Kirribilli buyers agent

About the suburb

Kirribilli at a glance

Kirribilli sits on Sydney Harbour at the northern end of the Harbour Bridge, about three kilometres north of the city, in North Sydney Council. It is one of the city's oldest suburbs: the first land grants here date from the 1790s, and the name is thought to come from an Aboriginal word for a good fishing spot.

It is above all a suburb of apartments, with a small number of houses and terraces, and most homes are rented rather than lived in by their owners. Childless couples are the largest household group, and the most common age group is 30 to 39.

The streets carry real history. Admiralty House and Kirribilli House, the Sydney residences of the Governor-General and the Prime Minister, sit on the point. The old estates were subdivided from the 1860s into terraces, Victorian villas and, later, apartment blocks, and several buildings are on the Register of the National Estate.

Getting around is easy without a car. Milsons Point station is next to the shops, Kirribilli wharf is one stop from Circular Quay, and the Kirribilli Markets run on the fourth Saturday of each month. St Aloysius' College and Loreto Kirribilli are both in the suburb.

The trade-offs are worth saying plainly. Apartment buildings here vary widely in age and quality, so the building matters as much as the view: strata records, levies, defects and what the owners' corporation has planned all need checking before you bid. Bridge and freeway traffic shape some streets far more than others. And because so few houses change hands, treat the house figures in the statistics box as a guide, not a price.