Sydney pockets where buyers can still score value in an otherwise punishing real estate market have been exposed in a new study.
As the Harbour City grapples with a dire shortage of stand-alone houses and sky-high prices, the newly released PRD Smart Moves 2026 report has pinpointed postcodes offering genuine affordability and better “liveability”.
Report author Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo, the chief economist at property group PRD, said recent price falls meant many of these areas offered “a window of opportunity” to get into the market for less, before expected interest rate cuts in 2027 pushed up prices again.
“The prices are a little bit softer, you can get good value, but these (conditions) may only be temporary,” she said.
The sales market has changed in recent months Picture: Steve Pohlner
For buyers hunting for a stand-alone house, western suburbs Granville, Chester Hill, and Merrylands were signalled as the three best “smart moves” due to lower entry prices, improving facilities, strong transport links and crime levels lower than the Sydney average.
Granville has a median house price of $1,275,000, while Chester Hill sits at $1,410,000, and Merrylands at $1,450,000 — all dramatically lower than the $2m prices that remain the norm in much of Greater Sydney.
Other pockets of better value for buyers were in Sydney’s southwest, including Yagoona, Regents Park, Lakemba, Auburn, Bankstown, Padstow and Narwee.
Unit buyers were pointed toward Regents Park (median $536,000), Granville ($543,250), and Bankstown ($620,000).
Apartments in these areas were flagged for offering an entry point hundreds of thousands of dollars below the $880,000 metro average. They also had higher rental yields of up to 6.4 per cent, making them an attractive target for savvy investors.
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PRD chief economist Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo.
Other suburbs offering unit buyers a good combination of solid transport links, lower crime, better facilities and cheaper prices were Parramatta, Sydney Olympic Park, Carlingford, Wentworth Point, Strathfield, North Ryde and Arncliffe.
“Many of these areas may be places that, to some people, may have a stigma based on something that happened years ago, but places change,” Dr Mardiasmo said.
“The data cuts through people’s preferences to show where the true value is … for some people these will be areas they would never have considered before.”
Suburbs flagged as good buys survived a rigorous, multi-layered data stress-test, she explained.
The PRD methodology dictated that these specific areas represent the “best value” based on five strict criteria: genuine affordability, proven property performance, strong investment fundamentals, future-focused development and “everyday liveability”.
SYDNEY’S BEST VALUE SUBURBS FOR HOUSES
Source: PRD.
PRD reporting showed Sydney’s property market is currently in a volatile transition phase. Over the last 12 months, detached house prices have softened by about 2 per cent.
Meanwhile, desperate buyers are flooding the unit market in search of affordable alternatives, driving unit sales up by a staggering 35.4 per cent annually and pushing median unit prices up 2.9 per cent to $880,000.
The underlying trend fuelling this shift is a supply gap. While $41.5 billion worth of development is scheduled across the city for 2026, almost all of it is concentrated in high-density living, with 21,088 new units planned compared to 748 houses.
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