Regulated and significant trees. Anything with a trunk circumference over 2m (3m for significant) needs approval to prune hard or remove, and Burnside checks. Budget an arborist before the architect.

Also: Creeks under the streets: stormwater easements on more blocks than the maps suggest.

Historic Area Overlays over almost the whole council. You can do nearly anything at the back and almost nothing at the front. Ceiling heights of 3.3m make every square metre of renovation dearer.

Also: Rear two-storey additions are the local building type.

Bluestone frontages that must stay, and some of the worst salt damp in Adelaide behind them. The council will not let you render the stone; the stone will not let you skip the damp course.

Also: Narrow blocks with no side access. Crane hire is a normal line item.

Character overlays along the old tram-line streets. Hammerhead subdivisions at the back are how the suburb grows without changing its face.

Adelaide's smallest council. The planner will ring you back the same day and say no just as quickly.

Two-for-one country. The General Neighbourhood Zone minimums make most 750m²+ blocks splittable, and the Bay of Biscay clay under them makes every slab a Class H conversation.

Also: Hills Face Zone at the top of Athelstone: effectively no subdivision above the line.

The Hills Face Zone runs through the council. On the wrong side of it you need a BAL assessment for a carport.

Also: Reservoir catchment rules near Hope Valley.

The cheapest subdivision play in metro Adelaide: Trust homes on flat 700m² blocks near the train line. Council processes a lot of them and is quick about it.

The Gawler River flood overlay. It decides what you can build in Angle Vale and Virginia more than the zone does.

Also: Playford Alive renewal: whole Trust streets rebuilt at once.

Adelaide's busiest infill council by volume. Findon, Woodville and Henley are going two-for-one, and the council has a template response for every objection you can think of.

Also: Airport flight-path overlays on the southern streets.

The airport. Height limits, acoustic construction requirements and a noise contour map that determines your glazing spec before you pick a colour.

Sand and sea. Basements fight the water table, steel fixings rust three streets back from the beach, and the coastal overlay follows the dunes.

Also: Character zones protect the interwar streets of Brighton and Glenelg.

Big flat blocks near Westfield that turn into three courtyard homes. Marion has approved more of them than almost anyone.

Also: Coastal cliff overlays at Hallett Cove.

Historic Conservation over the village, Brownhill Creek's flood overlay through the middle, and slate under the topsoil in Blackwood. Three reasons a Mitcham quote is never the cheap one.

The biggest council in the state by population, so every kind of rule at once: coastal overlays at Christies, the Character Preservation District locking McLaren Vale's vines, reservoir catchments at Happy Valley.

Bushfire everything. High and Flame Zone BAL ratings, tree protection, and deciduous gardens that the community would chain themselves to. Nothing in Stirling gets demolished.

Also: Septic and wastewater approvals on unsewered blocks.

The fastest-growing council in SA and the site costs to match: reactive clay plus slope means Class H slabs and a "site cost allowance" that is never enough.

Old industrial land turned residential. Kilburn, Lightsview and the Port have contamination histories to read before the soil test. Renewal SA is rebuilding whole Trust streets.

Also: Heritage zoning across Semaphore's foreshore.

A heritage-protected 1840s town with brand-new estates ten minutes' walk away. Two planning conversations, one council.

The strictest Neighbourhood Character overlays in Melbourne. A rebuild that sails through Monash gets redesigned twice in Brighton.

More heritage-listed properties than almost any council in Australia. Assume your house is one until told otherwise, and budget for a heritage consultant before an architect.

Heritage controls that cover the colour of your front door. Fitzroy and Richmond do not demolish; they extend backwards and downwards.

Also: Flood overlay along the river flats of Richmond.

Party walls, no side access and 1870s footings in Carlton. Every renovation is a logistics job before it is a building job.

Interwar apartment blocks are the signature housing, and 1930s plumbing is the signature problem. Owners corporations decide more than council does.

Parking overlays and car-space minimums that shape what you can build on a Prahran or Malvern block as much as the heritage rules do.

Dual occupancies on every second block. Glen Eira wrote the playbook for the townhouse pair, and sandy loam makes them cheap to slab.

Melbourne's knockdown capital. Glen Waverley's school zone turned 1960s cream brick into land value, and the council processes rebuilds on an industrial scale.

The Box Hill Metropolitan Activity Centre. Heights that would be unthinkable three streets away are normal at the station.

The Significant Landscape Overlay. In Templestowe the tree permit comes before the building permit, and the council has a very good memory for stumps.

Also: Old orchard cool-store sites in soil reports.

Bluestone from the old quarries under Brunswick and Coburg. Excavation quotes here carry a rock clause and the council knows why.

Reservoir and Preston: dual occupancies across the whole council, and level-crossing removals that repriced everything in five years.

Former industrial land. Environmental audits are part of buying in Footscray, and the council will ask for one before it asks for your plans.

Essendon Fields flight paths. Aircraft noise contours set glazing and insulation specs on streets that look nothing like an airport suburb.

Sunshine's future airport-rail station. Height limits near the station are rising, and the old Harvester Works land comes with a contamination file.

Basalt clay and near-surface rock. Site costs in Tarneit and Werribee run $10K-$20K past the builder's standard allowance, and the council has heard every complaint about it.

The most reactive clay in metro Melbourne. Class H2 and E slabs are normal, and articulation joints are not optional.

Basalt floaters in Craigieburn. Ask the concreter about rock excavation before you sign a fixed site-cost allowance.

Growth-corridor drainage. The Merri and Darebin creek corridors carry flood overlays through estates that look bone dry.

Berwick's big blocks next to Cranbourne's small ones. Sandy soils across most of the council make slabs cheaper than the west, but the low ground near the wetlands has a high water table.

Where the growth corridor meets the Bunyip flood plain. Pakenham's drainage reserves are there for a reason.

Three or four units on a 700m² block. Some of the highest unit-development density in Melbourne, and a council that processes it fast.

Ringwood is a Metropolitan Activity Centre. Height limits near Eastland change street by street; check yours before you assume two storeys is the ceiling.

Bayside pools. Victoria requires pool registration and a compliance certificate every 4 years, and Kingston's beach suburbs have more pools than most.

Townhouse pairs near the station and the beach, single rebuilds only in Frankston South. Two rulebooks a few streets apart.

The Green Wedge. Suburbs cannot spread, so every bit of growth goes into replacing what is already there, and the shire guards the boundary like a border.