49 Reservoir Street · Surry Hills NSW 2010

Currently listed — $2,500,000

3 bed · 1 bath · House

View the live listing →

Development potential — how Council of the City of Sydney treats the work you might do

Refuses 2.61% of the development applications it decides · off-street parking 3.08% (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.

Similar properties — on the market now

The 6 listings above are on the market now: same house category, within 1 bedroom of 3, asking within 20% of this one, in Surry Hills or a suburb whose centre is within 3 km — ordered by how close the asking price is. That is the whole rule: a filter, not a recommendation, and nothing here judges which home is better.

Sale history — the official settled-sale record at this address

Settled-sale records from the NSW Valuer General's Property Sales Information. Dates are contract (exchange) dates; sales appear only once lodged, so the most recent months are incomplete and revise upward — never read the latest month as final. Two entries on one date are usually a single transaction recorded across parts. © State of New South Wales (Valuation NSW).

Planning & zoning — MU1 Mixed Use

Shops/offices below, apartments above. Walkable and lively, but denser and busier.

Heritage conservation area — Reservoir Street & Fosterville. The property sits in a heritage conservation area — the streetscape is protected, so visible/external changes are controlled. It's area-wide, not this building specifically; it tends to preserve character and value.

Registered lots in Surry Hills run 60–240 m² (middle 80% of 53 registered parcels). This one is 109 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 MU1 (Mixed Use) under the SYDNEY LEP · heritage from the NSW Heritage Map layer, 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 Council of the City of Sydney has refused this kind of work

Across all application types Council of the City of Sydney refused 2.61% (2.08–3.26%) of the 2,839 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)

Because this address sits in a heritage listing

Heritage does not make everything harder — it depends entirely on what you want to do, and for some work it makes approval more likely. Measured across NSW by category:

• Alterations & additions — heritage listing raises the refusal rate: 4.39% on heritage-affected land vs 2.27% elsewhere
• Off-street parking — heritage listing raises the refusal rate: 7.37% on heritage-affected land vs 2.29% elsewhere
• Pool, deck or fence — heritage listing raises the refusal rate: 4.56% on heritage-affected land vs 1.62% elsewhere
• Granny flat — heritage listing raises the refusal rate: 9.63% on heritage-affected land vs 4.4% elsewhere
• Knock down & rebuild — heritage listing lowers the refusal rate: 7.1% on heritage-affected land vs 12.68% elsewhere — applications here are typically pre-advised and conservative

These are NSW-wide rates for heritage-affected applications, not Council of the City of Sydney-specific, and they describe applications rather than this property. The zoning section above records the actual listing at this address.

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 Surry Hills — recent local signals

2025-09-30 — Place of worship invest — 119-123 DEVONSHIRE STREET SURRY HILLS 2010 ($193k) (institutional-signals.json (PAN-574775, OnlineDA))

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

School catchments

Crown St PS (primary) · Inner Sydney HS (secondary)

9 primary schools within 2 km · ICSEA ~1104 — 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.