The brief in one table
Everything below is what the group's acquisition team checks before a block is shown to a client who intends to build this product. It is a brief for finding land, not a guarantee that any block passing it will be approved, built or let at any figure. The numbers come from the planning instruments where they are statutory, and from our own layouts and the public rooming-house register where they are not; each row says which.
Swipe or scroll across the table to compare every detail. Keyboard users can focus the table and use the arrow keys.
| Test | Threshold | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Lot size | 500 m² or more | Our screen (the product plus two bays and garden area do not fit below it) |
| Frontage | 15 m or more (corner: the longer street edge) | Our screen; measured from the Vicmap cadastre |
| Depth | About 34 m: building length + 9 m front setback + 1 m rear | Our layout rule (9 m is the setback we design to, not a statutory minimum) |
| Side and rear clearances | 1 m to every boundary and easement, measured to the fence | Our layout rule; Building Regulations 2018 Table 79 also sets 1 m for walls up to 3.6 m |
| Slope | Fall across the lot 1 m or less is treated as flat; 1–2 m, 2–3 m and over 3 m are flagged and scored down | Our screen, read from state elevation data |
| Car parking | 2 compliant spaces drawn, one accessible; more only if the frontage holds them with a turning area | Clause 52.06-5 Table 1 and 52.06-9 |
| Garden area | 25 / 30 / 35 % by lot size; since Amendment VC314 (28 October 2026) uncovered driveways and car spaces count, covered ones do not | Clauses 32.08-4, 32.09-4 and 73.01 as amended by VC314; a Clause 52.23-3 condition |
| Zone | GRZ, NRZ, RGZ, HCTZ, MUZ or TZ for the works exemption | Clause 52.23-3 |
| Overlays | Heritage, flood (LSIO / SBO / FO), bushfire and erosion overlays scored down; FO, PAO and RO treated as excluding | Our screen; each overlay has its own permit trigger that Clause 52.23 does not remove |
| Frontage road | Arterial or Transport Zone 2 frontage scored down (Clause 52.29 access permit); 20,000 vehicles a day or more scored down | Vicmap roads, Vicmap Planning, DTP traffic volume |
Does the house physically fit? Width, depth and the 9 m setback
Before any location question, the building has to sit on the land with its car parking in front and the garden area intact. The group's layout engine places the single-storey nine-room footprint 9 m back from the street boundary — the setback we design to for a rooming house, so that two bays, an accessway and a turning area can sit in front without touching the footpath — and 1 m from every other boundary and easement, measured to the fence line. On that rule the lot needs roughly the building's length plus 10 m of depth and its width plus 2 m of frontage; the acquisition screen therefore reads 15 m of frontage and about 34 m of depth as the practical floor, and the published drawing on the product page is where to take the exact building dimensions from.
Two things commonly defeat a block that looks large enough. A drainage or sewerage easement along the rear boundary moves the 1 m line forward and can take 2–3 m out of the usable depth; and a lot that is wide at the street but narrows toward the rear can fail at the back wall even though its area is well over 500 m². Both are read from the Vicmap cadastre and the plan of subdivision before anyone drives out.
Clause 52.23-2 and 52.23-3 count "the total floor area of all buildings on the land, measured from the outside of external walls or the centre of party walls", up to 300 m², "excluding outbuildings". A detached garage or shed is an outbuilding and does not count; an attached garage sits inside the external walls and does. On a knock-down-and-rebuild the old house is gone, so the only area on the land is the new one — which is why a published nine-room design is drawn under 300 m² including its porch.
Where do rooming houses actually cluster in Melbourne?
Operators have already answered the location question with their own money, and the public register lets anyone read the answer. On 10 October 2026 the group analysed 2,656 rooming-house properties in metropolitan Melbourne — every address on the Consumer Affairs Victoria register at that date or in archived copies of the register from 2021, 2023 and 2025 (so that houses later sold and de-registered still count), plus properties whose advertisements identified them as rooming houses — geocoded against Vicmap, with train stations and service frequencies from the Department of Transport and Planning GTFS timetable and public emergency-department hospitals from the AIHW MyHospitals collection. All distances are straight lines; walking routes run 20–40 per cent longer.
In the 20–45 km band where a knock-down-and-rebuild is affordable, the pattern is consistent: the houses sit beside interchange stations and beside hospitals. The ten outer suburbs with the most registered or identified rooming houses were Frankston, Dandenong, Noble Park, Werribee, Cranbourne, Melton South, Springvale, Tarneit, Hoppers Crossing and Berwick — most around a major station, and four clusters (Frankston, Dandenong, the Casey corridor, Werribee) beside an emergency hospital. The hospital is almost certainly standing in for the activity centre around it — employment, services, bus interchange — rather than for the hospital itself, which is why the screen counts only public hospitals with an emergency department and ignores rehabilitation and private facilities.
- —Source: 2,656 rooming-house properties, metropolitan Melbourne, 10 October 2026; Consumer Affairs Victoria register plus archived snapshots plus advertisement-identified properties; straight-line distances.
- —The register says where houses are, not how quickly rooms let or at what rent; nothing on this page is a rent figure.
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| Distance from CBD | Within 800 m of a station | Within 1.2 km of a station | Within 3 km of an emergency hospital |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20–30 km | 22 % | 40 % | 72 % |
| 30–45 km | 26 % | 48 % | 61 % |
Is a street full of rooming houses a bad sign?
The register answers this one too, and the answer surprises most first-time builders. Take every property that was on the rooming-house register before 2022 and ask whether it was still registered on 10 October 2026. With zero to two other registered rooming houses within 2 km, 57 per cent were still registered. With three to nine, 65 per cent. With ten to twenty-four, 72 per cent. With twenty-five or more, 77 per cent. The denser the cluster, the more operators stayed in business.
Supply is a marker of demand, not a cause of it, and the register cannot say what happens when one more house opens on a street that is already saturated; dense clusters also draw more objection at council level. So the site score below rewards nearby registered supply up to a ceiling of ten houses within 2 km and never deducts for density. A block with no registered rooming house within 2 km is not excluded — it is simply a block where the demand is not yet proven by anyone else's capital.
The 100-point site score, as a checklist
Every block that passes the hard tests in the first table is scored so that the best sit at the top of the list a human reviews. The score decides the order, never the qualification, and nothing below 50 is circulated. The anchors are published so the ranking can be argued with; they are not a forecast of what any site will earn.
- —A corner or a lane is a map fact from Vicmap. It earns points because it can give a second pedestrian entry and more parking options; it does not mean a second crossover will be approved. Councils require a vehicle-crossing permit, and a Transport Zone 2 street needs a Clause 52.29 permit with referral.
- —The build price in the income-to-cost anchor is the published Victorian price for the 300 m² house, $748,000 inc GST on the 2026-10-17 price book. Site works, approvals, demolition and connections beyond the published scope are confirmed in the written proposal and are not in the anchor.
Swipe or scroll across the table to compare every detail. Keyboard users can focus the table and use the arrow keys.
| Component | Points | How it is scored |
|---|---|---|
| Price — discount to local sales | 20 | Asking price against the sold median for the same suburb and the same 100 m² land band (12 months, at least 8 sales; else 24 months): 0 % below scores 0, 25 % or more below scores full |
| Price — income-to-cost anchor | 20 | Gross income evidence for the area set against the asking price plus the published build price for the 300 m² house, scored between an internal floor and ceiling. A ranking threshold on gross figures before vacancy, management, land tax, rates, insurance and finance — not an expected return, and not published as a rate |
| Demand — nearby registered supply | 15 | Registered rooming houses within 2 km: 10 or more full; 5–9 three-quarters; 3–4 half; 1–2 a quarter |
| Demand — rent evidence | 5 | How many properties within 3 km show advertised-room evidence, scored in three steps |
| Demand — postcode vacancy | 10 | A postcode vacancy series, scored higher as vacancy falls and adjusted for the direction of the last year; the series and its thresholds are not republished |
| Transport — train | 15 | Nearest station with 2 or more trains an hour each way: ≤ 800 m full; 1.2 km 0.8; 2 km 0.53; 3 km 0.27; beyond, 0 |
| Transport — emergency hospital | 10 | ≤ 1.5 km full; 3 km 0.7; 5 km 0.3 |
| Transport — bus | 5 | Stop within 400 m with 2 or more services an hour full; within 400 m 0.6; within 800 m 0.2 |
| Risk deductions | — | Heritage Overlay −15; LSIO / SBO / FO −10; lot-number-only address −10; BMO −5; EMO −5; unreadable terrain −5; fall 1–2 m −5, 2–3 m −10, over 3 m −15; arterial or Transport Zone 2 frontage −10; 20,000+ vehicles a day −5; Public Acquisition Overlay at the frontage −5 |
| Access bonuses | — | Corner +15; side or rear lane +15; both +20; corner and lanes capped at +25 together; frequent station within 500 m walking +10, within 800 m +5 |
| Grade | — | 70 or more A; 50–69 B; below 50 C (not circulated) |
Parking and garden area: why two bays are drawn first
Clause 52.06-5 Table 1 (VC311, 9 June 2026) requires 0.25 car spaces per rooming-house bedroom on Category 1 and 2 land under the Car Parking Requirement Maps, rounded down: two spaces for nine bedrooms, with no maximum. Of 982 registered rooming houses 20 km or more from the CBD checked against the mapped categories on 10 October 2026, two were in the capped Category 3 — the outer ring is Category 1 and 2 land. One of the two spaces is drawn as an accessible space, because the National Construction Code rounds the accessible proportion up for a Class 1b building.
More than two is a commercial choice with one statutory cost, and one that disappeared on 28 October 2026. Under Clause 52.06-9 an accessway serving four or more spaces must let cars leave in a forward direction, so the fourth bay brings a turning area with it. Until Amendment VC314 a driveway and "an area set aside for car parking" were excluded from garden area, which Clause 52.23-3 requires at 25, 30 or 35 per cent of the lot in the GRZ and NRZ; VC314 rewrote the Clause 73.01 definition so that only a covered driveway or a covered parking area is excluded, so uncovered bays no longer reduce the percentage while a carport or garage over them does. The site plan therefore commits two uncovered bays and keeps any cover off the parking; the parking and garden-area article sets out the clauses in full.
Slope, overlays and the road out front
Flat land is cheaper to build on and the screen treats a measured fall of 1 m or less across the lot as flat. Steeper blocks are not excluded — they are sent on with the fall stated and scored down in three bands — because the right answer to a 2 m fall is an engineer's cut-and-fill or a retaining wall priced in the proposal, not a refusal. Where the elevation data cannot be read the block is flagged rather than assumed flat.
Overlays are separate controls with their own permit triggers, and Clause 52.23 removes none of them. The screen scores a Heritage Overlay hardest, then the flood overlays, then bushfire and erosion, and treats a Floodway Overlay, a Public Acquisition Overlay or a Restructure Overlay as excluding; the 5 m / muted-tones concessions written into the heritage, design and character overlays for a small second dwelling do not apply to a rooming house. The overlays article walks through each one.
Finally the road. A frontage to a declared arterial or a Transport Zone 2 road means a Clause 52.29 permit to create or alter the crossover, referral to the road authority, usually a left-in-left-out condition, forward exit for any accessway of four or more spaces and access at least 6 m from the carriageway. The screen reads the road class from Vicmap, the Transport Zone from Vicmap Planning and the traffic count from the Department of Transport and Planning series; an arterial frontage, 20,000 or more vehicles a day, or a Public Acquisition Overlay on the frontage each lower the rank. They do not exclude a block, but they are the difference between a quiet residential street and a house whose front bedrooms face a six-lane road.
What this brief does not tell you
It does not tell you what a finished house will let for or return. Nothing above is a rent figure, and the ranking anchors are thresholds on gross numbers that ignore vacancy, management, land tax, rates, insurance and finance — the arithmetic article shows how to run those inputs yourself. It does not tell you a block is exempt from a planning permit: the Clause 52.23 conditions, the overlays and the title are read for the specific lot, and a building permit, a Class 1b classification, an operator licence and council registration follow in every case. And it does not replace a site visit; every distance here is a straight line on a map, and the brief exists to decide which blocks are worth driving to first.
Questions people ask
How much land does a 300 m² nine-room rooming house need?
In the acquisition screen used for this product a lot is considered at 500 m² or more, 15 m or more of frontage and about 34 m of depth, so the single-storey footprint can sit 9 m back from the street with 1 m to every other boundary and easement, two compliant car spaces in front and the zone's garden area intact. Rear easements and lots that narrow toward the back are the usual reasons a large-looking block fails.
Where do rooming houses rent best in Melbourne?
The public register shows where operators cluster: of 2,656 metropolitan rooming houses analysed on 10 October 2026, those 20–45 km from the CBD were within 3 km of a public emergency hospital 61–72 per cent of the time and within 800 m of a station 22–26 per cent of the time. The outer suburbs with the most registered houses were Frankston, Dandenong, Noble Park, Werribee, Cranbourne, Melton South, Springvale, Tarneit, Hoppers Crossing and Berwick. The register records location, not rent.
How many car spaces does a nine-bedroom rooming house need?
Two on Category 1 or 2 land: Clause 52.06-5 Table 1 (VC311, 9 June 2026) sets 0.25 spaces per bedroom, rounded down, with no maximum. One of them is drawn as an accessible space. Once four or more spaces are served, Clause 52.06-9 requires forward exit, so a turning area is drawn with the fourth bay.
Does a corner block help a rooming house?
It helps and it scores: a corner earns +15 and a side or rear lane +15 (both +20, capped at +25 together) in the site ranking, because a second frontage can give a separate pedestrian entry and more parking options. It is a map fact, not an approval — a new crossover needs a council vehicle-crossing permit, and a Transport Zone 2 street needs a Clause 52.29 planning permit with referral to the road authority.
Is it bad to build where there are already many rooming houses?
The register suggests the reverse within limits: of properties registered before 2022, 57 per cent were still registered on 10 October 2026 where 0–2 other rooming houses sat within 2 km, 65 per cent with 3–9, 72 per cent with 10–24 and 77 per cent with 25 or more. The site score rewards nearby registered supply up to ten houses within 2 km and never deducts for density; community objection in dense areas is the caveat.
Does the site score predict rent?
No. It orders qualifying blocks so a human reviews the strongest first. Its price anchors are thresholds on gross figures — a discount to local sales and an income-to-cost ratio using the published build price — before vacancy, management, land tax, rates, insurance and finance. Nothing in it is a forecast for any property.
What slope is too steep for a rooming house build?
The screen treats a measured fall of 1 m or less across the lot as flat and does not exclude steeper land; falls of 1–2 m, 2–3 m and over 3 m are flagged and scored down because they add cut-and-fill or retaining to the proposal. Where state elevation data cannot be read the block is flagged rather than assumed flat.
References
- 1.Victoria Planning Provisions — Clause 52.23 Rooming house (52.23-2 VC274, 28 February 2025; 52.23-3 VC257, 25 February 2025), current clause PDF — checked 3 November 2026
- 2.Victoria Planning Provisions — Clause 52.06 Car parking (52.06-5 Table 1 VC311, 9 June 2026; 52.06-9 design standards VC277, 18 December 2025) — checked 3 November 2026
- 3.Victoria Planning Provisions — Clause 32.08 General Residential Zone, 32.08-4 minimum garden area (VC253) — checked 3 November 2026
- 4.Victoria Planning Provisions — Clause 32.09 Neighbourhood Residential Zone, 32.09-4 minimum garden area — checked 3 November 2026
- 5.Victoria Planning Provisions — Clause 73.01 General terms, definition of garden area — checked 3 November 2026
- 6.Victoria Planning Provisions — Clause 52.29 Land adjacent to the Principal Road Network (VC205) — checked 3 November 2026
- 7.Consumer Affairs Victoria — public register of rooming houses (browse all); archived snapshots 2021, 2023, 2025 via the Internet Archive — checked 3 November 2026
- 8.Department of Transport and Planning — GTFS Schedule (stations, stops, service frequencies), CC BY 4.0 — checked 3 November 2026
- 9.Australian Institute of Health and Welfare — MyHospitals (emergency department presentations by hospital) — checked 3 November 2026
- 10.Land Use Victoria — Vicmap catalogue (Address, Property, Transport, Planning), CC BY 4.0 — checked 3 November 2026
- 11.Department of Transport and Planning — VicPlan (Car Parking Requirement Maps layer) — checked 3 November 2026
- 12.Department of Transport and Planning — Traffic Volume open dataset (declared roads) — checked 3 November 2026
- 13.DollarBuild — Rooming house rules, Victoria: the Clause 52.23 rule set as open data (CC BY 4.0) — checked 3 November 2026
