“Which Sydney suburb is best for me to live in?”
It’s one of the most commonly-asked questions for those looking to relocate to Australia’s flagship city, both from overseas, for those relocating from interstate – or even long-term Sydneysiders considering a change.
It’s also a question my wife and I had to ask ourselves in 2018 when we decided to move back to Sydney to further our careers from the Gold Coast in Queensland. What seemed like it should be a relatively simple task quickly became obvious how lacking the Internet was in centralised, comprehensive answers in a single spot.
Hours upon hours of trawling out-of-date online forums, biased blogs, “Most Liveable Suburb” junk media articles which basically advise everyone to live in the richest suburbs in the city, word of mouth from relatives who had only ever lived in one spot, half-serious Reddit threads and much more, and we’d ended up not much further ahead than when we started.
It also doesn’t help that a lot of the “real estate” websites out there for Australia are filled with dodgy real estate agents writing fake reviews about how great! every suburb they operate in is, or are written by biased locals who live there (and have never lived anywhere else).
As a result, we decided to make a master list of dozens of potential Sydney suburbs that we’d heard a mixture of good and bad things about, then say “screw it” and fly down and visit them all in person over the course of several weeks. It soon became apparent that a ton of what’s online was different to reality; some Sydney suburbs received an unfairly hard go, while others were pleasant on the surface but had plenty of things wrong that would affect people in their daily lives.
How pet friendly is a suburb? If a suburb is noisy, does that necessarily make it “bad” for everyone, in every age group? If a suburb is gorgeous, safe, convenient – and costs millions of dollars to buy in – how does that help an average person on an average income?
These are just some of the factors we’ve aimed to consider on Sydney Suburb Reviews, as we break down in detail each of the major suburbs in Sydney based on the most popular criteria people online – and we ourselves – ask for in a place to live in Sydney.
In the end, the question we’re looking to solve is:
What Sydney suburb(s) offers the best possible quality of life, for the greatest number of people, for the cheapest possible price?
We hope this site helps save you time and make your choice of where to live just a little bit more easy; if it does, then we feel we’ve done our job – and hope you enjoy your time in this eclectic, amazing global city.