Waverley in 2026. Heritage, height, and very few sales.

A market read plainly.

Waverley sits on the highest ground in the Eastern Suburbs, about seven kilometres from the city. It takes its name from Waverley House, built in 1827 by Barnett Levey, and its life still centres on Charing Cross, one of Sydney’s oldest shopping strips. Heritage streets, elevation and the coast at Bronte, without the intensity of Bondi: that is the appeal, and it is not hard to explain.

The 2026 record runs from 28 January to 29 September. 47 sales: 22 houses and 25 units. Two unit prices were not disclosed. The 45 disclosed sales are worth $138.5 million, and houses carried $107.2 million of that, about 77 per cent. The house median is $4.90 million. The unit median is $1.28 million.

Waverley has always traded thin, and that makes its figures easy to misread. With 22 house sales, one or two results move the median by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Read the volume first, and the street record second. The suburb median comes last.

Seven years of volume.

This is the chart that matters most in Waverley. Twenty-two house sales by the end of September already equal the whole of 2025, the quietest year since 2020. With a quarter still to run, 2026 is level with last year and likely to finish above it. Units have gone the other way. After peaking at 103 in 2024 and 58 last year, they stand at 25.

Volume, month by month.

February did the heavy lifting. Eleven sales, nine of them houses, more house sales than in any other month and 41 per cent of the year’s total. After that, house sales ran at between none and four a month, with none at all in May or September. Units filled the gaps: September’s six sales were all apartments.

Every sale, plotted.

Each dot is one disclosed sale. 28 Carlton Street stands alone at the top, $10.8 million on 19 February, more than $3.5 million clear of the next result. Below it, the house market sits in a broad band from $2.3 million to $7.2 million. One apartment breaks into that band: 1107/2A Henrietta Street at $3.35 million, more than seven of the year’s houses.

Where the money traded.

Waverley’s apartments are the most affordable way into this part of the East: 21 of the 23 disclosed unit sales were under $2 million, and seven were under $1 million. Houses sit firmly above that. Half of them, 11 of 22, sold between $3 million and $5 million. Eight sold for $5 million or more, and three for $7 million or more.

Quarter by quarter.

The first quarter carried the year: 20 sales and $77.1 million, more than half the disclosed value. The second traded 13 sales for $27.7 million, and the third 14 for $33.8 million. Only four houses sold in each of the last two quarters, so their medians move with every sale and should be read lightly.

Seven years of medians.

The house median climbed every year from $2.90 million in 2020 to $4.28 million in 2025. On this year’s 22 sales it reads $4.90 million, the highest on the record. That is a real signal, but a small one: three sales at $7 million or more, including Carlton Street, pull it up. The unit median has eased to $1.28 million, below its 2024 peak, on a run of smaller apartments.

The top of the market.

28 Carlton Street, at $10.8 million, is the year’s benchmark and the second-highest result on Waverley’s six-year record. 21 Kent Street at $7.24 million and 7 Langlee Avenue at $7 million follow. On the apartment side, 1107/2A Henrietta Street at $3.35 million sits well above the rest.

The streets that traded.

Sales came from 19 streets. Henrietta Street led again, with seven sales, four houses and three units, worth $23.3 million. It is Waverley’s defining address on both sides of the market. Langlee Avenue’s three house sales added $17.3 million, and Macpherson Street and Bronte Road each recorded five unit sales.

The 2026 ledger.

Every recorded sale, January to September. Filter by type, or sort by date or price.

The six-year record.

For context, Waverley’s top verified results since 2020. Carlton Street’s February sale now sits second on that list.

The record also holds a caution. On Prospect Street, two like-for-like resales went backwards in the same cycle that lifted the suburb median. A rising median guarantees nothing about a specific home on a specific street.