DA-Approved Childcare Sites: What Buyers and Developers Should Know
A DA-approved childcare site is not a childcare centre. It is a permission — a council-stamped right to build a centre of a defined size on a particular piece of land. Nothing has been built, no children are enrolled, and there is no income. Yet in the right location that permission now sells for a premium of its own, and buyers are competing hard to pay it.
What a DA Actually Buys You — and What It Doesn’t
Three separate approvals stand between bare land and a trading childcare centre: planning approval (the development consent, or DA), building approval (a Construction Certificate before any works begin), and service approval from the regulatory authority before a single child walks in. A DA-approved site clears the first of those three — and it is usually the slowest, most contested, and most uncertain of the lot. For the full end-to-end pathway, see our guide to the DA process for a new childcare centre.
That is the whole proposition. When you buy a DA-approved site you are buying the removal of planning risk: you no longer have to gamble on whether the council and the state will let a centre exist there. What you are not buying is a finished asset. You still have to fund and complete the build, satisfy every condition of consent, obtain your Construction Certificate, and then secure service and provider approval to operate.
The single most important number on the consent is the approved place count. That figure is the revenue ceiling under everything the centre will ever be worth — a 90-place approval and a 60-place approval on similar land are two very different assets. The place count is driven by the site’s unencumbered indoor and outdoor area under the national regulations, which we break down in our article on council requirements for childcare development in NSW. Read the place count first; everything else is detail.
ChildcareLink Insight: A DA is not a building permit — it’s a value statement. The approved place count sets the ceiling on revenue, and revenue sets the price. Before you make an offer on an approved site, it’s worth modelling what the finished, leased centre would be worth and working backwards. Our 60-second estimator gives you that end-value anchor so you can judge whether the asking price for the approval still leaves a developer’s margin. |
Why DA-Approved Sites Are Trading at a Premium
The premium comes down to two things buyers value highly: speed and certainty. Securing a childcare DA can take well over a year and there is no guarantee of the outcome. A site that already holds consent lets an operator or developer skip that queue and get to market in a fraction of the time — and that head start is what they are paying for.
The competition is real. According to The Sector (November 2025), Colliers sold three DA-approved childcare sites in Western Sydney in a single run, with owner-occupiers paying premiums to lock in locations for their own centres. One of those, a Cambridge Park site approved for 90 places, sold for $3.15 million after drawing more than 95 enquiries and six formal offers. That is auction-grade demand for a block of land with a piece of paper attached.
It sits inside a hot wider market. CBRE Research’s March 2026 Early Education report (cited via Burgess Rawson and Stonebridge) put 2025 childcare property transactions at roughly $1.44 billion, with about $188 million already done in the opening quarter of 2026. Yields have tightened as institutional money has returned: prime metropolitan centres with brand-name operators on long leases are trading around 4.25%–5.00%, secondary and regional-core stock around 5.00%–5.75%, and regional centres around 5.25%–6.25%. With the Reserve Bank holding the cash rate at 4.10% through April 2026, a long-leased childcare asset still clears the funding cost — which keeps developers chasing sites to feed that demand. (We unpack what those yield bands mean for returns in our guide to childcare property as an investment.)
Government policy is adding fuel. The federal Building Early Education Fund commits $1 billion to expand supply — $500 million in grants to providers and $500 million for the Commonwealth to build and lease centres itself — targeting around 160 new or expanded services in under-served areas. More operators wanting more centres, with fewer planning headaches, means more buyers for every approved site that comes up.
The Five Things to Check Before You Pay the Premium
A premium is only worth paying where the approval removes genuine risk. These are the checks that decide that.
1. Read the conditions of consent, not just the headline. A DA always comes with conditions — and some are expensive or deal-changing. Car parking numbers, hours of operation, traffic and acoustic works, landscaping, and contributions can all sit inside the consent. A 100-place approval capped at restrictive hours, or burdened with heavy upfront works, is not the asset the cover page suggests.
2. Check the lapse date. A development consent does not last forever. If physical work has not commenced before the consent’s lapse date, the approval expires and you are back to square one. Confirm exactly how long is left and what counts as commencement — buying an approval with months on the clock is a very different risk to one with years.
3. Verify the place count against the land. Confirm the approved number of places and that the plans actually deliver the unencumbered indoor and outdoor area the regulations require for it. The place count is the asset; make sure it is real and buildable as drawn.
4. Model the build honestly. The approval is the start of the spend, not the end of it. Cost the construction, the Construction Certificate stage, and the working capital to carry an empty centre through lease-up, then test whether the numbers still work. This is exactly the discipline of a proper feasibility study, and the same build-versus-buy maths we set out in greenfield vs established childcare.
5. Stress-test the catchment. An approval in an over-supplied suburb is a permission to compete for children who are already spoken for. Some metropolitan pockets are now genuinely saturated, and industry commentators have flagged a tipping point in parts of the market. Pull the supply pipeline and demographics before you fall in love with the consent — our article on demographics and site selection shows how we read a catchment.
ChildcareLink Insight: The mistake we see most often is treating a DA as proof a centre will succeed. It isn’t. The approval proves you can build — not that the local market needs another centre or that the build stacks up at today’s costs. Pay the premium where consent was hard to win and demand is real; walk away where the approval is easy to replicate and the catchment is already full. |
For Sellers and Landowners
If you own land with a childcare DA — or land that could win one — the approval is your product. A development consent crystallises latent value: it converts “this might be suitable for a centre one day” into a defined, transferable, priced asset that operators and developers can act on immediately. The Western Sydney results show how deep that buyer pool currently runs.
Timing and presentation matter. An approval with plenty of time before lapse, clean and clearly summarised conditions, and a credible place count will draw a stronger field than one buyers have to untangle themselves. The work of getting the consent investor-ready costs weeks of preparation; the difference it makes to the final price is paid in full at settlement.
Key Takeaway
A DA-approved childcare site sells the removal of planning risk — real, valuable, and increasingly expensive in growth corridors. But the approval is a beginning, not a finished centre: the build, the conditions, the lapse date, and above all the catchment still decide whether the premium was worth paying.
Looking at a DA-approved childcare site, or holding land you think could win consent? Talk to ChildcareLink for specialist development advice and a confidential view on what the approval is really worth. Visit childcarelink.com.au or contact our team directly.
Sources
- The Sector — “Demand surge for DA-approved childcare sites in Western Sydney” (November 2025): Cambridge Park sale and Colliers campaign data
- CBRE Research — “Early Education” report (March 2026), cited via Burgess Rawson and Stonebridge: 2025–26 transaction volumes and yield bands
- Reserve Bank of Australia — cash rate decision (held at 4.10%, April 2026)
- Australian Government Department of Education — Building Early Education Fund announcement
- NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment framework — development consent lapse dates and Construction Certificate requirements (general practice)
- Elite Agent (2026) — commentary on localised childcare oversupply
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or professional advice. ChildcareLink recommends seeking independent professional advice tailored to your specific circumstances before making any business or investment decisions.
