Find a roommate in Sydney and/or read everything about roommates in Sydney.

Who's your best roommate in Sydney?

Who'll pay more rent?

What's affordable in SPRING 2025?

• (?-see footnote)  =  non-traditional average ¹
• 2400 (600 per week)  =  traditional 2BR ÷ 2 ²
• 3148 (787 per week)  =  average 1BR, rented solo ³
• the rest of Australia
• Daily errands do not require a car (CBD); Some errands can be accomplished on foot (inner city outside CBD). ⁴
• the real estate prices, the UV
• the Sydney Harbour, the Victorian architecture, the food, the cultural diversity, the weather, the ferries, the national parks
• Crazy rich asians, Chinese, rich moms, old money, Chinese in Porsches, The Rich, i could have played nrl but did my acl, Art hipsters, full of tourists, wearing activewear for brunch, champagne brunches, horse riding and daddys money, silent discos & vegan dogs, ikeaaaaaa, great food, Bogan Lads, lots and lots of asian students, megachurch weirdos, average house is 3 mil, I will make house music; Dad pays for my rent ⁵

roomiematch.com's Sydney roommate rundown:

If any movie needs a location shot that's instantly iconographically cosmopolitan Australia, that camera always swoops over Sydney Harbour, with its majestic Sydney Harbour Bridge and architecturally stunning Sydney Opera House.

Sydney Harbour is the most stunning real estate in all of Australia. Possibly the world.

That urban harbour goes to eleven.

But renting anywhere near this cosmo gorgeousness is stunningly expensive as well. And unlike how the other four Australian capital cities compensate just a bit for their overpriced rents with cheaper food and subsidized services (like some free public transport) . . . Sydney does not.

It really costs a lot to live here.

Most of Australia has been in a housing crisis for several years or more, some say due to lack of protective regulation around foreign real estate investment causing real estate prices to skyrocket in the capital cities. But it's the absolute most anywhere near Sydney's Central Business District (CBD).

And when we say anywhere near, we do mean multiple hours out by car, depending on traffic.

Sydney is basically an extremely densely populated CBD surrounded by a densely populated greater urban core surrounded by suburbs that go waaaaaay out.

On the one hand, public transport can get you pretty much anywhere. However, anywhere outside the CBD and inner suburbs will take a while and cost money. Sydney's transport system involves complicated connecting trains, light rail, ferry, metro and bus routes, often requiring trip engagement with various apps on smartphones in advance of travel.

While you can take public transport into the CBD all the way from the outermost suburbs, especially if part of your route involves driving to a station, it all tends to take time. Time that's longer than most roommates would like, possibly up to two hours each way.

So, hopeful roommates considering Sydney? If your plans involve spending most days in the CBD, we hope you'll be paid enough to live there. Public transport is also expensive, and driving anywhere near the CBD, especially in the morning, will involve a lot of traffic. So if you're only paid to live in the suburbs in Sydney, you might need to go ahead and live in the suburbs, unless you really enjoy commuting.

But if your job is paying you to live near the CBD, especially if you could work roommates into the picture to save some cash . . . Sydney is VERY nice.

It's so nice and so cosmopolitan it's hard to imagine what you'd miss out on or what the problem might be if you lived here, provided you and your roommates can afford it? For other cities we listed multiple pros and multiple cons. In Sydney, the cost is the overwhelmingly main con. Anything else pales in comparison.

Well, except for exactly like the entire rest of Australia, you'd be foolish to walk around most of the time without multiple UV blockers. Do walk around Sydney, it's very pedestrian-friendly, there are enjoyable walking tours.

But Sydneysiders will think you've gone full Bogan if you forget your long-sleeved shirt, sunglasses, sunscreen, and wide-brimmed hat!

If you'd prefer slightly less cosmopolitan but significantly less expensive, still beach-intensive but with cheaper cafe food and free trams, you may want to consider Melbourne.

If you're not-so-cosmo, really looking for Australian surf culture in a decent capital city but for less money than both Sydney and Melbourne, you may want Perth.

Otherwise, good on ya if you and your roommates can finance Sydney.

Send us a selfie from the Opera House!

The rest of the Sydney roommate lowdown:

• Sydney was originally settled over 60,000 years ago but is also the oldest British colony (1788).
• Sydney is one the most globally multicultural cities on the planet, with about 30% of Sydneysiders born outside Australia.
• Most consider Sydney the most temperate capital city in Australia, with about 300 sunny days per year, but also actual seasons. Sydney experiences occasional cooler temperatures just like Melbourne, but without much of Melbourne's rugged wind gusts and hailstorm surprises.
• Parking in the inner city is expensive, and street parking is usually metered and enforced. Don't park illegally or in a no-stopping zone, the fines are substantial and towing happens too. Speed limits are strictly enforced, often by cameras.
• Many find ferries Sydney's most pleasant way to get around. So it's really too bad that method only works for some locations.
• Bicycling is a mixed bag, but a lot of proud bicycle warriors bike almost everywhere!
  The pros: temperate weather, cycling is allowed on almost all roads
  The cons: traffic, hills in traffic, occasional freeway tunnels
• Boxing Day on Sydney Harbour is actually yacht racing.
• Local beaches feature surf schools and surfboard rentals for beginners.
• Footy, cricket, and rugby are ongoing in Sydney . . . just not quite as often as Melbourne. There's also an Australian Ice Hockey League!
• If you go swimming on a beach, stay within the lifeguard's safety flags. It's unlikely you'll encounter sharks, jellyfish, or other dangerous creatures if you follow safety instructions including immediately getting out of the water if there's an alarm.
• Sydney probably hosts more international students than any other city in the world. Sydney hosts the University of Sydney, University of Technology (Sydney), University of New South Wales, Western Sydney University, Macquarie University, and Australian Catholic University. There are also a number of other public universities with extra campuses just for Sydney.
• You and your roommates shouldn't miss Sydney's rock oysters, Vietnamese pork rolls, sausage rolls with tomato sauce (ketchup to Americans), and tiger meat pies (topped with mashed potatoes, mushy peas, and gravy).
• If you love to club, Sydney features the largest late night DJ party venues in Australia. There are a few 24-hour clubs with live music as well. However, this also means nearby trains tend to feature drunk people late at night. If you plan to take a train to a club after hours, you may want to plan to travel with a friend, or sit near a driver or guard.

After you're settled down, you and your roommates should experience Sydney's:

• Sydney Opera House near Sydney Harbour Bridge on the Sydney Harbour: No one moves to Sydney and doesn't visit all of this. Don't forget your sunscreen.
• Sydney Festival: 3 weeks in January, Australia's largest art festival
• National Gallery of Victoria: Australia's oldest art gallery with its largest collection
• Art Gallery of New South Wales: Aboriginal art from the oldest continuing cultures on the planet, from the deep past to their evolving future.
• Sydney Fish Market: All the fantastic seafood Australia has to offer!
• Night Noodle Market: Celebrated part of Australian food culture, so celebrated it grew so large it's now properly a festival. Live music, dog friendly, and often broadcast on TV and video.

Here's the City of Sydney's Services page, including information on rates and permits and approvals.

Notes

1.   The following two paragraphs are what this note says for cities in the United States and Canada, but we can't provide this number for cities in Australia yet because we've only recently added them. We will provide this number when we have more data.

(Not Applicable Yet: The non-traditional roommate rent average for this city we've experienced over the last 3 years. We can't predict future rental availability, because we're neither in control of any rental market nor psychic, sorry!

But in most cities most of the time, the recent and relatively recent past are the best predictors.)

2.   This idea came from smartasset.com's ranking of what a roommate saves you in 50 cities. They ranked where roommates will save you the most money, based on the average cost of a 1BR as opposed to a 2BR ÷ 2. Unsurprisingly, the more expensive the city, the more you can save, but the savings are significant in all larger metros. So we got the data for the rest of our cities from realestate.com.au.

This is really the minimum you could save, as you could live with more than one roommate, split more services, share food or other supplies, etc. More sharing tends to lead to more savings too, as per our roommate roadmap.

As per the rest of the description at the top of this page, we're calling this "traditional" roommate rent.

3.   From realestate.com.au.

4.   Directly quoted from Walk Score's Cities and Neighborhoods Ranking. They've ranked "more than 2,800 cities and over 10,000 neighborhoods so you can find a walkable home or apartment."

5.   From hoodmaps.com: a collaborative map where residents use tags describing social situations you're likely to find. Other users can thumb up or down, so the largest tags have been thumbed up the most.