How to find jobs from DA approvals in NSW

Every development application approved in NSW is published on a public database. For most tradies, this data is invisible. For the ones who know how to use it, it is a pipeline of funded, certain projects at known addresses, showing up every business day.

This guide explains how DA approvals work, what data is publicly available, and which trades benefit most from knowing about them early.

What is a DA approval and why does it matter?

A Development Application (DA) is a formal request to a council to carry out building or renovation work. When a DA is approved, it means:

• The project is real. Planning permission has been granted.
• The homeowner has committed. They have paid council fees and waited weeks or months for the decision.
• The project is funded. Approved projects proceed at a much higher rate than lodgements.
• The address is public. The approval is a matter of public record, published under NSW open-data law.

Compare this to a homeowner posting a job on hipages or ServiceSeeking: at that point, they are already comparing three or four quotes. With a DA approval, you can reach them before they have spoken to anyone.

What types of DAs trigger trade work?

Not every DA is relevant to every trade. The most useful signals for downstream trades are:

• Pool construction: triggers pool fencing compliance work, plus landscaping, concreting and paving around the pool area
• Dwelling additions and renovations: often include new fencing, driveway work, and landscaping as part of the overall project
• Demolition: the site needs clearing; arborists are often needed before or during demolition
• New dwellings: the whole exterior is fresh - fencing, landscaping, driveways, and often a pool at the end
• Complying Development Certificates (CDCs): a faster track for smaller projects; also fully public, often overlooked

Where is this data published?

The NSW Government publishes all DA and CDC decisions through the NSW ePlanning Portal. This is an open data resource, governed by Creative Commons CC BY 4.0, meaning it can be accessed and used commercially with attribution.

The portal covers all NSW councils and includes the development address, development type, estimated value, determination date, and application status.

The challenge for individual tradies is the volume and format of the data. There are thousands of applications across hundreds of councils. Filtering by suburb, by approval stage (not just lodgement), and by development type relevant to your trade requires either technical access to the API or a service that does this work for you.

Why most tradies miss this data entirely

There are a few reasons most tradies never tap into DA data, even though it is fully public:

1. It is not easy to consume. The portal is designed for planners, not for tradies on their phones between jobs.
2. Lodgement is not approval. Services that send alerts on lodgement (when a DA is first submitted) are sending signals about projects that may take 6-18 months to be approved, or may never be approved at all. Approval is the meaningful signal.
3. There is no action built in. Even if a tradie sees an approval, they have no easy way to reach the homeowner. The address is there - but sending a physical letter is friction most people skip.

What action can you take on a DA approval?

The address is public. What tradies can legally do is send a letter to the property. Addressed to "The Homeowner" at the approved address, introducing your business and mentioning the project.

This is standard business outreach. Tradies who do it by hand say it converts well because the homeowner is surprised to hear from a professional trade business before they have even started looking. The timing is the point of difference.

The limitation is that doing this manually is slow. Checking the portal daily, filtering by your suburbs and trade, writing letters, printing, buying stamps, posting - for most tradies working full days on tools, it simply does not happen.

How to get started for free

Before committing to anything, it is worth seeing how many relevant DAs are being approved in your suburbs each month. The volume varies significantly by area and trade type.

LeadPost offers a free sample report for any suburb and trade combination. Enter your details and we will send you a month of real approval data, formatted exactly as you would receive it as a subscriber.