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 four schemes below cover most of the South East Queensland lots we assess. Treat the figures as the scheme position we verified in August 2026 — councils amend their schemes, so the number that matters is the one we confirm in writing for your lot at the site assessment.

Brisbane (Brisbane City Plan 2014): a secondary dwelling of up to 80 m² gross floor area in most residential zones (up to 100 m² on rural land), located within 20 metres of the main house, with total site cover across all structures generally within 50%. Within those limits it is assessed as part of the dwelling house — the accepted-development fast lane.

Moreton Bay: the Better Housing Amendment (in effect 30 October 2024) introduced a tiered cap tied to lot size — 45 m² GFA on lots of 450–800 m², 55 m² on lots over 800 m², and up to 100 m² in rural and rural-residential zones. The secondary dwelling must sit within 10 metres of the main house in the general residential zone (50 metres in rural zones).

Logan: up to 70 m² in residential zones on lots under 1,000 m², and up to 100 m² on larger lots. Logan also has a second, separate pathway unique to its scheme — the "auxiliary unit" (minimum 450 m² lot, up to two bedrooms) — which pre-dates the state reform and has its own rules and infrastructure-charge treatment. Which pathway fits your lot is part of our written assessment.

Gold Coast: up to 80 m² GFA in residential zones and 90 m² in rural-residential, with a maximum of two bedrooms; council can consider larger proposals (up to around 120 m²) on their merits, but above 80 m² infrastructure charges apply. 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.

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 caps of 90–100 m² in 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.