Families

Summary: Relatively tiny and subdued, and prominently green and bushy, Loftus on the southern end of Sutherland Shire is a fairly bare-bones suburb that’s oriented around offering roomy housing, train connectivity, peace & quiet – and not much else.

It’s almost entirely reliant on its proximity to neighbouring Engadine & Sutherland for services and retail, with only a tiny strip of boutique storefronts and a couple of educational facilities in terms of amenities. In return, you get a highly peaceful and safe streetscape with close proximity to large-scale greenery, and immediate access to a large arterial road.

With a only minimal dining & shopping scene to speak of, its main benefit involves being able to obtain a detached, freestanding home for a more reasonable price by Sydney standards – and enjoying a train-based CBD commute with the guaranteed prospect of always getting a seat in the morning. If peace and price are your two main concerns, Loftus certainly delivers; however in recent times its house prices have climbed along with the rest of Sydney.
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Summary: Tucked away and rarely discussed, Milperra in Western Sydney quietly offers a bastion of sneaky-good value living for those after a detached house not too far from the Sydney CBD. That this pocket of well-kept residential living is “hidden” behind half of a suburb which is otherwise unappealing warehousing and industrial estates allows it to fly under the radar.

Home to a healthy array of parks, reserves, ovals and other green spaces large and small, a nice little smattering of local shops and bigger stores on its fringes, and a low crime rate, Milperra only really has two real glaring flaws. With a lack of a train station its driving-dependent, while its homogenous housing profile means its “freestanding house or look elsewhere”; if neither of those apply to you, then Milperra provides a potentially great value place to live given its location. Read Review

Summary: Sitting in a location that positions it quite central to the majority of ‘everyday’ Sydney, Beverly Hills is a suburb that offers convenience and some unique dashes of character in return for a few elements that could do with a bit of a spit shine. This is a fairly well-equipped suburb with a couple of interesting quirks in terms of dining – including Americana-esque ‘diner’ style food – alongside traditional restaurants and a decent array of amenities, all dissected by some highly-trafficked major roads.

This leads to a streetscape of contrasts, with surprisingly leafy and roomy residential streets that gradually fade away into busy and 80’s-Sydney-style amenity strips that are functional, if not exactly pretty. Where exactly you live within the suburb itself thus becomes fairly important, with ambient traffic noise an annoyance in some areas and a near-complete non-factor in others. Add in easy major arterial road access – albeit with typical Sydney traffic problems – handy train connectivity, a surprisingly extensive array of cute parks both little and large, plentiful schools, and this is a pretty eclectic suburb with both highs and lows on offer. Read Review

Summary: Well-equipped, safe and convenient – and with the added benefit of water views – Gladesville is a suburb that sits just outside “inner” Sydney yet is still close enough to provide all the benefits of easy city access when required. Home to an extensive array of amenities and a reasonably diverse housing profile that skews upper-end, Gladesville is also highly leafy with countless parks, reserves and little hidden walks amongst peaceful streets which bely its otherwise central physical location.

This is a suburb that can be both quiet when you need it, yet has enough action for those seeking it, to be quite versatile overall with only a couple of factors – such as high property prices, lack of rail connectivity and some slight aircraft noise – that work together to hold it back. Outside of these, Gladesville checks a ton of boxes, and rates as a highly desirable overall as a place to live.
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Summary: Historic yet dotted with modern elements, while both prestigious and trendy, Randwick in the eastern suburbs makes for one of the most interesting and eclectic suburbs in Sydney. Your average slice of wealthy and uneventful suburbia this is not; Randwick’s prime location and abundance of amenities make it a buzzing spot with a ton to see and do, and for multiple purposes – whether that be dining, shopping, sightseeing, or simply admiring its varied streetscape.

Randwick’s varied range of home styles and sizes are a living representation of the decades of Sydney’s evolution, often sitting side-by-side with one another. Meanwhile its multiple intersection-based hubs of cafes, restaurants & boutiques, sandstone and glass-made buildings and array of significant public spaces means there’s something new to see and do around almost every corner. It’s also increasingly well-connected via public transport services, is a stone’s throw from the beach, and largely safe. It’s also prohibitively expensive for property despite its extensive older high-density housing, has notable parking issues, and can fluctuate between noisy or utterly peaceful depending on which individual street you should live. Read Review

Summary: Having undergone a fairly significant central facelift in recent years while still retaining its surrounding character, Kirrawee in Sutherland Shire is a suburb in which the drastic changes will be immediately obvious for those who haven’t visited for several years. Its main inner hub has been massively modernised and provides a concentration of new, slick housing and retail, while its external streets still offer diverse housing both large and small as well as pretty bush-style greenery.

It fares well in terms of transport connections by both road and rail – although the road side of things are under increased stress and stuck in “catch-up” mode for the time being. It also provides a surprisingly good array of dining and boutique spots for food and drink that couple with its quality education offerings, opportunities for employment, and safe and well-kept overall streetscape to make for a versatile and appealing suburb that can cater to multiple budget levels and life stages. Read Review

Summary: For a suburb that’s not physically too large, Wentworthville located to Sydney’s west packs quite a lot into the space it has. This is a slice of Sydney that contains a relatively balanced mix of everything, with a leaning towards the impressive side in terms of amenities – largely Indian-influenced – in particular. It’s home to a very diverse housing profile, centered mainly around clusters of single-level freestanding homes on occasionally-pretty streets that are gradually being encroached on by more and more low and mid-rise apartment blocks.

There’s an aura of ongoing construction and renovation to Wentworthville that can be seen in its continuing excess of higher-density buildings, but also its improving public facilities. While it’s not a “beautiful” suburb on the whole, it’s likely better than you think, and its above-average public transport, proximity to Parramatta, and somewhat affordable homes make up for its sometimes-hectic atmosphere and some traffic issues. Overall, it’s probably slightly underrated – particularly for families due to an abundance of childcare.
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Summary: One of the pinnacles of where Sydney’s mix of wealth and bushland greenery collide, Wahroonga on the Upper North Shore is a showcase of pretty gardens, sprawling mansions and estates, and the occasional helping of unit blocks, little amenities and local shops sprinkled in. There’s an element of prestige that permeates almost everything within the suburb’s boundaries, from its homes, to its schools, to even the cleanliness and upkeep of its convenient train station which offers easy access down into Sydney city.

While it’s impressive to gawk at and wander its largely-peaceful streets, Wahroonga also has a practical element to it, with a decent smattering of amenities & dining throughout, a relatively easy drive into the CBD, and access to larger-scale shopping not far away. Other than its obvious price barrier to entry – boasting some of the most expensive real estate in the region – it’s lacking in “entertainment” of any kind outside of dining, although it boasts an extremely low crime rate in return, too. There are plenty of more boring suburbs, despite its reputation.
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Summary: One for those who like a little extra room to move – without being a wasteland lacking in amenities – Menai in Sutherland Shire provides a more reasonably-priced chance at a larger freestanding home. This comes without the extra fee for having a train station that multiple other suburbs in the region have tacked on. Both dotted with and surrounded by bushland, it’s a place where buildings and houses have a wider footprint in general, being mostly built out horizontally instead of vertically.

Its combination of multiple shopping centres and increasing hubs for dining combines with its array of educational opportunities to make for solid diversity for families as well. Distance from the city is a required sacrifice of living here, and while its fringing bushland offers walking opportunities, it has had issues with exposure to fires in the past. It’s also best as a base for those who can work either in the Western Suburbs or elsewhere in the Shire or southern Sydney, with owning a car basically essential for daily life. Read Review

Summary: Balancing the space and peaceful appeal of Sutherland Shire with one of southern Sydney’s most concentrated hubs of amenities, Miranda strikes a fairly even balance of the busy versus the serene. Its solid public transport connectivity via both road and rail combine with its sheer variety of housing types – on both the high and low end of the economic scale – to make for a good variety of options for daily life.

It’s increasingly becoming too busy for its own good however due to rapidly increasing high-density construction, making both traffic and parking ongoing issues. Its station and social housing areas combine to contribute to the odd crime issue as well, making for a suburb in which its central section is a massive contrast to its external residential areas. These offer much more roomy, relaxed and greenery-draped living – although at some increasingly eye-watering prices.
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