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Suburb guide · 2007

Can I build a duplex or granny flat in Ultimo?

Ultimo sits in City of Sydney's area under Sydney Local Environmental Plan 2012. We ran 24 real Ultimo addresses through the checker: the typical block is 74 m² with 3.7 m of frontage, 0 of the 24 could add a granny flat, and 22 could carry two separate homes today.

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74 m²typical block
3.7 mtypical frontage
0 of 24could add a granny flat
22 of 24could carry two homes

The typical Ultimo block

The middle block of the 24 we checked is 74 m² with 3.7 m of street frontage. The smallest was 37 m² and the largest 151 m². Zones in the sample: R1 (22), MU1 (2).

under 450 m² 24
450–599 m² 0
600–699 m² 0
700–799 m² 0
800–999 m² 0
1,000 m²+ 0

The 24 blocks we checked, by land size.

What homes sell for in postcode 2007

Median sale prices for the whole of postcode 2007, January to March 2026. These cover every suburb sharing the postcode, not Ultimo alone, and they are not a value for any one block.

  • Houses: not published (10 or fewer sales this quarter)
  • Units and apartments: $870k (47 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

0 of the 24 blocks we checked could take one. 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 Ultimo

22 of the 24 blocks we checked could carry two or more separate homes today.

Sydney LEP sets no minimum lot size or frontage for a dual occupancy — permitted with consent in R2 (and R1 is an open zone), judged on the City's DCP, height and FSR maps

Low and Mid-Rise

None of the 24 blocks we checked fell inside the state Low and Mid-Rise area, so in this part of Ultimo 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

23 of 24 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 24 real Ultimo 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 24 blocks we checked" rather than a figure for every block in Ultimo. Your own block is the only one that answers for itself — that is what the box on the right is for.

74 m²3.7 m × 20 m
The typical block in this suburb, to scale.
Check your own Ultimo block

Enter the address — lot, frontage, zone, constraints and what it can carry.

Ultimo people — agent · planner · architect · builder.
More: the City of Sydney guide · duplexes in Sydney · granny flats in Sydney.
Nearby suburbs — Chippendale · Darlington · Pyrmont · Darlinghurst · Surry Hills · Elizabeth Bay · Rushcutters Bay · Woolloomooloo.
What would it cost to build? a duplex · terraces or townhouses · a knockdown rebuild · a manor house · a granny flat (Sydney build costs, Cost Checker).
Finding the address…