THE INNER WEST APARTMENT MARKET
Signals, Streets & Buildings That Consistently Outperform
Most people talk about the Inner West apartment market like it’s one thing – as if a unit in Ashfield behaves the same as a unit in Summer Hill, Camperdown, Marrickville or Forest Lodge. It doesn’t. Units don’t just live inside suburbs; they live inside micro-markets, and those are shaped by three forces: who needs to be there, what the building is made of, and how the street behaves between 7am and 11pm.
Start with demand anchors.
Suburbs like Camperdown, Newtown, Forest Lodge and Glebe are plugged directly into institutions – the University of Sydney, UTS, RPA Hospital, the city’s education and medical spine. That does two things. It creates a deep, renewing tenant pool, and it attracts owner-occupiers who like living near serious work. Median unit prices around $850k–$950k in these areas reflect that stability, even when short-term sentiment wobbles.
Then there are the village-adjacent markets – places like Summer Hill, Leichhardt, Petersham, parts of Dulwich Hill and Ashfield. Here, apartments piggyback off a different kind of anchor: a small-town main street, a station, a handful of really good cafés and bakeries, and a school network that keeps families in place. In Summer Hill, for example, unit medians hover just under the million mark, with buyer demand recently up more than 20% despite a small softening in price – a classic signal of people circling, waiting for the right stock.
Within those broad zones, some buildings always seem to overperform.
They’re not necessarily the newest or the flashiest. Often, they’re older brick walk-ups from the 60s–80s: three storeys, no lift, maybe a bit of common laundry culture left over from another era. What they offer is proportion and simplicity – proper room sizes, workable balconies, minimal common services to break, and strata schemes small enough that owners actually know each other. Their levies stay sane. Their maintenance is predictable. Investors like them because they don’t surprise anyone.
Then there are the boutique contemporary blocks that got the fundamentals right: smart floor plans, good orientation, real cross-ventilation, and enough parking to keep the street from becoming a permanent car yard. These are the buildings that stay full when others struggle. Their units sell quietly, often off the back of tenants converting into owners or friends of owners waiting for something to come up.
At the other end are the complexes that underperform – and the market now knows what to watch for. Overly high levies masking recurring defects. Long corridors of identical doors. Small, dark courtyards pretending to be “communal gardens”. Poor acoustic separation. Overreliance on short-term letting models. These buildings can trade well in boom years when everyone is chasing yield, but in normalised conditions, they’re exposed.
Street context is the layer almost no one talks about but every buyer feels.
An apartment on Parramatta Road, even in Leichhardt or Camperdown, lives differently to an apartment one street back facing a tree-lined side street. The same applies in Marrickville around Illawarra Road, in Newtown off King Street, in Petersham and Lewisham along New Canterbury Road. Buildings that manage to be close to the action but not on top of it – one or two streets off the arteries, with walking access but acoustic distance – build a reputation over time. Their sales campaigns lean less on adjectives and more on the simple truth: “You can walk everywhere, but you don’t have to hear it all night.”
Rental data backs this nuance. Across the Inner West Council area, median unit rents have grown around 5% per year over the last five years – less explosive than Greater Sydney in general, but more stable, reflecting a mature, fully built-out region where new supply is incremental rather than speculative. Within that, pockets like Marrickville, Newtown, Dulwich Hill, Camperdown and Glebe show strong rent levels and competitive vacancy, especially for one- and two-bed units near trains or light rail.
The last signal is behavioural: who’s actually buying.
You’ve got three main tribes:
Young professionals and couples who want an Inner West life without a $2m mortgage. They chase good layouts and walkability, and they’re increasingly picky about noise and build quality.
Investors who’ve realised the wild west phase of Sydney units is over. They now favour suburbs with diverse tenant bases – students + professionals + hospital staff – because that mix weathers shocks better than purely investor-built precincts.
Downsizers who are selling houses in the same suburbs and staying local. They don’t want to swap a federation home for a shoebox; they want a single-level or lift-serviced apartment with real living space, good light and enough storage to not feel like they’ve amputated half their life.
The buildings and streets that consistently outperform are the ones that can satisfy more than one tribe at once. A block in Summer Hill that’s close to the village, well-run, and quiet inside. A complex in Camperdown that serves RPA staff, uni-linked tenants and owner-occupiers equally well. A pocket in Leichhardt where older walk-ups sit a safe distance from Parramatta Road but still walk to Norton Street.
If you own an apartment in the Inner West, your asset isn’t just your floor plan. It’s the whole stack of decisions layered above and below it: suburb choice, street choice, building choice, neighbour choice. The market has become smart enough to price that in.
If you’re looking to buy or to sell, the question isn’t “What’s the median?” It’s, “Which of these little ecosystems am I actually in – and how does it behave when things get difficult?”
That’s where the real edge lives.
— From the desk of
Ramon Raneal