Chatswood has 20 state significant applications in assessment right now. None of it is what people think it is.

Chatswood is not a quiet suburb right now. It is the busiest CBD on the North Shore. Twenty State Significant Development applications are under assessment for Chatswood, which together could deliver almost 6,000 new homes. That single fact is the most useful starting point for understanding what is actually happening there.

One project alone, twin towers of 58 and 60 storeys carrying 552 apartments, among the largest residential proposals in the state's current pipeline, has been on public exhibition with sales already underway. A separate rezoning of a former Sydney Metro works site would allow towers from 25 up to 56 storeys and as many as 1,500 homes, with its first stage a 23-storey build-to-rent block for essential workers.

The correction worth making

Chatswood is not a Transport Oriented Development accelerated precinct, and it is not a tier-2 TOD station. The only North Shore TOD tier-2 stations are Roseville, Lindfield, Killara and Gordon, and the only North Shore TOD accelerated precinct is Crows Nest. Whatever is driving Chatswood's pipeline, it is not the TOD policy.

What is actually driving it: the Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy, in force within 800 metres of the Chatswood CBD since February 2025, and a wave of individual State Significant Development and Housing Delivery Authority applications on specific properties, assessed by the state rather than council. Council itself estimates the low and mid-rise policy alone adds 2,380 to 4,760 dwellings of capacity on top of 6,500 homes it had already rezoned for, in council's own words without matching infrastructure funding.

Several large towers already approved illustrate the pattern: a 46-storey, 260-apartment build-to-rent tower approved by the state over council's objection and more than 140 public objections; a proposal to demolish an existing retail centre for a tower of up to 32 storeys and 325 apartments, seeking to remove the floor space ratio cap entirely; and a 35-storey tower approved through a state affordable-housing bonus pathway that exceeded local height and floor space limits by a wide margin.

Market context, for scale: Chatswood's median house price rose roughly 4.7 per cent over the 12 months to mid 2026, one of the few North Shore suburbs still rising while Sydney-wide auction clearance has been weak.