Our spring reports followed the same homes through two sales to see what sellers made. This one asks simpler questions of the same record. What were the biggest sales of the winter? Which suburbs and streets cost the most? And what did a typical house or flat change hands for, across the Northern Beaches, the Lower North Shore and the Upper North Shore?
One thing first, because it shapes every number below. This is not the full winter. It is most of June, a good part of July and only a sliver of August. A sale reaches the NSW Valuer General’s register once it has settled and been lodged, and settlement is typically about six weeks after exchange. So at the 21 September update the register holds around 1,400 winter contracts across our three districts, against roughly 3,100 for the whole of last winter. Every “biggest” and “dearest” here is the biggest and dearest so far. We will revisit the figures once August has caught up.
The other rule is the one we always apply. Only ordinary sales between strangers count. We left out anything the register flags as a bulk or related-party transfer, anything below $400,000, and a handful of deals where several adjoining lots exchanged on the same day for one combined price. Those last ones are interesting in their own right, and we come back to them below.
The biggest sales of the winter
| District | Type | Address | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lower North Shore | House | 55 Shellcove Road, Kurraba Point (1,940 m²) | $25.0m |
| Lower North Shore | Flat | 2/63 Muston Street, Mosman | $6.0m |
| Northern Beaches | House | 30A Beatty Street, Balgowlah Heights (1,074 m²) | $17.5m |
| Northern Beaches | Flat | 5/19A Addison Road, Manly | $6.3m |
| Upper North Shore | House | 42 Nelson Road, Lindfield (2,145 m²) | $9.7m |
| Upper North Shore | Flat | 317/1 Balfour Street, Lindfield | $4.55m |
Arm’s-length residential sales, contracts 1 June to 31 August 2026, as registered at 21 September.
The Kurraba Point sale is the largest across all three districts and the only winter sale above $20 million on the register so far. Behind it on the Lower North Shore sit a Hunters Hill home on Wybalena Road at $12.25 million, last sold in 2008 for $3.8 million, and 21 Morella Road, Mosman, at $11.65 million on a 516 square metre block.
On the Beaches, the Balgowlah Heights house on Beatty Street tells a longer story. The register has it at $3.15 million in 2013 and $11.8 million in 2017, before this winter’s $17.5 million. Next came 69 Stuart Street, Manly, at $9.0 million on just 286 square metres, and a Palm Beach house on Barrenjoey Road at $8.45 million.
The Upper North Shore’s largest house sale is the one that gives us pause. The register shows 42 Nelson Road, Lindfield, bought in November 2024 for $12.8 million and sold this June for $9.7 million. That is $3.1 million, or about a quarter, given back in nineteen months. The register does not say why, and we would not guess. But it is a reminder that at the top of the market, a short hold carries a risk that no suburb median will show you. Below it, 29 Spencer Road, Killara, made $8.28 million on a 1,941 square metre block, and three homes in Pymble, Turramurra and St Ives Chase each made $7.0 million.
For flats, Manly’s Addison Road had a winter of its own: five sales from $2.5 million to $6.3 million, three of them above $5 million. Two of the Beaches’ three largest flat sales are on that one road. On the Upper North Shore, the two largest flat sales were both in Lindfield, at $4.55 million and $4.25 million, a sign of how far the new apartment stock near the station has moved the top of that market.
The dearest suburbs
Suburb medians on two or three months of sales are thin, so we only list suburbs with five or more sales, and the ranking is the point, not the decimal.
| District | Dearest suburb, houses | Median | Dearest suburb, flats | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower North Shore | Mosman (19 sales) | $5.45m | Cremorne Point | $2.15m |
| Northern Beaches | Manly | $4.21m | Fairlight (10 sales) | $2.17m |
| Upper North Shore | Lindfield (6 sales) | $5.70m | St Ives (23 sales) | $1.36m |
Runners-up: houses, Hunters Hill $4.70m and North Willoughby $4.10m; Balgowlah Heights $4.13m and Balgowlah $4.01m; Pymble $5.15m and Roseville $4.20m. Flats, Waverton $1.58m and Milsons Point $1.54m; Avalon Beach $1.75m and Manly $1.60m; Lindfield $1.30m and Wahroonga $1.23m.
Median sale price, suburbs with five or more registered winter sales.
Mosman led the Lower North Shore on nineteen sales, which is a proper sample. Lindfield’s $5.7 million rests on six sales, all of them large blocks, so read it as “Lindfield led the Upper North Shore this winter” rather than “Lindfield now costs more than Mosman”. Manly’s flat median of $1.6 million sits on 51 sales, the deepest flat market on the Beaches, and the average was $2.2 million, pulled up by the Addison Road and North Steyne sales.
The dearest streets
A single winter rarely gives a street enough sales to say anything, so for streets we widened the window to the twelve months to August and kept only streets with five or more sales.
| District | Dearest street, houses | Median (sales) | Dearest street, flats | Median (sales) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower North Shore | Wolseley Road, Mosman | $7.95m (5) | Parriwi Road, Mosman | $4.50m (5) |
| Northern Beaches | Cutler Road, Clontarf | $6.70m (6) | Bower Street, Manly | $4.10m (5) |
| Upper North Shore | Mudies Road, St Ives | $6.30m (5) | Milray Street, Lindfield | $2.42m (7) |
Next in line: houses, Farnell Street Hunters Hill $6.85m and Raglan Street Mosman $6.70m; Jackson Street Balgowlah $4.50m and Ingleside Road $4.30m; Braeside Street Wahroonga $6.09m and Roseville Avenue $5.84m. Flats, Lavender Street Milsons Point $3.83m and Kirribilli Avenue $3.48m; North Steyne Manly $3.85m (19 sales) and West Esplanade $3.50m; Bobbin Head Road Turramurra $2.17m (13 sales) and Beaconsfield Parade Lindfield $2.16m.
Median sale price, streets with five or more registered sales, contracts September 2025 to August 2026.
Two things stand out. Manly owns the flat list on the Beaches outright: every one of the five dearest flat streets is in Manly, and North Steyne alone recorded nineteen sales at a median of $3.85 million. And on the Upper North Shore, the dearest streets are spread across four suburbs, where on the Lower North Shore they cluster in Mosman. That is the difference between a district with one prestige core and a district with several.
What a typical home cost
| District | House median | House average | Flat median | Share of sales that were flats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower North Shore | $3.59m (128 sales) | $4.27m | $1.20m (460 sales) | 78% |
| Northern Beaches | $2.48m (220 sales) | $2.90m | $1.19m (305 sales) | 58% |
| Upper North Shore | $2.62m (137 sales) | $3.17m | $890,000 (191 sales) | 58% |
Median and average sale price, arm’s-length residential sales of $400,000 and above, contracts June to August 2026 as registered at 21 September.
A few things fall out of that table that a suburb-by-suburb view hides.
The Lower North Shore is a flat market first. Nearly four in five of its winter sales were flats, and they added up to more money than its houses: about $650 million of flats against $550 million of houses. Across the three districts the register holds close to $2.9 billion of winter sales so far, $1.2 billion of it on the Lower North Shore.
A flat in the right suburb costs more than a house in many others. Fairlight’s flat median of $2.17 million is above the house median in Hornsby ($1.73 million), Warriewood, Narraweena, North Narrabeen, Frenchs Forest and Belrose. Cremorne Point’s flats clear the same bar. If you are choosing between a flat near the water and a house further out, the register says the money is closer than the labels suggest.
The Upper North Shore has more big sales than the Beaches, and fewer very big ones. Twenty Upper North Shore sales cleared $5 million this winter, against sixteen on the Beaches and 33 on the Lower North Shore. But none on the Upper North Shore cleared $10 million, where the Beaches had one and the Lower North Shore four.
Land is priced very differently on the two sides of Middle Harbour. Mosman’s winter house sales ran at about $10,700 per square metre of land, Lindfield’s at about $5,300, and the Manly sale on Stuart Street at more than $31,000. The Upper North Shore buyer is paying for a block; the Manly buyer is paying for a position.
The busiest streets were all flat corridors: the Pacific Highway at North Sydney and Hornsby, Archer Street in Chatswood, Pittwater Road in Dee Why. That is where the entry end of these markets lives, and it kept trading through winter.
The deals we left out
Three sets of sales were excluded from every figure above because they are not ordinary sales, and they are worth a paragraph each.
In April, nine adjoining houses on Beaconsfield Parade, Lindfield, exchanged on the same day and settled on the same day, for a combined $141.6 million across 13,100 square metres. The individual prices ran from $5.8 million to $26.3 million. That is a site being assembled, most likely for apartment development close to Lindfield station, and it is why Beaconsfield Parade would otherwise top every list in this report. Five houses on Larkin Street and Pockley Avenue, Roseville, went the same way in February for about $38 million.
On the Beaches, two neighbouring houses on Park Street, Mona Vale, exchanged together in July for $17.7 million, on odd prices that point to a single negotiated deal split across two titles.
And on the Lower North Shore, four flats in one McMahons Point building were sold in one transaction for $9.3 million. The register records each of them at the full $9.3 million, which is how a $2 million flat can appear, at a glance, to be the largest apartment sale of the winter.
None of this is wrong. The register records what was lodged. But it is why we never take a top-sales list at face value, and why an unusually high sale on a street you are considering deserves a second look before it goes into your comparables.
What this means if you are buying this spring
The $25 million sale is a headline. The $1.19 million flat median on the Beaches is a decision, and it was made about 300 times this winter. Most of the buying in these three districts happens a long way below the top of this report, and the register has something useful to say at every price point.
Flats held their value best through winter on the Beaches and the Lower North Shore, so do not expect spring to discount them. Family houses between about $2.5 million and $4 million softened, and there were fewer rivals for them; that is the band where patience and a well-prepared offer have been rewarded. And at the top, the Nelson Road sale is the plainest case we have seen this year for buying the right home rather than the available one, because the cost of getting it wrong is not spread over decades. It arrives at the next sale.
Most of the sales above were handled by selling agents we work alongside every week, and we thank them for it. More than three quarters of the homes we secure never reach the open market, and that only happens because agents know that a buyers agent with a ready client is worth a call. We do not publish our clients’ addresses or prices, and we never will, but the relationships are a large part of how the work gets done.
Where this leaves us
Winter’s register is two thirds written. What it shows so far is a market with a wide top and a busy floor: a $25 million harbourfront and 300 Beaches flats with a median of $1.19 million in the same season, on the same record. The suburb and street lists will move as August’s sales land, and we will publish the full-winter version when they have. If you are weighing a purchase this spring at any of these price points, we are happy to look at the register with you, for the street you are considering, before you commit. Our spring reports carry the resale test for the Northern Beaches, the Lower North Shore and the Upper North Shore, and the three-district overview pulls them together.
About the author
Mike Kaye is Co-Founder and Director of Sarah Kaye & Co., a director-led independent buyers’ agency for Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Upper North Shore, and Lower North Shore. A former Accenture Global Partner and Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD), with formal qualifications in property law, valuation, and economics, Mike advises clients on disciplined property acquisition, risk management, and long-term capital protection. This report is part of the Sarah Kaye & Co Research spring 2026 series.
Methodology and sources
Sarah Kaye & Co Research analysis of NSW Valuer General Property Sales Information (Land Registry Services), as at the 21 September 2026 weekly release, for the firm’s 95 suburbs across the Northern Beaches (41 suburbs with winter sales), the Lower North Shore (34) and the Upper North Shore (18). Winter figures are contracts dated 1 June to 31 August 2026; because sales register only after settlement, June is close to complete, July partly complete and August largely still to come, and every figure should be read as “registered so far”. Arm’s-length residential sales only (no low-value, bulk, commercial, vacant-land or non-standard transfers), $400,000 and above. Houses are Torrens-title lots; flats are strata lots. Groups of two or more lots on one street exchanged and settled on the same day at identical or non-round prices are treated as a single combined transaction and excluded from the sale, suburb and street figures, and are described separately. Suburb medians require five or more winter sales. Street medians use contracts September 2025 to August 2026 and require five or more sales. Price per square metre uses the register’s recorded land area for houses only. Prior sales of individual properties are the register’s own record of the same address. The register does not record bedrooms, condition, agent or campaign type, and no such detail has been inferred.