Building approvals, live development applications and major projects across the Port Phillip statistical area — covering Port Phillip and Melbourne.
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.
What councils and certifiers have formally permitted — the ABS series, published about four months in arrears.
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 1,208.
Dwelling approvals a year per 100 existing dwellings.
Detached houses as a share of existing homes, against the share of recent approvals.
Share of each year’s approvals.
The same approvals, measured against the population they have to house.
People added for every new address verified, against the size of an average local household.
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.
Dwellings a year: what is currently being approved, against what the 2041 population projection implies.
Implied need assumes the average household stays at today’s 2.1 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. 11 of them carry an AreaSearch analyst assessment — look for the Analysed marker in the search below.
Estimated value of applications by development type. This is the clearest single picture of what kind of place Port Phillip is being asked to become. A further 143 applications sit across 2 smaller categories, too few to plot.
As reported by the council. Highlighted rows are applications still in assessment.
1 application is still marked under assessment but was lodged more than 18 months ago. Councils often leave determined or abandoned applications open in their feeds, so it is counted here but excluded from the live queue above.
A further 2,979 applications carry no status in the council feed.
Applications on record within each council area that overlaps Port Phillip. This counts applications inside this statistical area only — it is not a total for the council.
No current list of the largest applications can be shown for Port Phillip. 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 3,014 applications AreaSearch holds for this area, lodged between Feb 2013 and Jun 2020, are counted in the figures above.
What is funded and moving — the projects large enough to change how Port Phillip works, ranked by committed value and how close they are to delivery.
Level Crossing Removal Project removing the Maddox Road and Champion Road level crossings by constructing new rail bridges over Maddox Road, permanently closing Champion Road at the rail line, extending Akuna…
A 400 million dollar mixed-use precinct at 474 St Kilda Road featuring 244 luxury residential apartments across Garden Homes, Sky Manor residences, and penthouses. The development integrates Australia's first…
A 35 to 40-storey build-to-rent tower featuring 406 apartments, designed by LiFE Architecture with a facade inspired by aviation heritage. The project includes extensive amenities such as a wellness podium…
63 further projects in Port Phillip are not listed here.
Combined values on this page exclude 1 whole-of-state program that reaches this area but are not local to it, and 7 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 $2.01bn across 3 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.
Development applications around Port Phillip
SOURCE: Planning portals and council registers, compiled by AreaSearch. Distance & bearing measured from the suburb midpoint.
Applications and major projects plotted where they are actually proposed, with the 108 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.
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 Port Phillip.
| Local government area | Share of Port Phillip | Applications on record | Register read to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Port Phillip | 100% of residents | 2,827 | January 2026 |
| Melbourne | 0.0% of residents | 187 | December 2025 |
The same view of building approvals, applications and major projects for areas neighbouring Port Phillip.
Port Phillip is Statistical Area Level 3 20605 in the ABS Australian Statistical Geography Standard (2021 edition), made up of 8 Statistical Areas Level 2. It has an estimated 114,628 residents, +12.4% since the 2021 Census.
| 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 | January 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.
The ABS recorded 1,113 dwelling approvals across Port Phillip in the 2024-25 financial year, against a five-year average of 1,208 a year.
AreaSearch tracks 3,014 development applications of material scale across Port Phillip — routine minor works such as signage and fencing are not included, so this is not a count of every application lodged, of which 1 remain in assessment. Applications are assessed within the Port Phillip and Melbourne local government areas. The most recent application in our data was lodged in January 2026.
AreaSearch tracks 78 current major projects in Port Phillip, 32 of them under construction. The largest include Newport Level Crossing Removal - Maddox Road and Champion Road, Park Quarter and Local South Melbourne.
Port Phillip is an ABS Statistical Area Level 3. It is covered by parts of 2 local government areas — Port Phillip and Melbourne. AreaSearch publishes development figures at ABS statistical boundaries rather than council boundaries, so they reconcile with the official ABS series.
On development approvals, Port Phillip is adding new dwellings faster than Victoria as a whole — 1.38 approvals per 100 existing dwellings a year against the state figure of 0.80.
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 January 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.