Suburb guide · 2068
Can I build a duplex or granny flat in Middle Cove?
Middle Cove sits in Willoughby City Council's area under Willoughby Local Environmental Plan 2012. We ran 25 real Middle Cove addresses through the checker: the typical block is 757 m² with 16.9 m of frontage, 23 of the 25 could add a granny flat, and 16 could carry two separate homes today.
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The typical Middle Cove block
The middle block of the 25 we checked is 757 m² with 16.9 m of street frontage. The smallest was 286 m² and the largest 1,362 m². Zones in the sample: C4 (15), R2 (8), E3 (2).
The 25 blocks we checked, by land size.
What homes sell for in postcode 2068
Median sale prices for the whole of postcode 2068, January to March 2026. These cover every suburb sharing the postcode, not Middle Cove alone, and they are not a value for any one block.
- Houses: $3.60m (33 sales)
- Units and apartments: $1.43m (36 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
23 of the 25 blocks we checked could take one. Willoughby LEP cl 5.4(9) — the greater of 60 m² or 10% 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 Middle Cove
16 of the 25 blocks we checked could carry two or more separate homes today.
Under Willoughby Local Environmental Plan 2012 a dual occupancy needs 700 m² — this LEP sets no frontage minimum, so Council's DCP governs width.
Of the 8 ordinary R2 blocks in our sample sitting outside the Low and Mid-Rise area, 4 had the 700 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 Middle Cove 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
12 of 25 were on bushfire-prone land. 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 Middle Cove 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 Middle Cove. Your own block is the only one that answers for itself — that is what the box on the right is for.
Enter the address — lot, frontage, zone, constraints and what it can carry.