Trees and the Local Council

Okay, so one of the things that I should share with you is that our new block, the site for our new home is covered with trees.  As well as an old house that we plan to knock-down and replace, there are about 20 mature trees on the block – all natives - and we live in an area that where the local council (by reputation at least) are very protective of trees.

And I have been worrying a bit about the trees.

 

A bit of Background

When we bought the house, we bought it from a woman who had being trying her hand at a bit of property development – arriving from overseas several years previously, she had bought two houses in the same suburb with a view to knocking them down and building units.  She had (as far as I can tell) come unstuck by three problems (i) a big mortgage that could not be serviced by the rents she was getting (old houses due for demolition don’t rent well) (ii) a fall in the value of the properties she had bought between 2010 and 2012 and (iii) trees.

We know all this because (and this is an absolutely true story) a day or so after agreeing the price and signing contracts to buy one of her property, her “business associate” had arrived on the front doorstep of our home to try to convince us to back out of the deal.  He explained that the woman was in big trouble with her family in the motherland – turns out it was not her money she was using as capital and that she wanted to re-negotiate the deal.  We declined, and this is when he changed tactic and told us that we would never be able to build on the site because the council would never let us cut down any of the trees.

So trees have been on my mind for a while, and I decided that I would give the council a call to find out if what challenges lay ahead of us.  I spoke to a friendly lady at the council offices who asked me three key questions, before giving me some feedback:

• What is the address of the property?   I told her the address.
• Are you aware of any vegetation overlay on the property?   “No.”
• Are you planning on knocking down the house to build units or townhouses.  “No.”

Having answered these she quickly confirmed “yep, I’ve checked the address and there definitely is no overlay and if you are planning to knock down the existing house to build a single residence, then you are fine.”  And that was that!

It seemed all too easy so I drilled in a bit more.   It turns out that this council takes a pretty dim view of knocking down trees to build units and townhouses, so property developers need to do their homework.  However, unless there is an overlay on the title, then I am pretty much free to do as I please.

 

Timmmmmberr!!!!

 

As an afterthought, I should add that I am actually a fan of trees and one of the reasons that we like the block of land and suburb is the trees.  However, in our case, a sadly, quite a number of them will need to be removed to make way for the construction of our new house.