Can I build a duplex or granny flat in Crows Nest?

The typical Crows Nest block

The middle block of the 25 we checked is 218 m² with 6.1 m of street frontage. The smallest was 94 m² and the largest 887 m². Zones in the sample: R2 (15), MU1 (8), R3 (2).

What homes sell for in postcode 2065

Median sale prices for the whole of postcode 2065, January to March 2026. These cover every suburb sharing the postcode, not Crows Nest alone, and they are not a value for any one block.

• Houses: $3.50m (34 sales)
• Units and apartments: $1.26m (153 sales)

Source: NSW Government Rent and Sales Report (Department of Communities and Justice), sales tables by postcode, NSW Government. Updated each quarter.

A granny flat

1 of the 25 blocks we checked could take one. North Sydney LEP cl 5.4(9) — the greater of 60 m² or 30% of the house’s total floor area, parking excluded. Separately, the state Housing SEPP allows a granny flat of up to 60 m² through the ten-day complying-development route on a lot of 450 m² or more with a 12 m frontage, where the land is not flood, bushfire or heritage constrained.

Dual occupancy (duplex) rules in Crows Nest

2 of the 25 blocks we checked could carry two or more separate homes today.

Under North Sydney Local Environmental Plan 2013 a dual occupancy needs 450 m² — this LEP sets no frontage minimum, so Council's DCP governs width.

Of the 15 ordinary R2 blocks in our sample sitting outside the Low and Mid-Rise area, 1 had the 450 m². There is no LEP frontage test to pass here, but Council's DCP still judges width, setbacks and private open space, so clearing the area alone does not settle it.

Low and Mid-Rise

None of the 25 blocks we checked fell inside the state Low and Mid-Rise area, so in this part of Crows Nest the LEP minimums are what count. The boundary is a walking distance from a listed centre, so it can cut through a suburb — the checker reads which side of it your own address sits on.

What else turned up

17 of 25 carried a heritage listing or conservation area. Any of those takes a block out of the fast-track routes and into a full DA, so it changes the answer more than the lot size does.

How we got these numbers

We took 25 real Crows Nest street addresses from the NSW geocoder and ran every one through the same engine this site runs for you, reading the planning controls live. Nothing here is modelled or estimated.

It is a sample, not a census. The addresses are a spread across what the geocoder returns, so treat these as "of the 25 blocks we checked" rather than a figure for every block in Crows Nest. Your own block is the only one that answers for itself — that is what the box on the right is for.