vs Hiring a Town Planner
Use Feasibly to filter. Hire a planner for the shortlist.
A good town planner is worth every dollar — on the three sites you actually want to buy. The other twelve don't need a $1,500 desktop review. They need a 30-second screen.
Head to head
What each one is actually for
Planners and Feasibly do different things. Picking the wrong one costs money or risk.
| Hiring a town planner | With Feasibly | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Formal advice, signed off by a qualified professional. Relied upon for bidding, contracts, or council submission. | Preliminary screening. A filter, not a decision. Not for formal reliance. |
| Coverage | Deep, context-aware, includes judgement on grey areas. | Broad. Schedule-grade facts. No judgement calls. |
| Turnaround | 3-10 business days per desktop review. | 30 seconds. |
| Cost | $500-$2,500 per site. | $0.03-$0.15 per site. |
| Strongest at | Interpreting overlay intent, precedent, VCAT risk, council politics. | Returning the schedule, overlays, envelope, and subdivision indicator as structured data. |
| Weakest at | Not cost-effective for filtering a 20-site pipeline. | Can't tell you whether council will approve a particular variation. |
| Can you rely on it? | Yes — that's what you're paying for. | No, every response carries a "not professional planning advice" disclaimer. |
Decision
The decision
Use Feasibly when you need to...
- Screen a pipeline of candidate sites
- Answer a client's first zoning question on the phone
- Know the envelope before sketching
- Spot a heritage overlay before you pay for a report
- Batch-check a dozen addresses from an email
Hire a planner when you need to...
- Make a bid or buy decision on a specific site
- Interpret whether a variation might succeed
- Prepare advice that will be relied on
- Navigate VCAT, council objections, or PSA referrals
- Write a planning report for submission
Closing
Our honest position
- Feasibly is not a planner replacement. It's the filter you run before you call one.
- The planners who use Feasibly use it daily — to answer client intake calls faster and reserve their billable hours for the sites that deserve them.
- If you're doing fewer than 5 sites a year, hire a planner for all of them.
- If you're doing more, the filter is the difference between chasing 15 leads and closing 3.