4 Ethel St · Balgowlah NSW 2093

Currently listed

3 bed · 1 bath · 4 car · House · 511 m² land

View the live listing →

⏱ Days on market — this campaign

83 days since our daily sweep first saw this listing.

The portal's own campaign may have started slightly earlier than our first sighting. Longer campaigns tend to mean more negotiating room — the board's "Longest listed" sort exists for exactly that reason.

Land — for a house, the land is the asset

511 m²

A house's size is its land. An apartment's advertised "size" can include car space and balcony — the two are never comparable and this site never pools them. Lot details and planning controls sit under Explore the area.

Development potential — how Northern Beaches Council treats the work you might do

Refuses 2.88% of the development applications it decides · off-street parking 2.59% (determinations to Nov 2023).

The full outlook — every category with confidence ranges, which plan elements come unstuck, and the heritage effect by category — is under Explore the area.

Published auction results at this address

From Domain's published weekly auction results — individual outcomes as published; withheld prices stay withheld.

Agencies' own published sales nearby — Balgowlah, around 3 beds

Prices as published on the selling agency's own website (their sold pages) — includes private-treaty sales the auction results never see. Only sales the agency chose to publish a figure for appear here.

⏭ It passed in — what happens next — the question the listing stops at

Across Sydney, homes that passed in and later sold went for about 6% less than comparable homes that sold under the hammer.

Half sold within 33 days, 76% within three months.

Like-for-like within bedroom and property-type groups · 64 comparison groups across Sydney, sales settled in the last two years. Based on passed-in homes that later sold. Homes that never sold aren't in the figure, so read this as what a sale fetches — not what the home is worth. Passing in is a negotiating position, not a verdict — this is evidence about outcomes, never advice on what to offer.

Planning & zoning — R1 General Residential

A mix of housing types — houses through to apartments — permitted.

Registered lots in Balgowlah run 300–680 m² (middle 80% of 24 registered parcels). This one is 531 m² — inside that range.

Whether a block this size can be subdivided or redeveloped is a separate question: minimum lot size, setbacks and the council's DCP controls decide it, and this page doesn't check them. One point per registered parcel, so a tower's parent lot counts once — not once per unit. Confirm the parcel and its controls with the council before you inspect.

Zone R1 (General Residential) under the NORTHERN BEACHES LEP, as recorded against this property in the NSW Valuer General's valuation record — a guide, not a parcel-level legal check. Confirm the exact lot at the NSW Planning Portal.

Development outlook — how often Northern Beaches Council has refused this kind of work

Across all application types Northern Beaches Council refused 2.88% (2.42–3.44%) of the 4,195 development applications it decided.

Where these applications come unstuck

The refusal rate above says how strict the council is. This says which part of a plan is exposed — measured across all 192,284 NSW development applications, not just this council. Each is an association: plenty of applications carrying these elements are approved, and nothing here is a verdict on a proposal you haven't made yet.

• Alterations & additions — a new vehicle crossing cut into the front boundary (refused 7.27% vs 2.59% for this kind of work generally — 2.8×, on 220 applications); excavation or a new lower level (refused 6.71% vs 2.54% for this kind of work generally — 2.64×, on 611 applications)
• Off-street parking — a new vehicle crossing cut into the front boundary (refused 8.45% vs 2.42% for this kind of work generally — 3.49×, on 284 applications)
• Pool, deck or fence — excavation or a new lower level (refused 6.22% vs 1.61% for this kind of work generally — 3.88×, on 659 applications); full demolition and rebuild (refused 4.97% vs 1.6% for this kind of work generally — 3.12×, on 965 applications)
• Knock down & rebuild — excavation or a new lower level (refused 25.78% vs 9.36% for this kind of work generally — 2.75×, on 256 applications); full demolition and rebuild (refused 19.91% vs 10.46% for this kind of work generally — 1.9×, on 221 applications)

Determinations lodged on the NSW Planning Portal up to Nov 2023 — the published dataset stops there, so this is a record of how the council has behaved, not a forecast and not a statement about any particular application. Rates cover development applications only; modifications and reviews of an earlier decision are excluded. A rate is shown only where at least 30 applications were decided — below that the counts are given instead, because a percentage from a handful of decisions is not a fact about a council. "Approved with conditions" is a consent, not a refusal, and is never counted as one.

Development applications — at & near this address

Development application data © NSW Department of Planning and Environment, used under CC BY 4.0. Matched at this exact address or within ~150 m of its geocoded point — proximity evidence, not a parcel-level check. Lodged means proposed, not approved or built. Outcome comes from a separate NSW dataset that stops in Nov 2023: applications determined after that, or still undetermined, read “not on record” — which means we don't know, never that it was refused. “Status” is the council's own workflow state and “Determined” on its own does not say which way it went. Verify any application on the NSW Planning Portal.

What's changing in Balgowlah — recent local signals

2025-10-13 — Petrol station invest — 487 SYDNEY ROAD BALGOWLAH 2093 ($127k) (institutional-signals.json (PAN-577428, OnlineDA))

Dated public signals compiled for this suburb — openings, closures, site sales and institutional moves. Facts with sources, not forecasts.

School catchments

Balgowlah Hts PS (primary) · The Forest HS (secondary)

5 primary schools within 2 km · ICSEA ~1136 — the socio-educational advantage of the school community (My School, national average ~1000): a demographic measure, never a results or quality score.

NSW DoE intake zones at this address's geocoded point — tighter than a suburb-level guess, but geocodes carry a few metres of error and boundaries change with reviews. Verify the exact address at School Finder. Intake zones cover government schools only.

Green space nearby

Protected public recreation land within 250 m

Land zoned RE1 under the local environmental plan — reserved for public recreation, which protects it from being built over. The zoning doesn't say what's on it or how usable it is, and this layer doesn't carry park names.

Privately-zoned recreation land (RE2 — typically golf courses or club grounds) within 500 m. Private land: green outlook, not public open space.

Straight-line distance, not walking distance. NSW ePlanning planning layers (Land Zoning), CC BY. Distances are ladder buckets measured at the address's geocoded point.