Building approvals, live development applications and major projects across the
Melton - Bacchus Marsh statistical area — covering Melton and Moorabool.
SA3 21304Greater Melbourne259,196 residents15 statistical areas
The PipelineDevelopment Pipeline in Melton - Bacchus Marsh
1 Proposed1,657applications on record, though this council feed does not publish assessment statusLatest August 2026See applications ↓
2 Approved4,701dwellings approved in 2024-25, or 1.88 per 100 existing dwellings a yearOfficial · ABS to June 2026See approvals ↓
3 Building146major projects committed or under construction, 93 of them already on siteForward · completions to 2030+See projects ↓
4 Delivered22,204new addresses verified since the 2021 Census, up 24.9% on the existing baseActual · to June 2026Where it landed ↓
In the 2024-25 financial year the ABS recorded 4,701 dwelling approvals across Melton - Bacchus Marsh. AreaSearch tracks 146 major projects here that are committed or under construction, the largest being Melbourne Airport Rail (SRL Airport) at an estimated $12.0bn. On the ground, 22,204 new addresses have been verified since the 2021 Census — growth of 24.9% on the existing address base.
These four figures are deliberately not added together. An application, an
approval and a project under construction are often the same building at three points in its life,
measured by three different bodies with three different lags. Read them as a sequence, not a total.
ApprovedBuilding Approvals in Melton - Bacchus Marsh
What councils and certifiers have formally
permitted — the ABS series, published about four months in arrears.
Approvals are running at 1.88 per 100 existing dwellings a year, well above the Victoria rate of 0.80. Development here remains overwhelmingly detached: houses account for 86% of recent approvals. The mix being approved closely matches what is already standing — 90% houses against 91% of existing homes. The average approved dwelling is valued at $348,000 in construction cost.
For its size, Melton - Bacchus Marsh is adding 1.88 dwellings a year per 100 existing homes — well above the Victoria rate of 0.80 and the national rate of 0.71. That is about 19.4 approvals a year for every 1,000 residents. Building intensity has risen by about 22% across the published series.
Measured against people rather than housing stock, Melton - Bacchus Marsh is approving 18.04 dwellings a year per 1,000 residents — well above the Victoria rate of 7.97. The two rate views differ by household size, which here averages 3.2 people per home. Housing the projection to 2041 would need about 12.23 per 1,000 residents a year.
Dwelling approvals a year per 100 existing
homes, with Victoria and Australia for comparison. This is the
same activity as the totals view, divided by the size of the area — which is the only
fair way to compare a large SA3 with a small one.
Dwelling approvals a year per 1,000
residents, each year divided by that year’s estimated resident
population (ABS ERP at 30 June), not by today’s — which matters most in fast-growing
areas, where a fixed denominator can understate the early years by half. The most recent periods use the latest published ERP, as the population series runs a year behind approvals. Read it alongside the per-100-homes view: the two differ wherever household size does.
Dwelling units approved each financial year. The dashed line is the five-year average of 5,031.
How intensively is it building?
Dwelling approvals a year per 100 existing dwellings.
Melton - Bacchus Marsh1.88
Victoria0.80
Australia0.71
What is here, and what is coming
Detached houses as a share of existing homes,
against the share of recent approvals.
Existing homes (2021 Census)91%
Approved, last 5 years90%
Approved, latest year86%
Detached housesApartments, townhouses & other
Approvals mix by year
Share of each year’s approvals.
2022
2023
2024
2025
2024-25
$1.80bn
Residential work approved
2024-25
$691m
Commercial work approved
construction cost
$348,000
Average value per approved dwelling
last two years
53
Residents per approval
Supply & DemandIs Melton - Bacchus Marsh Building Enough Homes?
The same approvals, measured against the population
they have to house.
Melton - Bacchus Marsh approves about 19.4 new dwellings a year for every 1,000 residents. Since the 2021 Census it has added 60,757 residents and 22,204 new addresses, roughly one new home per 2.7 extra residents — broadly in step with an average household of 3.2. Housing the population projected for 2041 implies roughly 3,170 new dwellings a year from here, which puts the recent approval rate of 5,031 a year comfortably ahead of what the projection needs.
Growth against supply since the Census
People added for every new address verified,
against the size of an average local household.
People added per new home2.7
Average household size3.2
A bar longer than the household average means
the area gained more residents than its new housing could hold, and the extra had to be
absorbed by existing homes.
Approval rate against projected need
Dwellings a year: what is currently being
approved, against what the 2041 population projection implies.
Approved (5-yr average)5,031
Implied need to 20413,170
Implied need assumes the average household stays
at today’s 3.2 people. Approvals are not
completions, and not every approval is built.
What is being asked for right now — applications
collected from council planning portals, before any of it reaches the ABS series above.
AreaSearch tracks applications of material scale; routine minor works such as signage and
fencing changes are not carried, so these are not counts of every application lodged. 24
of them carry an AreaSearch analyst assessment — look for the
Analysed marker in the search below.
AreaSearch tracks 1,657 development applications of material scale lodged with councils across Melton - Bacchus Marsh, the most recent in August 2026. The biggest categories in the queue by value are commercial, industrial and retail.
Estimated value of applications by development type. This is the clearest
single picture of what kind of place Melton - Bacchus Marsh is being asked to become. A further 16 applications sit across
2 smaller categories,
too few to plot.
Where the applications stand
As reported by the council. Highlighted rows are
applications still in assessment.
Complete23
Advertising6
Referrals2
Completed - More info Lapsed1
Delegate Report1
More Information-Post 28 days1
A further 1,623 applications carry no status in the council feed.
By local government area
Applications on record within each council area that
overlaps Melton - Bacchus Marsh. This counts applications inside this
statistical area only — it is not a total for the council.
Melton1,350
Moorabool307
No current list of the largest applications can be shown for Melton - Bacchus Marsh.
Nothing on record here is both still open and lodged within the last
18 months. Victoria has no
state-wide planning portal and its council coverage is uneven, so what AreaSearch can
collect here is a record of past activity rather than a live queue. We are currently
investigating a solution. The
1,657 applications AreaSearch holds for this area, lodged
between Aug 2005 and Dec 2025, are counted in the figures above.
BuildingFORWARDMajor Projects & Infrastructure in Melton - Bacchus Marsh
What is funded and moving — the projects large enough
to change how Melton - Bacchus Marsh works, ranked by committed value and how close
they are to delivery.
AreaSearch tracks 146 current projects across Melton - Bacchus Marsh. The largest is Melbourne Airport Rail (SRL Airport) at an estimated $12.0bn, due by 2033. That breaks down as 93 under construction, 17 approved and awaiting a start and 36 still in planning. The pipeline is weighted toward communities, precincts & urban renewal, residential development and communities.
Under construction$650mby 2027
Melton Line Upgrade and Level Crossing Removals
A major Victorian Government rail program that combines the removal of four level crossings in Melton and Truganina (Coburns Road, Exford Road, Ferris Road and Hopkins Road) with a wider upgrade of the Melton…
A $650 million upgrade to the Melton Line to enable 9-car VLocity trains, increasing peak capacity by 50%. The project includes extending platforms at Cobblebank, Rockbank, Caroline Springs, and Deer Park…
The 650 million dollar Melton Line Upgrade is preparing the corridor to run longer 9-car VLocity trains from 2027, one year ahead of schedule, boosting peak passenger capacity by 50 per cent. The project…
131 further projects in
Melton - Bacchus Marsh are not listed here.
Combined values on this page exclude
12 records that appear to be
separate stages of a project already counted. Both are still listed
above with their own values.
Denotes AI-based impression for illustrative purposes only, not to be taken as
definitive under any circumstances. Please follow links and conduct other
investigations from the project’s source for actual imagery. Developers and
project owners wishing us to use original imagery please Contact
Us and we will do so.
Beyond 2030:
a further $52.7bn across
26 projects with completion dates further out — mostly precinct-scale programs whose dates are
indicative. Kept out of the chart so the years you can act on stay readable.
Estimated value of tracked projects by the year they are due to
complete, stacked by how certain they are. The dark band is money already being spent;
the pale band is still an intention. Estimates are indicative and mix infrastructure
cost with whole-of-precinct development value, so read the shape rather than the totals.
Approvals PipelineDevelopment Applications in Melton - Bacchus Marsh
Development applications around
Melton - Bacchus Marsh
Development approvals is a new addition to AreaSearch.
We’re actively expanding council coverage and refining the dataset — details and statuses for some councils may be partial. Check back regularly for the latest pipeline.
Application search is not available in Victoria.
AreaSearch holds 1,657 applications for Melton - Bacchus Marsh, but they are a record of past activity rather than a current register. Victoria has no state-wide planning portal and its council coverage is uneven, so we
have switched the search off here rather than return partial answers. We are
currently investigating a solution. No credits are charged for Victorian
applications, and building approvals from the ABS and the major projects we track
are unaffected.
SOURCE: Planning portals and council registers, compiled by AreaSearch. Distance & bearing measured from the suburb midpoint.
ProfessionalPRODevelopment Map for Melton - Bacchus Marsh
Applications and major projects plotted where
they are actually proposed, with the
202 projects AreaSearch tracks here on their own tab — filterable by type, delivery stage,
area and committed value. To search every application on record rather
than this sample, use the section above.
DistributionWhere Development Is Happening in Melton - Bacchus Marsh
Melton - Bacchus Marsh covers 15 statistical areas. Follow any of them through for a full profile of population, housing, sales and amenity at local scale.
Map builder
Each area below opens a map builder on its own page — a tool for
putting a map and a table into a report. Pick the place types you want plotted
(schools, supermarkets, medical, child care, transport and the rest of what
AreaSearch holds), add development applications as their own layer, drop your own
points, then recolour, renumber and export the result as a table or CSV.
A this area only toggle clips everything to the boundary you are looking at.
Searches are charged against your credit balance — 1 credit per 40
results from AreaSearch data — and setting filters costs nothing until
you search. The builder works on one suburb-sized area at a time, which is why it
opens per area rather than across the whole of
Melton - Bacchus Marsh.
Melton - Bacchus Marsh spans 2 local government areas — Melton and Moorabool. Applications here are assessed by whichever of those councils the site falls within. AreaSearch publishes development
figures at ABS statistical boundaries rather than council boundaries. That is deliberate: the ABS
issues a separate official building-approvals series for local government areas, and totals
built up from statistical areas would not match it. Reporting at SA3 keeps every figure on this page
reconcilable with the published ABS series.
Local government area
Share of Melton - Bacchus Marsh
Applications on record
Register read to
Melton
88% of residents
1,350
August 2026
Moorabool
12% of residents
307
July 2026
CompareNearby Development Hubs
The same view of building approvals, applications and
major projects for areas neighbouring Melton - Bacchus Marsh.
Data & MethodSources & Method for Melton - Bacchus Marsh
The four tenses, and what each one can tell you
Proposed — development applications
Collected from council planning portals. The
earliest signal available, but the least certain: many applications are amended,
withdrawn or refused, values are the applicant’s own estimate, and coverage
varies by council. This is a curated set, not the full council feed:
AreaSearch carries applications of material scale and does not track routine minor
works such as signage, fencing or small alterations, so the counts here are lower
than a council’s own total lodgement figure and should not be compared with it. Applications still shown as under assessment more than
18 months after lodgement are reported separately
and kept out of the live-queue figures: the age profile of open applications is
sharply split between a genuine queue under a year old and a long tail of records
councils never closed. Not every state publishes a cost of works — Queensland,
the Northern Territory and the ACT publish none at all — so on those pages
applications are counted rather than valued and no dollar figure is shown
rather than a partial one. Treated here as a snapshot of the current queue only —
AreaSearch does not chart application counts over time, because the history
reflects when each portal was collected rather than when development happened.
Approved — ABS building approvals
The official series, aggregated to SA3 from
ABS building approvals data, currently published to June 2026.
Counts dwelling units approved, not buildings and not completions. The most recent
financial year is annualised from nine months of data wherever it appears and is
labelled as such.
Building — major projects
Projects tracked individually by AreaSearch
from Infrastructure Australia, state infrastructure agencies, developer disclosures
and council records. Values are estimates and delivery dates are targets. Ranked on
this page by committed value and delivery stage rather than by distance.
Delivered — verified new addresses
New residential addresses verified in the national
address register since the 2021 Census. This is the closest available measure of what has
actually been built, though address creation can lead occupation and lags
construction. It is not a completions count.
Boundaries
Melton - Bacchus Marsh is Statistical Area Level 3 21304 in the ABS Australian Statistical Geography Standard (2021 edition), made up of 15 Statistical Areas Level 2.
It has an estimated 259,196 residents, +30.6% since the 2021 Census.
Currency
Measure
Source
To
Dwelling approvals, five-year average
ABS / AreaSearch
June 2026
House share of approvals
ABS / AreaSearch
June 2026
Residents per approval
ABS / AreaSearch
June 2026
Value per approved dwelling
ABS / AreaSearch
June 2026
Commercial work approved
ABS / AreaSearch
June 2026
Verified new addresses since the Census
Address register / AreaSearch
May 2026
Development applications
Council planning portals
August 2026
Major projects
Infrastructure Australia / state agencies / AreaSearch
Ongoing
Figures on this page are read live from the
AreaSearch database each time it loads, so they update as soon as a source does.
Development in Melton - Bacchus Marsh — common questions
How many new dwellings were approved in Melton - Bacchus Marsh?
The ABS recorded 4,701 dwelling approvals across Melton - Bacchus Marsh in the 2024-25 financial year, against a five-year average of 5,031 a year.
How many development applications are lodged in Melton - Bacchus Marsh?
AreaSearch tracks 1,657 development applications of material scale across Melton - Bacchus Marsh — routine minor works such as signage and fencing are not included, so this is not a count of every application lodged. Applications are assessed within the Melton and Moorabool local government areas. The most recent application in our data was lodged in August 2026.
What major projects are planned for Melton - Bacchus Marsh?
AreaSearch tracks 146 current major projects in Melton - Bacchus Marsh, 93 of them under construction. The largest include Melton Line Upgrade and Level Crossing Removals, Melton Line Upgrade & Cobblebank Stabling Yard and Melton Line Upgrade.
Which council covers Melton - Bacchus Marsh?
Melton - Bacchus Marsh is an ABS Statistical Area Level 3. It is covered by parts of 2 local government areas — Melton and Moorabool. AreaSearch publishes development figures at ABS statistical boundaries rather than council boundaries, so they reconcile with the official ABS series.
Is Melton - Bacchus Marsh growing faster than the rest of Victoria?
On development approvals, Melton - Bacchus Marsh is adding new dwellings faster than Victoria as a whole — 1.88 approvals per 100 existing dwellings a year against the state figure of 0.80.
How current is this development data?
ABS building approvals are published with a lag of roughly four months; this page carries the series to June 2026. Development applications are collected from council planning portals and refresh continuously, with the most recent application here lodged in August 2026. Major project records are reviewed on an ongoing basis. Each section carries its own currency label so the four are never confused.
Development data is provided for general information.
Estimated values, dwelling counts and delivery dates come from the lodging or delivering party and
are not independently verified by AreaSearch. Confirm anything material with the relevant council
or agency before relying on it.
Denotes AI-based impression for illustrative purposes only, not to be taken as
definitive under any circumstances. Please follow links and conduct other
investigations from the project’s source for actual imagery. Developers and
project owners wishing us to use original imagery please Contact
Us and we will do so.