Your metro station decides whether six storeys can go up next door

A family in Kellyville and a family in Rouse Hill live one metro stop apart. One of them can have a six storey apartment block approved 300 metres from the front door. The other cannot, and nothing about the street, the house or the title explains the difference. The difference is a list published by the NSW Government. Under the low and mid rise housing policy NSW now applies, that list decides which side of the line a suburb falls on, and very few households on either side have ever read it.

The low and mid rise housing policy NSW rolled out in two stages

Stage 1 started on 1 July 2024 and reaches every suburb in the state. It made dual occupancies and semi detached homes permissible with consent in the R2 low density zone across all of NSW. In plain terms, a standard block in an R2 street can now be put to a council for two homes where the rules had allowed one.

Stage 2 started on 28 February 2025 and is the stage that draws the line. It applies to residential land within 800 metres walking distance of 171 nominated town centres and stations, measured as a walk rather than a straight line. Within 400 metres of one of those centres, residential flat buildings of up to 22 metres and a floor space ratio of 2.2 to 1 are permitted in the R3 and R4 zones. Between 400 and 800 metres the ceiling drops to 17.5 metres and 1.5 to 1.

That inner band, in the R3 and R4 zones, is where six storeys becomes possible beside houses that have never had a neighbour above one.

Kellyville is on the list and Rouse Hill is not

Checked one by one against the department’s site selection list, the nominated centres on this readership’s map include Kellyville, Bella Vista, Norwest, Hills Showground, Castle Hill and Baulkham Hills, along with Blacktown, Seven Hills, Hornsby, Epping and Westmead.

The list runs wider across the north west and the inner west. Doonside, Mount Druitt, Waitara, Asquith, Eastwood, Macquarie Park, Meadowbank, North Ryde, Top Ryde and West Ryde are all named. So are five shopping centres, Carlingford Court, Northmead Village, Pennant Hills Market Place, Thornleigh Marketplace and Winston Hills Mall, which means the 800 metres can be walked from a car park rather than a platform.

Checked the same way, the following places do not appear on the list at all. Rouse Hill, Tallawong, Cherrybrook, Schofields, Riverstone, Quakers Hill, Marsden Park, The Ponds, Box Hill, Wentworthville and Toongabbie. Rouse Hill and Tallawong sit on the same metro line as Kellyville and Bella Vista, one and two stops further out, and neither picked up the Stage 2 controls.

What this means if you own the house

The controls attach to the land itself, so a neighbour can lodge an application whether or not anyone else in the street wants it. That is the practical shock for owners who assume a quiet street stays quiet because everyone in it agrees.

If an agent or a site consolidator knocks and asks several neighbours to sell as one parcel, the list is the first thing to check, then the walking distance. A property inside 400 metres of a nominated centre sits under a different ceiling to one at 600 metres, and a property in a suburb that never made the list sits under neither. Nothing in the policy obliges anyone to sell, and neighbours approached together are under no obligation to answer together.

Independent legal advice before signing an option or an expression of interest costs far less than the document itself, whichever band the house sits in.

What this means if you are renting

The same list reads differently from a rental. More permitted floor space close to stations is the supply side of the policy, and it arrives slowly. The department’s material on the related precinct work describes a delivery period of 10 to 15 years and beyond, so nothing here moves a rent this year or next.

The piece that touches affordability directly is narrower and specific. In the accelerated precinct work at Kellyville and Bella Vista, mandatory affordable housing contributions apply across the precinct, with a 3 per cent base rate on all sites and higher rates of up to 10 per cent on eight key sites. That is a defined obligation on every new residential development in the precinct, and worth following as each site comes forward.

Kellyville and Bella Vista already went further

The Hills pair did not wait for the state wide controls. The Kellyville and Bella Vista accelerated precinct was exhibited from 9 July to 23 August 2024, drew 5,390 submissions, and the rezoning took effect on 27 November 2024. It creates capacity for 4,600 new homes and 3,800 new jobs, with those mandatory affordable housing contributions set at a 3 per cent base rate across all sites and up to 10 per cent on eight key sites. Glenwood and Stanhope Gardens were in the draft and were taken out after consultation, which is worth remembering for anyone who assumes a submission changes nothing.

Hornsby went through the same process across the same dates, drew 337 submissions, a small fraction of the Hills response, and was finalised on 27 November 2024, the same day. It creates capacity for more than 6,000 homes, plus a further 1,000 in key areas, and 2,900 jobs. Across all eight Transport Oriented Development accelerated precincts, the NSW Government has committed $520 million for community infrastructure, including critical road upgrades, active transport links and public open spaces. The Kellyville and Bella Vista rezoning passes its second anniversary on 27 November 2026.

The question put to the department

The Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure runs this policy day to day. It publishes the site selection list, the summary of key provisions that sets out heights and floor space ratios, and the precinct pages that record how many submissions each proposal drew. It also decides which town centres and stations are nominated in the first place.

Paul Scully MP holds the portfolio as Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, and both the state wide controls and the accelerated precincts sit inside it. The list of 171 centres does more work than any other part of the policy, because it decides whose street is covered and whose is untouched. Questions about why one metro suburb is named and the next one out is absent belong with the minister and his department.

For a household in Kellyville, Castle Hill or Westmead, the useful step is to find the property on the list, work out the walking distance, and know which set of rules applies before anyone knocks. For a household in Rouse Hill, Schofields or Quakers Hill, it is to understand that a decision was made about their suburb without a letter arriving to say so. Planning changes of this kind are easiest to question in the quiet window before the first approval notice lands in a letterbox, and very hard to argue with afterwards.