Understanding the Residential Development Forecast data schema

The Residential Development Forecasts are a critical layer to help form our forecasts. Every major residential development site Informed Decisions researches carries a development type, a status and the dwellings it is expected to deliver. The dataset also carries a version number and a publish date, relating the the known inputs at the time of forecast.

Key concepts

Development type

Development type	What it covers
Apartments	Attached dwellings stacked vertically with shared access.
Greenfield	New development on previously undeveloped land, generally on the urban fringe.
Redevelopment	A net increase in residential density on already-developed or urban land.
Demolition	Dwellings removed with no residential replacement, so a net dwelling loss.

Apartments excludes villas and townhouses. They sit side by side, each with its own access, so they are recorded under Greenfield or Redevelopment depending on the land they are built on.

Status

Status to 1 October 2026 without the year appended	From 1 October 2026, to reflect more neutral language.	What it means
Complete	Complete	Finished. No dwellings remain to be delivered.
Under construction	Under Construction	Building work is underway on site.
Site clearing	Site Work Commenced	Site preparation and early earthworks have begun.
Marketing	Sales Commenced	Lots or dwellings are actively for sale. No construction has started.
Approved	Development Approved	Planning approval has been granted. Nothing built or sold.
Pre-approved / Lapsed approval	Development Proposed	An application has been lodged, or a previous approval has expired or been refused.
Structure plan / Under-utilised (med-high density)	Identified Growth Area	Future dwellings are signalled by a structure plan, or by land under-utilised for its density potential.
Under-utilised (low density)	Under-utilised Residential Land	Land is under-utilised for its low-density potential.
Potential long-term supply	Potential Long-Term Supply	Long-term or residential investigation sites.

Status records the furthest milestone a site has reached. Selling is what separates Marketing from Approved: a site with an approval that has started selling carries Marketing.

A lapsed approval is not a dead site. It still signals developer interest, and often needs only a reduced dwelling count to be resubmitted, which makes it more likely to develop than land with no application history.

Publish date

The date the land development assessment was completed. These are the values used to build the forecast, so a site's status is current as at the publish date.

Version number

A five-part value recording which input data the forecast is built on. It does not tell you when a site was assessed – use the publish date for that.

Upcoming changes

From 1 September 2026:

status no longer carries a year. Appending the year produced too many values to work with, so status is now a fixed set you can theme a map on
publish date has been added, so you can see when the assessment behind the data was done

From 1 October 2026, the status wording changes to the labels in the table above. The values themselves are unchanged.

If you match on status text in a report or extract, map the September and October changes together and update it once.

Frequently asked questions

Q: How do I tell when a site's status was set?

A: Use the publish date. That is when the land development assessment was completed. The version number describes the forecast inputs, not when a site was assessed.

Q: My filter on status returned nothing. What happened?

A: Status values changed on 1 September 2026 and change again on 1 October 2026. A filter looking for a retired value returns no rows rather than failing. Map both sets of values from the table above.

Q: Are completed sites included?

A: Yes. Sites in progress at the start of the forecast period are included, so a site finishing early in the period shows as Complete for most of it. Sites completed before the 2026 base year are not shown, and completed sites are archived at each census, every five years.

Q: A site has approval and is selling. Which status does it get?

A: Marketing. Status records the furthest milestone reached, and selling sits further along than approval.