All but 11 of the 374 privately owned urban homes destroyed in the January 2003 bushfires have been rebuilt.
Five of the 11 undeveloped blocks are still held by the original owner at the time of the bushfires. Building has started on one of the blocks but the remaining four blocks are vacant.
The other six blocks have been on-sold and on-sold again by different owners.
There were 488 homes destroyed in the January 18 firestorm nine years ago today. They consist of 374 urban homes, 87 rural properties (23 privately-owned, 64 government-owned) and 27 government-owned houses in the city.
Environment and Sustainable Development director-general David Papps said usually homeowners from the time of purchase had 12 months to start construction and two years to complete their home before penalties started to be applied.
Mr Papps said people who didn't build on a block of land within two years could face a fine, an order directing them to do certain things or ultimately have their leasehold terminated by the Government.
The Government had taken a ''more sympathetic'' approach to the owners of bushfire blocks over the past nearly decade since the disaster.
No penalties had been applied to the owners of the 11 undeveloped blocks.
Mr Papps said the Government was in contact with the four original owners who nine years later had still not rebuilt, some of whom had ''suffered quite severe emotional and financial distress''.
''We're working with those four to get through the issues,'' he said.
Mr Papps said the same leeway had not been given to people who had bought a bushfire block and still not developed on it but the Government was ''starting the clock again'' on the rebuild deadline each time a block was resold.
''Of those blocks on-sold, there is at least one in which we are taking an interest. They are not an original owner and ... won't meet the deadline to start rebuilding,'' he said.
The Government tried to work with the owners first, before resorting to penalties.
Revoking the leasehold was a last-resort option.
Having enough resources to ensure compliance had been an issue. The Government had allocated an additional $598,000 over the past two years to increase resourcing to ensure people who were building new homes met the two-year construction deadline. That funding was for compliance on all properties, not just bushfire-affected blocks.
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