Granny flat rules in Queensland —
approvals, sizes and renting law.

Before September 2022, most Queensland planning schemes only allowed a secondary dwelling to be occupied by members of the same household as the main house — think elderly parents or adult children. Renting it to an unrelated tenant on the open market was, in planning terms, a different (and usually unapprovable) use.

On 26 September 2022 the Queensland Government amended the Planning Regulation 2017 to remove that restriction across the whole state. The reform’s logic, in the government’s own words, is that the relationships between occupants of a dwelling "should not be considered in a planning assessment of how land is used". The practical effect: any secondary dwelling can now be rented to anyone — family, friends, or a tenant you have never met — regardless of which council you are in.

Two things did NOT change, and this is where most online summaries go wrong. First, the approval requirements to build a secondary dwelling are untouched: you still need building approval, and depending on your council and zone you may still need planning (development) approval. Second, the moment you rent it out, Queensland tenancy law applies in full — bond, agreement, minimum housing standards. Both are covered in detail below, because getting them right is exactly what turns a backyard build into a durable second income stream.

Whether a secondary dwelling needs planning (development) approval depends on your council’s planning scheme and your zone. The good news: in most low-density and general residential zones across South East Queensland, a secondary dwelling that stays within the scheme’s limits — size cap, distance from the main house, site cover, setbacks — is "accepted development", meaning no development application, no neighbour notification, and no council planning fee. You go straight to building approval.

Fall outside a limit — larger than the cap, further from the main house than allowed, or on land with an overlay such as flood, bushfire hazard or character — and the project does not die; it moves to a development-approval pathway where council assesses it on its merits. Rural and acreage lots often sit here too. That pathway is routine work for us: we prepare the application, deal with council, and confirm your timing in writing after the site assessment rather than guessing.

The Queensland Government is also progressively standardising these rules: a draft State Code for secondary dwellings was consulted from 30 September to 12 November 2024, and a state-wide Queensland Housing Code covering houses and secondary dwellings is being phased in. Until your council formally adopts the new standards, its current planning scheme remains the operative test — which is why we check the live scheme for your exact lot, in writing, before you commit to anything.

The state sets the framework; your council sets the numbers. The figures below were re-read from each council’s own planning scheme or fact sheet in September 2026. Councils amend their schemes, so the number that matters is the one we confirm in writing for your lot at the site assessment. For the full eleven-council comparison — including Noosa, Scenic Rim, Somerset and Lockyer Valley, the shared-meter rules and the infrastructure-charge position of each — see Granny flat rules by council, Queensland. The clause-level restatement, with the provision and verification date on every row, is the Queensland reference spec sheet.

Brisbane (Brisbane City Plan 2014, v36): a secondary dwelling of up to 80 m² gross floor area, located within 20 metres of the dwelling house, with total site cover generally within 50%. Within those limits it is assessed as part of the dwelling house — the accepted-development fast lane. The “100 m² on rural land” figure repeated on builder sites was not found in the code when we read it. A pending major amendment (Package L, not adopted at September 2026) would cut the cap to the lesser of 80 m² or 10% of the site area.

Moreton Bay (MBRC Planning Scheme v7, Better Housing Amendment, in effect 30 October 2024): 45 m² GFA on lots of 450–800 m² and 55 m² on lots over 800 m². The unit must not sit in front of the house and, if freestanding, must be within 10 metres of it. A minimum lot of 450 m² with a 10 m frontage applies (600 m² and 12.5 m in the Suburban neighbourhood and Coastal communities precincts). RAD19 also requires a single shared water and electricity meter — which has a tenancy consequence: on a shared water meter, Queensland law does not let you pass water consumption to a tenant.

Logan (Logan Planning Scheme 2015, v9.2): up to 70 m² in residential zones on lots under 1,000 m², and up to 100 m² on larger lots, excluding garages, carports, decks and patios. There is no minimum lot size and no 20-metre proximity rule in Logan’s scheme — the requirement is that the unit sit beside, within or behind the primary dwelling, never in front of it. Logan does levy infrastructure charges on a secondary dwelling, at the dwelling-house rate. A separate “auxiliary unit” pathway (minimum 450 m² lot, up to two bedrooms) pre-dates the state reform and has its own rules.

Gold Coast (Gold Coast City Plan 2016, v13): up to 80 m² GFA and a maximum of two bedrooms, attached to or within 10 metres of the house in the standard residential zones — 90 m² and within 20 metres in the Rural and Rural residential zones. The council’s Charges Resolution (No. 1) of 2025 applies no adopted infrastructure charge to a secondary dwelling of 80 m² or less; above that, the dwelling-house charge applies. As everywhere, exceeding a cap doesn’t end the project — it changes the approval pathway, and we tell you which one you are on before you spend anything.

Three neighbouring SEQ schemes we also track. Sunshine Coast (Planning Scheme 2014): up to 60 m² GFA in urban zones, 90 m² in the rural zones and 45 m² in the Moffat Beach / Shelly Beach / Dicky Beach area, on a regular-shaped lot of at least 600 m², within 20 metres of the house, sharing its water meter. Ipswich (Ipswich City Plan 2025, v2): a lot-size ladder — 60 m² on lots of 450–600 m², 90 m² on 600–800 m² and 120 m² above 800 m², with no band below 450 m² and no infrastructure charges at all. Redland (City Plan v14): the scheme contains no GFA cap for a secondary dwelling — size is controlled through the council’s Amenity and Aesthetics guideline, whose 85 m² / 112 m² / 160 m² figures are referral and charge thresholds rather than a limit.

Queensland also lets you rent room-by-room — and for a two-bedroom secondary dwelling this is a workable configuration, provided you know exactly where the legal lines sit. Two separate regimes can be triggered by room-by-room renting, and both have clear numeric thresholds.

Line one — the RTRA Act’s rooming accommodation provisions (s 15): where residents rent a room and share facilities such as the kitchen or bathroom, the arrangement is "rooming accommodation" and uses the rooming agreement (Form R18) with its own rights and duties, instead of a general tenancy. One carve-out matters for owner-occupiers: if the owner lives on the premises and rents out no more than three rooms, the arrangement sits outside the Act entirely; from four or more rented rooms, the rooming accommodation provisions apply.

Line two — the Residential Services (Accreditation) Act 2002: once you provide accommodation to four or more residents who each pay rent individually and share facilities, you are operating a registrable "residential service" — registration and accreditation with the state regulator become mandatory, with substantial penalties for operating unregistered. This is the line that separates "renting out a couple of rooms" from "operating a boarding house".

Read those lines against a two-bedroom secondary dwelling and the position is comfortable: two residents renting two rooms sits under both thresholds — no residential-service registration, and a clean documented setup using the correct agreement type. We set the structure up with you (agreement type, bond lodgement, standards checklist) so the paperwork matches the configuration from day one. And if your ambitions are bigger — three, four or more separately rented rooms across the property — that is not a dead end either: it is a rooming-accommodation / residential-service compliance project with registration steps we can scope with you before you commit.

A meaningful share of Queensland enquiries come from acreage and rural-residential owners — lots with room to spare, and often the strongest case for a second dwelling. The rules there are friendlier on size (rural and large-lot caps of 90–100 m² in several of the schemes above) but stricter on process: rural zones and overlay-affected land are where development approval, bushfire hazard and flood mapping most often enter the picture.

None of that is a reason to stop; it is a reason to sequence properly. Bushfire-prone land means the build is designed to the required bushfire attack level; flood-mapped land means floor levels and siting respond to the mapping; character and heritage overlays shape materials and placement. Each of these is a known, solvable design input — what they change is the approval pathway and the timeline, which is exactly why for overlay and rural lots we work on one rule: permit pathway, timing confirmed in writing after site assessment.

The site assessment itself is free and produces a written answer: your zone, your overlays, your council’s size cap, which approval pathway applies, and what the sequence looks like. You know where you stand before you have spent anything.

Plenty of our Queensland clients also hold property south of the border, and the frameworks are genuinely different. Victoria went furthest: since Amendment VC253 (December 2023), a small second dwelling of 60 m² or less needs no planning permit at all on most residential lots over 300 m² — only a building permit — with overlays (bushfire, flood) restoring the permit requirement. The complete picture is in our Victorian small second dwelling guide.

New South Wales runs the longest-standing fast lane: under the Housing SEPP 2021, a secondary dwelling of up to 60 m² on a residential lot of 450 m² or more can be approved by a private certifier on a statutory 20-day clock — and NSW has allowed renting it to anyone since 2009. CDC vs DA, rural zones and the 2024–25 tenancy reforms are covered in our NSW granny flat rules guide.

What Queensland has that neither southern state does: council-set size caps that go beyond 60 m² — up to 80 m² in Brisbane and Gold Coast, more on rural land — which is why a Queensland secondary dwelling can be the largest of the three states’ builds. What all three share: one secondary dwelling per lot, same title, no subdivision, building approval always.