NSW Development Application Leads (Council DA & Planning Data)

Get newly lodged council development applications in NSW as clean, scored construction leads, filtered by council, trade and project cost.

What this actor does

• Pulls new DAs from the NSW Planning Portal open-data API (official government open data, no login)
• Adds trade tags (pool, solar, roofing, extension, new dwelling, demolition, commercial fit-out, +11 more)
• Gives every lead a 0-100 score from project cost, application status and trade signals
• "Only new" mode: scheduled runs return only DAs you haven't seen, so you never pay twice for the same lead
• No personal data: applicant/owner names are never collected

Coverage: NSW only today (all councils on the NSW Planning Portal). VIC and QLD are planned.

Who uses it

1. Trades lead generation (pools, solar, roofing, landscaping, builders)

Example: "pool DAs in Northern Beaches + Hills Shire, cost > $80k, daily at 7am → email". A DA is lodged months before construction starts, so you reach the owner or builder before the job is quoted. Think of it as DA leads for tradies: new pool, solar, renovation and new-home projects in NSW, delivered as they're lodged.

2. Property investors and developers (real estate)

Example: "all multi-dwelling and subdivision DAs in Canterbury-Bankstown, last 90 days". Shows where development activity is clustering and which streets are going to duplexes or townhouses: planning application data that maps the development pipeline in NSW.

3. Suppliers and B2B sales (building materials, kitchens, windows, finance, insurance)

Example: "new dwellings > $1m across Sydney, weekly → Google Sheets for the sales team". A live territory list of upcoming builds for prospecting and forecasting demand: construction project leads and building industry data for Australia's largest state.

Input

Field	Description
councils	Exact NSW council names, e.g. Northern Beaches Council. Empty = all of NSW
daysBack	Lodged within this many days (default 14)
maxItems	Max leads per run (default 200)
tradeFilter	Only leads matching these trades, e.g. ["pool","solar"]
minCost	Minimum estimated cost (AUD)
onlyNew	Skip DAs returned in previous runs
keyValueStoreName	Named store holding seen DA IDs (use one per saved search)

Example output

{
  "id": "NSW:PAN-679271",
  "daNumber": "PAN-679271",
  "councilReference": "DA2026/1286",
  "council": "Northern Beaches Council",
  "address": "9 GORDON STREET CLONTARF 2093",
  "lodgementDate": "2026-09-30",
  "status": "Under Assessment",
  "description": "Demolition; Dwelling house; Alterations or additions to an existing building or structure; Erection of a new structure",
  "estimatedCost": 1223100,
  "costBand": "$1m-$5m",
  "trades": ["extension", "new-dwelling", "demolition"],
  "leadScore": 95,
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/"
}

Look up any DA on the NSW Planning Portal tracker by its daNumber or councilReference.

Pricing and ROI

Pay per result: US$0.03 per lead returned (US$30 per 1,000, event lead-returned), with no other actor charges; you pay normal Apify platform usage on your plan. A daily run for one council and one trade usually returns a handful of leads, which costs cents per day. One won pool, solar or extension job pays for years of runs. Cap spend with maxItems or a max-cost-per-run limit, and with onlyNew you never pay twice for the same DA.

Schedule it

1. Save a task with your councils/trades and onlyNew: true.
2. In Apify Console > Schedules, run it daily (e.g. 0 7 * * *, Australia/Sydney).
3. Add an integration to send each run's new leads to email, Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make or a webhook.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This actor works with the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com), so Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP clients and AI tools can call it as a tool, e.g. "find pool DAs over $500k lodged in Northern Beaches this week". Output fields are flat, typed and stable, which suits agents.

FAQ

Which states? NSW today (all councils on the NSW Planning Portal). VIC and QLD are planned. Star the actor to get notified.

Are these building approvals? They're development applications at the planning stage. Complying development certificates (CDCs) and ABS building approvals statistics are different datasets.

How fresh is the data? It's updated on each run, pulled live from the NSW Planning Portal API as published at run time. Schedule daily runs to stay current.

Is it legal to use? The data is published by the NSW Government as open data. Use leads in line with the Spam Act 2003 and Privacy Act 1988 (no personal data is included).

Can I get a sample? Run with maxItems: 20. It costs US$0.60.

Data source and notes

Data comes from the NSW Government ePlanning Online DA open data API (government open data). The description is built from the DA's listed development types; estimated cost is as declared by the applicant.