New South Wales runs two front doors for a new home. The one everyone knows is the development application: lodge with the council, wait for a merit assessment, negotiate, and hope. The other is complying development, a certificate a private or council certifier can issue in days if the lot and the design fit inside the SEPP (Exempt and Complying Development Codes) 2008, no council assessment required.
Most commentary about the two pathways runs on anecdotes. We track both tracks in one database, ingesting the NSW Planning Portal's public application feed since April 2021, so we can just count. The count says the fast track is no longer the side door: 518,114 new-proposal applications, 189,762 of them complying development certificates, and a CDC share that has climbed every single year.
All figures below are computed from the DA Leads national application database, snapshot 13 July 2026, covering NSW applications lodged 9 April 2021 to 11 July 2026. New proposals only: modifications and review applications are excluded.
Nearly half of NSW applications now take the fast track
In the last nine months of 2021, 25.5% of NSW new-proposal applications were CDCs. That share has risen every year since, without exception:
The composition of the movement matters as much as the trend line. This is not just a share shifting inside a fixed pie:
* 2021 covers April to December; 2026 covers January to 11 July.
Comparing the full years: annual CDC lodgements grew from 35,595 in 2022 to 39,510 in 2025, while DA lodgements fell from 72,850 to 55,718 over the same period. One track is growing, the other is shrinking. If 2026 holds its first-half pace, the two tracks will be near parity within a couple of years.
Five days versus fifty-seven
The pathway's whole promise is time, so we measured it: days from recorded lodgement to recorded determination, for the roughly nine in ten applications in each track that carry a determination date.
| Lodgement to determination | CDC | DA |
|---|---|---|
| 25th percentile | 0 days | 29 days |
| Median | 5 days | 57 days |
| 75th percentile | 22 days | 111 days |
| 90th percentile | 55 days | 196 days |
Based on 165,711 determined CDCs and 286,993 determined DAs with plausible date pairs (0 to 1,095 days).
Read the CDC numbers honestly. A quarter of CDCs are determined the same day they are lodged, and the median is five days, but that is not because certifiers assess a dwelling in an afternoon. On the CDC track the design and documentation work happens before lodgement, between the applicant and the certifier, and the portal record captures the formal tail of that process. The DA clock, by contrast, starts when the council first sees the file.
That distinction does not change the practical conclusion, it is the practical conclusion. On the fast track, approval timing is mostly in your hands: get the design inside the complying envelope and the statutory step takes days. On the DA track, the median project spends two months in assessment, and the slowest tenth spends more than six, in a queue you do not control.
What the fast track actually carries
Two more cuts from the same 189,762 CDCs are worth having in your head.
It is a residential instrument in practice. About 89% of NSW CDCs in our database are classified residential, against 84% of DAs. The Housing Code and Low Rise Housing Diversity Code are the workhorses; commercial and industrial complying development exists but is a sliver of the volume.
It concentrates where the land is clean. The suburbs with the most CDCs are Sydney's greenfield release areas: Austral (4,368 CDCs in five years), Box Hill (2,140), Leppington (1,497), Oran Park (1,330) and Melonba (1,301). New estates produce exactly the lots the Codes SEPP was written for: regular shapes, standard zoning, no heritage listings, no conservation areas. Where those conditions fail, the fast track thins out fast. Which council you are in changes the odds dramatically, and we published that league table separately: CDC share by NSW council, from 69% to 7%. (South Australia runs the same idea through a different machine, with the opposite trend: SA's three approval lanes.)
Whether your lot qualifies is a different question
Statewide shares say nothing about a specific address. Eligibility for complying development is decided lot by lot: the zone must be right, the lot must clear minimum size and frontage for the dwelling type, and a list of hard exclusions in the Codes SEPP must all miss, heritage items and conservation areas, Class 1 and 2 acid sulfate soils, environmentally sensitive land, coastal hazards, and more. Bushfire-prone land caps out at BAL-29, and flood control lots carry extra standards.
We encoded those checks into a free tool: type an address, get an indicative three-state verdict, likely CDC, likely DA, or see a planner, with the driving reasons. It runs the same 13-factor screen our map applies to every parcel, and where our data cannot see a factor (registered easements, draft heritage listings, the s10.7 certificate) it says so instead of pretending. Try it at /solutions/cdc-pathway-check/.
What this means if you build, buy or sell to builders
For builders and developers, the pathway is a margin decision. Fifty-two fewer median days of holding cost per dwelling is real money at current rates, which is one reason knockdown-rebuild operators standardise designs to the complying envelope and buy accordingly.
For land buyers, CDC eligibility is a value attribute the listing will not tell you. Two similar lots a street apart can sit on opposite sides of a heritage conservation boundary or a flood layer, and carry a two-month difference in approval timing and a very different consultant bill.
For anyone selling to the residential construction market, the two tracks are different lead pools. A DA is public for weeks while it is assessed. A CDC appears determined, days after lodgement, and the builder is mobilising now. If your pipeline only watches DAs, you are blind to the fastest-moving 45% of the market. Both tracks are in our data, flagged by pathway.
FAQ
What share of NSW applications are CDCs? Across our full window (April 2021 to July 2026), 36.6% of NSW new-proposal applications were complying development certificates. The share has risen every year: 25.5% in 2021, 40.2% in 2024, 41.5% in 2025, and 45.3% for 2026 lodgements to 11 July.
How much faster is a CDC than a DA in NSW? In our data the median CDC is determined 5 days after lodgement; the median DA takes 57 days. At the slow end the gap widens: the 90th percentile is 55 days for CDCs and 196 days for DAs. CDC timelines partly reflect pre-lodgement work with the certifier, so treat them as pathway timing, not assessment effort.
Are CDC volumes actually growing, or is the DA market just shrinking? Both. Comparing full years, CDC lodgements rose from 35,595 (2022) to 39,510 (2025) while DA lodgements fell from 72,850 to 55,718. The share shift is driven from both sides.
Can any house be built as complying development? No. The lot must be in the right residential zone, meet minimum lot size and width for the dwelling type, and avoid a list of hard exclusions (heritage items and conservation areas, certain acid sulfate soil classes, environmentally sensitive land and others), and the design must stay inside the Housing Code envelope. An indicative screen for any address is free at /solutions/cdc-pathway-check/.
Where does this data come from? From the DA Leads national application database, which ingests the NSW Planning Portal's public application data daily and normalises every record onto a cross-state pathway taxonomy. Figures in this article were computed on 13 July 2026 over 518,114 NSW new-proposal applications lodged between 9 April 2021 and 11 July 2026.
