three to six storeys: residential flat buildings and shop-top housing.

A low and mid-rise housing area is residential land within 800 metres walking distance of a mapped town centre or the entrance to a nominated train, metro or light rail station. Inside that 800 m there is an inner area (first 400 m) where mid-rise buildings in R3 and R4 can go higher — commonly 22 m for apartments and 24 m for shop-top.

Inner West stations and centres, the eastern corridor toward Edgecliff, and Ku-ring-gai stations at Gordon and St Ives sit in that conversation. Being 801 metres away, or on a street the walking tool does not count, can put you outside the SEPP standards even if it feels like the same suburb.

Dual occupancy in R2 does not need the 800 m map. That change is statewide.

The numbers that now sit over a lot of family houses

Inside an LMR area, the Housing SEPP sets non-discretionary standards for dual occupancy. Council cannot refuse the application just because it meets these and they do not like the density:

• minimum lot 450 m²

• minimum width 12 m at the front building line

• floor space ratio 0.65:1

• height 9.5 m

• one car space per dwelling if the LEP or DCP does not already cap parking

Subdivision of a dual occ in R1, R2 and R3 can go down to about 225 m² and 6 m width per new lot.

Those figures matter because many Sydney LEPs used to want much larger lots. Ku-ring-gai is the clearest example in DC’s catchment: outside the mapped local housing areas a dual occ still needs about 1,015 m² under Council’s own controls. Inside the mapped area, the 450 m² SEPP figure can apply if every Housing SEPP standard is met. If it is not, you fall back to Council’s larger lot. Complying development dual occ in Ku-ring-gai still uses the 1,015 m² figure.

Non-discretionary does not mean automatic approval. It means Council cannot use that standard as the reason to say no. Design, privacy, overshadowing, trees, stormwater, heritage and bushfire are still on the table.

What the policy does not switch off

This is the part that decides whether the family garden survives.

Heritage items and conservation areas — listed houses and many HCA lots are treated differently. Ku-ring-gai excludes heritage items and bushfire-prone land from the LMR pathway. A Paddington or Haberfield terrace is not a clean 450 m² dual-occ site just because a station is nearby.

Trees — before Council can consent to a dual occupancy in an LMR area it must consider the Tree Canopy Guide for Low and Mid Rise Housing (February 2025). The same consideration applies to terraces and to flat buildings and shop-top in R3 and R4. The guide is not a rubber stamp for clearing the backyard. It sets canopy and deep-soil percentages and a planting rate. For a dual occupancy on a lot under 300 m² that is 15% canopy and 15% deep soil, and at least one small tree per dwelling in the deep soil. On 300–600 m² it steps up to 20% and 20%, with a small tree for every 200 m². Over 600 m² it is 25% and 25%, with medium trees.

Deep soil is not a planter on a slab. It is ground the tree can live in.

Bushfire — mapped bushfire-prone land is carved out of the LMR pathway in Ku-ring-gai. On the Upper North Shore that still leaves a lot of family houses next to an APZ conversation even when the SEPP density does not apply.

Flood — in April 2026 the Housing SEPP brought previously excluded flood-constrained land into the LMR scheme. That is live in parts of the Inner West. A second dwelling on a flood lot still has to deal with levels, tanks and runoff.

The neighbour’s amenity — height of 9.5 m is two storeys with a roof. On a south-facing courtyard that can be winter shade. First-floor windows can look straight into the room you have now. A side driveway for the new dwelling can sit against the fence you were about to rebuild.

What actually changes on the ground

One lot becomes two front doors.The backyard that held a lemon tree and a clothesline is asked to hold two private open spaces, two paths, often two cars, and the deep soil the canopy guide wants. Something gives. Usually it is the large tree in the middle, or the idea that the garden is shared.

The house next door gets a first floor where there was sky.If you are not the applicant, you are the notification. View, privacy and overshadowing submissions still count. They do not stop a scheme that meets the SEPP numbers — but they do shape setbacks, sill heights and landscape screens.

Council landscaped-area rules have not disappeared.Inner West still runs landscaped area and site coverage in the LEP. Haberfield still talks in large percentages of the lot. Woollahra still argues 4.6 variations on landscaped area in the Land and Environment Court. The Housing SEPP does not delete those clauses. It sits beside them. A dual occ that meets 0.65:1 and 9.5 m can still fail if the remaining dirt is all 800 mm of soil on a basement lid.

Street character shifts in a decade, not a week.One dual occ on a Gordon street of 1950s houses looks like an alteration. Ten of them look like a different suburb. Canopy loss is cumulative. Greater Sydney’s canopy only moved from 21.7% to 21.9% between 2022–23 and 2024–25. Established streets lose trees one consent at a time.

Seniors housing arrived in the same map.From 24 April 2026, independent living and related seniors types picked up height and FSR uplift in LMR inner and outer areas. A family house near a station may not be looking at a duplex. It may be looking at a six-storey neighbour. Consent authorities assessing that work in R3 and R4 must consider the same Tree Canopy Guide.

A worked picture — 600 m² family block

A typical Inner West or lower North Shore house on 600 m². One dwelling, a rear garden, a mature tree offset from the back fence.

A dual occupancy under the SEPP can aim at 0.65:1 and 9.5 m. That is a lot of building. The canopy guide wants about 20% of the site as canopy and 20% as deep soil, plus small trees in that soil. If the existing tree can stay, it does a lot of that work. If the second dwelling’s garage and the new dividing fence sit on its structural roots, the tree comes out and the replacement stock has to do the same job in a smaller bed.

The neighbour’s winter courtyard to the south picks up shadow from the new ridge. Their 1800 mm masonry fence, if it is rebuilt on the boundary, now has a driveway and a first-floor window on the other side. Lighting the new path without lighting their kitchen is a design problem, not an extra.

That is the family-home question in one lot: not whether housing is allowed, but whether the remaining ground is still a garden.

What DC does when this lands on a job

We start with the map. Is the lot in an LMR area, a Ku-ring-gai local housing area, a heritage item, a conservation area, bushfire-prone or flood-affected? Those five answers change the drawing.

We measure the existing tree against the proposed walls using AS 4970, the same way we do on a single-house courtyard. If the tree can stay, the second dwelling moves. If it cannot, the landscape plan has to show the deep-soil percentage and the replacement trees the guide and the council both want — in ground, not in pots on the slab.

We design the leftover courtyard as a courtyard, not as leftover. Screen planting on the new boundary. A path that does not need a floodlight. Permeable paving where OSD and flood rules need it. A fence footing that does not raid the neighbour’s roots.

We put the landscape plan in the DA pack before Inner West’s three-day completeness clock starts.

If you already live in the family home

You do not have to dual-occ the block. The policy makes it easier for someone to try.

If a notification arrives, read the landscape plan and the tree report, not only the elevations. Ask where the deep soil is. Ask whether the big tree is proposed for removal and why. Ask where the first-floor windows look.

If you are the one drawing the second dwelling, do not treat the garden as the bit that shrinks to make the FSR work. The Tree Canopy Guide is sitting in the SEPP on purpose. Councils in the Inner West, Woollahra and Ku-ring-gai still know how to read a landscape plan that is only paving.

Planning a courtyard on a lot that might become two dwellings — or living next to one that will?DC works across the Inner West, the harbour suburbs around Vaucluse, and the Upper North Shore at West Pymble, Gordon and St Ives. Get the landscape and the tree in the drawing before the second kitchen is set out.