Professionals

Summary: Boasting a prime waterfront location and home to mostly high-density housing mixed with a handful of stunning waterfront homes and cottages, McMahons Point is expensive but provides a gorgeous blend of views and convenience for those who can afford it. With the city just a stone’s throw away and excellent public transport connectivity – plus a range of dining options within – it’s a lovely peninsula, but limited on space for those with regular budgets. 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.
Read Review

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: 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.
Read Review

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.
Read Review

Summary: At its core, Gymea ranks as the most versatile of the Sutherland Shire suburbs, with a solid across-the-board balance of all the benefits we look for in an enjoyable place to live. Its central location relative to the rest of its neighbours combine with its train connectivity and immediate access to main roads to make it highly accessible, while its diversity of housing types make for a place not only the highly wealthy can afford.

Its dining and cafe scene has grown to the point where it’s not only nice, it’s – dare we say – actually trendy, with a very good array of amenities despite some awkward parking in order to access them. This is balanced out further by its solid array of schools, leafy surrounds and actual options for adult entertainment to make for a Shire suburb that feels far less “boring” than many of its peers, while still not yet being overdeveloped. Its lack of parkland and some traffic issues are its only real downsides; this is one of our favourite suburbs in Sydney in terms of balanced places to live. Read Review

Summary: One of the most well-equipped suburbs in all of Sydney, Lidcombe is home to an immense amount of variety in multiple forms – housing, businesses, restaurants, streetscapes, and even cultures. It’s one of the city’s best hubs for Korean and mixed international dining, while lacking for almost no single amenity; if there’s a shop or service you’re looking for – both large and small – Lidcombe likely has it. There’s simply a ton to potentially do here.

Its location sits in a convenient position for accessing both Sydney’s east and west, while its public transport connections see a high volume of services in either direction as well. This is a busy suburb that can be noisy and a little hectic, and its major road arteries experience some eye-watering traffic, but it also contains a large range of different “pockets” of living that can suit a wide variety of people of different budget levels and life situations – while being pretty reasonable value and quite safe, too.
Read Review

Summary: Close to major public amenities and arterial roads yet somehow still feeling “tucked away”, Botany to Sydney’s south-east retains a self-contained, village-style atmosphere despite being relatively close to Sydney city. It boasts the signature, slightly “beachy” elements of the Bayside region despite not having much of an actual beach, with its historic and mostly low-lying homes fringing an inner section that has had large blocks of modern apartments plonked in over recent years.

It’s home to a decent array of restaurants, cafes and amenities along its main dining strip along with the occasional cool and trendy cafe dotted throughout elsewhere, and also offers some truly massive and excellently-equipped slices of parkland to go with all the rest of its leafy greenery. Botany also plays host to a substantial array of businesses and warehouse-style workplaces, offering the potential to both live and work in the one spot. It’s an appealing suburb overall, with traffic/parking and a lack of rail connectivity its main glaring negatives.
Read Review

Summary: An interesting mix of both budget high-density living and the ridiculously high end, Kensington in the “Inner South East” is an extremely diverse suburb that contains fragments of all the varied parts of Sydney both past and present. Squat and ugly mid-rise apartment blocks sit alongside grand Federation homes; slick modern gyms neighbour long-running, old-time local Asian restaurants & abandoned storefronts – all while massive, gorgeous parks and prominent public works lie just a street or two away.

It’s a highly central and well-located suburb that offers numerous demographics a chance at city-adjacent living, with good public transport connectivity and a helping of busy and noisy roads all mixed in. Sprinkle in some absolutely gorgeous pockets of wealthy living, a handful of impressive historic buildings, and an education-oriented chunk of student-heavy society, and you’ve got a recipe for one of the more eclectic suburbs Sydney has to offer. And, one that can often be as cheap – or expensive – as you like.
Read Review

Summary: Grand, historic and full of character, Haberfield is one of Sydney’s most charismatic suburbs that retains much of its legacy without the taint of more sterile modern development creeping in. Its Italian heritage remains obvious, not only in its excellent array of quality dining and cafes on offer, but the demographics and faces of its older residents as well. Heritage homes with picturesque gardens and quiet back streets contrast with some semi-industrial and traffic-packed parts of its extremities to form quite a contrast, however.

With a physical position that puts it within easy striking distance of the CBD along with its spacious, low-density housing blocks, it’s should be no surprise that Haberfield is highly expensive and priced out of reach for most. Add in traffic concerns with its arterial roads and some issues with aircraft noise, and Haberfield definitely isn’t perfect – but it certainly is pretty, and a part of Sydney everyone should visit at least once. Read Review