"Lot 12 DP 123456" means lot 12 in deposited plan 123456. A street address is how a house is found. The lot and plan is how the land itself is identified in law.
A deposited plan (DP) is the usual kind: it fixes the boundaries of the lots it creates. A strata plan (SP) goes a step further and divides a building, and the land it stands on, into lots that can be owned one by one, such as the units in a block. Plans are registered with NSW Land Registry Services.
Some older plans are divided into sections, so a lot can carry a section number too: lot 12, section 3 of a deposited plan. The short form puts the lot before a slash and the plan after it, as in 12/123456. Where a section has to be shown, it sits between the two, and where there is none a dash or an empty space often holds its place, as in 12/-/DP123456.
In a strata scheme the building and its land sit on one strata plan. Each unit is a lot on that plan, and the parts that are not lots are common property. The registered strata plan shows the lot boundaries and helps show what is common property. What is bought is the lot and a share of the common property, with levies and by-laws attached.
A townhouse can be on Torrens title, strata title or community title, so "townhouse" alone does not say which. In New South Wales a community plan is registered with a deposited plan number, so its lots are written "Lot 5 DP 270123" and the number alone does not show that the lot is in a community scheme.
Because the state's map of parcels draws a scheme as a single parcel, a map search for a unit often returns the strata plan with no lot number. The unit's lot number is on its title and in the contract.
New lots reach the state's parcel data within about ten working days of the plan being lodged, so a brand-new lot may not show up straight away.
The report prints the lot and plan for the parcel the address sits in, as the state's cadastre records it: for example "Lot 19, DP 271067", or "Strata Plan 13720" for a strata scheme. It does not show a section number, so where the land is in a section of an older plan, the title search is the authority. For a strata plan it says the address is one lot within a scheme, and that the scheme's levies and by-laws are not shown by any planning layer. It gives the parcel's area from the cadastre, marked approximate, and, where the lot is close to a rectangle, a width and depth derived from the outline. For a strata unit, that area and those dimensions describe the whole scheme's land, not the unit.
It is not a title search. It does not show the owner, mortgages or the easements recorded on the title, and for a unit it may give the strata plan without the unit's lot number. The cadastre is an index of parcels, not a survey; the plan carries the real dimensions. See easements for what the title can add, and land value for why a strata figure covers the whole scheme. The hazard map and the council pages show what is mapped in each council area.
Check an addressReports from $9.90 including GST, paid once. The price belongs to the jurisdiction the address is in; the check is free and tells you the exact total for your address, and which registers cover it, before you pay anything.
In New South Wales, a lot and plan number identifies a parcel of land by its lot number and the registered plan that created it: for example, Lot 12 in Deposited Plan 123456, written 12/123456.
A deposited plan (DP) sets the boundaries of the lots it creates. A strata plan (SP) divides a building and its land into lots that can be owned separately, and whatever is not in a lot is common property. Plans are registered with NSW Land Registry Services.
Adapted from the NSW Planning Portal. © State of New South Wales and Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure 2026, CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
General information about New South Wales registers. Not legal, planning or valuation advice for any particular property.