Why can't I just look this up myself?

Australia has no public, parcel-level register of social housing. State agencies publish suburb and area-level statistics, not addresses, and titles are held under agency and provider names that are not obvious from a search. Working out whether one specific address is social housing means cross-checking title records, provider registers and area data by hand — which is what you are paying for.

Which addresses do you check?

The properties immediately adjoining the one you are considering. For a house that normally means the dwellings either side and directly opposite. For a unit or apartment it means the other lots in the same block plus the neighbouring street numbers. You see the list before you pay and can add or remove addresses.

How long does a report take?

Most reports are ready within 24 hours. Every address is researched by a person, not an automated lookup, so timing varies with how clear the records are. The report page updates on its own — you do not need to wait on it.

From A$99 as a one-off payment. The price steps with how many neighbouring addresses your report covers — A$99 for up to 5, rising to A$359 for up to 50 — and one report covers them all. There is no subscription and no account to create, and you see the exact price before you pay.

What if the answer is unknown?

Some addresses cannot be resolved from the available records — a title held through a trust or an unregistered arrangement, for example. Those rows are marked unknown with a note explaining what was checked. We would rather tell you that than guess.

Is this a legal report?

No. It is a research service based on publicly available information, accurate as at the last-checked date shown on each row. It is not legal, financial or planning advice, and it does not replace your conveyancer's due diligence.

What is not included?

This report answers one question: is the neighbouring property public or social housing? It does not cover crime statistics, planning permits or development applications, noise complaints, or demographic profiles of the area.

How to find out if a property is public or social housing in Australia

Q: What counts as public or social housing in Australia?

Public housing is owned and managed by a state or territory government agency — Homes Victoria, Homes NSW, the Queensland Department of Housing and their equivalents. Community housing is owned or managed by a registered not-for-profit provider, often on behalf of government. Together they are usually described as social housing. Next Door Check reports on both, and the notes on each row tell you which one applies.

If you're about to make an offer, it's a fair question to ask whether the house or unit — or the ones next door — is public or community housing. In Australia the honest answer is that it's harder to check than most people expect. Here's what the terms mean, why there's no single lookup, and the steps you can take yourself before deciding whether it's worth having someone check for you.

Public housing, community housing, social housing — what's the difference?

Public housing is owned and managed by a state or territory government agency. Each state has its own — Homes NSW, Homes Victoria, Queensland's Department of Housing and their equivalents. Community housing is owned or managed by a registered not-for-profit provider, often on behalf of government. Together, the two are usually described as social housing. When people ask “is my neighbour public housing?” they nearly always mean either of these.

Why you can't just look it up

There is no public, parcel-level register of social housing in Australia. Governments and providers publish statistics by suburb or local area — how many social housing dwellings a region has — but not a list of addresses. There are good privacy reasons for that: tenants shouldn't be identifiable from an open dataset.

On top of that, ownership is rarely obvious. Title can be held under a government department, a state authority, the “Director of Housing”, a community housing provider, or a subsidiary or trust that doesn't look like housing at all. So even a title search doesn't always give you a clean yes or no.

What you can check yourself

Order a title search. A title search through your state's land registry (or a broker) shows the registered proprietor. If it's a housing department or authority, that's a strong signal. If it's a company or trust, you'll need to work out who's behind it — which is where it gets slow.
Check the community housing register. Most providers are registered under the National Regulatory System for Community Housing (NRSCH), and Victoria and WA run their own registers. These list providers, not property addresses, so they only help once you have a name from the title.
Read area-level statistics. ABS Census data and state housing dashboards tell you how much social housing a suburb has. That sets your expectations for a street, but it will never confirm a specific house.
Ask the selling agent. A direct question sometimes gets a direct answer — but an agent isn't obliged to know or disclose what's next door, and “I'm not sure” is common.
Look, carefully. On-the- ground cues exist, but they're unreliable and easy to get wrong. Modern social housing is deliberately built to blend in, so don't treat appearance as an answer.

Where the records live, state by state

The agency that holds public housing differs in every state and territory, and the historic names still show up on old records:

New South Wales — Homes NSW: Public housing sits with Homes NSW; community housing is run by registered not-for-profit providers.
Victoria — Homes Victoria (Director of Housing): Public stock is held by the Director of Housing; community housing is delivered by registered agencies.
Queensland — Department of Housing: Titles are commonly held under the State of Queensland or the department, not a name you'd recognise from a listing.
South Australia — SA Housing Trust (SA Housing Authority): Long-standing Housing Trust stock is mixed through many established suburbs.
Western Australia — Department of Communities (formerly Homeswest): Older Homeswest properties may still appear under legacy names on historic records.
Tasmania — Homes Tasmania: Homes Tasmania now holds the state's public housing role.
ACT — Housing ACT: Public housing is deliberately distributed across suburbs rather than concentrated.
Northern Territory — Territory Families, Housing and Communities: Remote and urban public housing is managed by the territory government.

When it's worth having someone check for you

Doing all of this for one address is a few hours of work; doing it for every property next door, on a deadline, before an auction, is more than most buyers want to take on. That's the gap Next Door Check fills: we research the immediate neighbours by hand against public and community housing records and give you a yes / no / unknown per address, with notes and the date each was checked — for a one-off A$99, with no account to create.

Check the neighbours before you offer

Enter an address and we'll tell you what's next door, usually within 24 hours.

Check an address

This guide is general information, accurate as at the date shown, and is not legal, financial or planning advice. Read our frequently asked questions for more on how the report works.