Do you need a permit for a knockdown in Victoria?

Building permit first

Demolishing a dwelling is building work. Your building surveyor is the person who tells you what the permit requires. Owner-builders and licensed builders both still sit in that system. If someone says “she’ll be right, it’s only a house”, ask them to put that in writing next to their registration number.

The permit can constrain hours, hoarding, public protection, and what happens to the crossover. Those conditions become part of our programme. If they arrive after we have quoted, the quote may move. Better to have them early.

When extra conditions show up

Heritage overlays — inner Melbourne, goldfields towns, some bayside and river pockets. The building you want gone may not be a simple knock. Ballarat and Bendigo cottages are the obvious regional examples. Parts of Footscray, Brunswick and Preston can surprise people who assumed “old weatherboard means easy”.

Bushfire-prone land, flooding overlays, and vegetation controls change what you can do with trees and when you can work. Maribyrnong river pockets, peninsula hinterland, and some regional edges are the usual places this comes up.

If the site is a shop with a dwelling, or a warehouse in a residential street, planning may have opinions too. We are demolition. Planning sits with you and your consultant.

What we need to see

Permit status, surveyor name if you have one, and any overlay you already know about. If you do not know, say that. We would rather walk the site and send you back to the surveyor than guess a start date we cannot keep.