What are the Benefits of a Secondary Dwelling Versus a Dual Occupancy?

Are you wondering what are the benefits of a secondary dwelling versus a dual occupancy? What is the difference between them?

To learn more click on the “Play” button below to watch now:



Or for those that prefer to read, here is a transcript of the video…

Okay, what are the benefits of a secondary dwelling versus a dual occupancy? I really want to unpack some of those definitions for you and answer your questions. I’m here in the studio. My name is Colin Fragar from Council Approval Group.

Fundamental Differences

So a secondary dwelling is defined similar to a dual occupancy in that they both from the beginning need to be on the same title, but they have two very fundamental differences. One of the fundamental differences is a secondary dwelling is smaller than a dual occupancy. So it’s restricted usually in floor area. A Dual Occupancy however, can be large and they’re usually considered to be a larger development type. This means an advantage for you, as the investor, with a higher rental return.

But there’s something, a key difference, that I actually want to draw out. And this is from one of my projects that I’ve worked on. So in this project, what we were able to achieve was a dual occupancy subdivision, but it was quite a process that we went through. So this is the corner lot and it’s got an existing house. When the this project was purchased, it was purchased on the basis of just being a secondary dwelling. We were going to put something on the rear. We were going to keep the house and build a secondary dwelling behind. It would have provided a decent rental return, but it wasn’t the best rental return.
A dual occupancy, I believe a dual occupancy subdivision, is the holy grail, you could say, of property investment…

Best Dual Occupancy Strategy

It wasn’t the best deal and this is something that I go through, actually, in Secrets of Property Millionaires Exposed. In this book, so make sure you grab a copy of this if you can, it goes through this strategy in detail. Instead, we used the Council Approval Group and went through the process of working out the best development outcome. We looked at the overall lot size and we realized we can get a dual occupancy here, which means we can get, instead of 60 square meters, 80 to 100 square meters. And so we started to design it and ended up coming up with a really good footprint. But then we realized if we attach these two, if we join these two together with a common wall with a carport, I’m really happy to say we could subdivide the dual occupancy.

So let me just run through that again because I don’t want to lose you. A secondary dwelling needs to to stay with the land. You can’t subdivide it and you can’t sell it off separately. A dual occupancy, I believe a dual occupancy subdivision, is the holy grail, you could say, of property investment because you’re able to subdivide it, sell, usually depart from the minimum lot size in the subdivision of a dual occupancy, and then sell off one of them to reduce debt levels significantly. And that’s what we achieved on this. We used departures from the minimum lot sizes and we used a whole bunch of town planning loopholes.

Free Resources For You

Please, if you’re considering one of these projects, make sure you grab Your Ultimate Guide to Council Approval. This is a great magazine, so make sure you get a copy of it on your coffee table and read through every single page. And when you’re ready, please book in for a complimentary consultation with one of our team that goes for 30 minutes. We’ll talk about your specific property that you have or you’re about to purchase. We’ll work out what are you trying to achieve, what are the challenges around that and what’s the first step? Usually the first step is a preliminary planning assessment. In the assessment we go through in detail what the highest and best use is of the property and what’s the best path for approval.

I went into a quite a bit of detail today but hopefully you grabbed a few points there. My name is Colin Fragar from Council Approval Group.