At least 250 new homes were proposed on NSW's mapped flood planning land in the last year
Every development application lodged in NSW carries coordinates, and the state publishes a map of the land where flood related development controls apply. We put the two together for the twelve months to August 2026. The result: 155 applications proposing at least 251 new dwellings sit on that mapped land. On the strict flood planning areas, one council on the Northern Rivers coast has more applications than the rest of the state combined. In Sydney the count concentrates on mapped flood prone land in the growth corridors.
The numbers
Between September 2025 and August 2026, 26,532 development applications lodged in NSW proposed at least one new dwelling. We checked the mapped location of every one of them against the NSW planning system's Flood Planning layer, the same official layer used to trigger flood related development controls. 155 applications sit on that mapped land, proposing 251 new dwellings after removing duplicate applications for the same address.
The layer carries two kinds of control land, and we count them separately. 103 applications proposing 128 dwellings sit on formal flood planning areas, the land where councils attach conditions such as minimum floor levels. A further 52 applications proposing 123 dwellings sit on land mapped as flood prone and major creeks land in Sydney's growth precinct plans, where a flood assessment is part of the approval. A third class, land inside only the probable maximum flood extent, the widest theoretical flood line, is not counted in any figure on this page: it adds 30 applications and about 36 dwellings, all in Clarence Valley, and we treat it as context, not as flood planning land.
The true statewide number is higher than all of these: the state layer only carries flood mapping that councils have published into it, and that is currently ten council areas plus the two Sydney growth precinct plans. A council that keeps its flood mapping in separate flood studies, which is most of the state including most of Sydney, simply does not appear here. These figures are a floor, not a ceiling.
Where: one council dominates
Clarence Valley, the Northern Rivers council that includes Grafton, Yamba and Iluka, accounts for 71 of the 103 applications on formal flood planning areas, more than every other NSW council combined, proposing 79 dwellings. Part of the reason is honest bookkeeping: Clarence Valley is one of only ten councils whose flood planning mapping is published into the state layer at all, and its mapping is the most comprehensive in it, covering the whole floodplain around Grafton, Maclean, Ulmarra, Lawrence and West Yamba. That mapping dates from 2019, before the February 2022 flood.
Applications on flood planning land
Dwellings proposed
The Clarence Valley pattern is small and steady: secondary dwellings, dual occupancies and single houses in Yamba, Ulmarra, Grafton and the river villages between them, 71 applications proposing 79 dwellings in a year. The biggest recent test of this land sits just outside our window and shows how the system weighs it: a manufactured home estate at 120 Carrs Drive in the West Yamba Urban Release Area, lodged in May 2023 for 216 homes, refused, then approved by the Land and Environment Court in June 2025 at 146 homes, on conditions that speak the flood language plainly: minimum floor levels of 3.5 metres AHD and a dedicated flood shelter building. In Sydney, the counts sit on the growth precinct flood prone land: Blacktown (36 applications, mostly around Melonba) and Camden (10), plus a single Leppington application in Liverpool proposing 40 dwellings.
The full council table
Every NSW council with at least one dwelling proposing application on the mapped land in the twelve months to August 2026, with the class of flood mapping named per council. Dwelling counts are given both ways: deduplicated by street address, which is the figure we quote, and raw, which counts every application including amended ones for the same site. Land inside only the probable maximum flood extent is excluded throughout.
Council
Mapping class
Applications
Dwellings
Dwellings, raw
Main localities
Clarence Valley
Flood planning area
71
79
83
Yamba 24, Ulmarra 6, Grafton 5
Blacktown
Flood prone and major creeks land
36
66
66
Melonba 23, Nirimba Fields 5
Forbes
Flood planning area
14
13
14
Forbes 14
Camden
Flood prone and major creeks land
10
11
11
Leppington 4
Wentworth
Flood planning area
8
7
8
Gol Gol 4, Buronga 3
The Hills
Flood prone and major creeks land
5
6
6
Box Hill 4, North Kellyville 1
Bathurst Regional
Flood planning area
4
5
5
Gormans Hill 2, Kelso 2
Wingecarribee
Flood planning area
4
21
21
Bowral 3, Moss Vale 1
Liverpool
Flood prone and major creeks land
1
40
40
Leppington 1
Wollongong
Flood planning area
1
2
2
Wongawilli 1
Tamworth Regional
Flood planning area
1
1
1
Barraba 1
Total
155
251
257
Journalists are welcome to reproduce this table with attribution to PropertyFlags. Write to hello@propertyflags.com.au for the underlying application list for any council, including application numbers, addresses, lodgement dates and status.
What this means, and what it does not
Land inside a flood planning area is not a building ban, and an approval there is not a scandal by itself. It means the council formally recognises flood risk at that location and applies conditions: minimum floor levels, flood resilient materials, evacuation requirements. Plenty of the applications in this data were approved with exactly those conditions.
What it does mean for the person who eventually buys or rents one of these homes: the flood risk is on the public record before a single slab is poured, insurance will price that risk every year, and the cheapest time to learn about it is before you commit. Buyers see hints of this in the contract paperwork. Renters are told nothing.
Method and source
Applications: NSW Planning Portal Online DA data, all applications lodged between 1 September 2025 and 20 August 2026 recording at least one new dwelling, with the portal's published coordinates for each site (26,532 applications; 28 lacked usable coordinates and were excluded). Flood layer: the NSW planning system's Flood Planning layer, queried point in polygon for every unique application coordinate on 26 August 2026 and re verified feature by feature against the live layer the same day. One coordinate could not be resolved and was excluded rather than counted as clear, and two applications were excluded: one because the portal's council label contradicts its mapped location, and one earthworks and fencing application at 120 Carrs Drive, Yamba whose dwelling count field carries the site's superseded 216 dwelling figure. The estate on that site was lodged in May 2023, outside this window, and was approved by the Land and Environment Court at 146 dwellings in June 2025. We also audited every counted application's stated dwelling count against its application types and cost of development; no other record failed the audit. Matches are classified by the layer's own mapping class: formal flood planning areas, growth precinct flood prone and major creeks land, and probable maximum flood extent, with the last excluded from all headline figures. Dwelling totals are deduplicated by street address so that amended applications for the same site are not counted twice; the undeduplicated total is 257.
Coverage caveat, stated plainly: councils that have not published their flood planning areas into the state layer cannot appear in this analysis, whatever their real flood history. Absence from the tables above is absence of mapping, not absence of risk.
PropertyFlags checks this flood layer, alongside the other official registers we query for NSW, for any address in its reports. If a register does not answer, we say unavailable, never clear.
All sources queried or checked on 26 and 27 August 2026. If a figure on this page and a source disagree, tell us at hello@propertyflags.com.au and we will correct the page.
Check one specific address
This page is about 155 applications. PropertyFlags checks one address at a time against every official government register we can query for its state, including this flood layer, and answers with red, yellow and green flags in about a minute.
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