Market Update - APRIL #5
Even Mosman Has Softened. Here Is Why That Makes the Lower North Shore's Prestige Market the Most Interesting in the Country Right Now.
The Sydney-Melbourne duopoly that has defined Australian luxury property for a generation is over. That is the conclusion of Ray White’s 2026 national luxury property report – and for buyers on Sydney’s Lower North Shore, the finding arrives at a particularly interesting moment.
Because the Lower North Shore’s prestige market has softened. Upper-quartile Sydney values have edged back 0.9 per cent in the most recent month. Clearance rates are at 2026 lows. Vendors in Mosman and Cremorne who were holding firm on 2025 prices have, in many cases, recalibrated. The softening is real and it has reached the top end of this market.
That is not the cautionary part of this story. That is the opportunity part.
The national luxury threshold, measured at the 95th percentile of all property prices, now sits at $2.75 million. Over the past decade, the top 5 per cent of properties on the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast have grown by more than 150 per cent, narrowing what was once a vast gap between the smaller capitals and the premier Sydney and Melbourne markets. Melbourne’s top-tier properties have recorded growth of just 42.1 per cent over the same period – a figure that tells its own story about relative resilience over time.
Yet one conclusion from the report is unambiguous: Sydney remains the country’s most expensive luxury market. And within Sydney’s prestige tier, the Lower North Shore – anchored by Mosman, Cremorne, Neutral Bay, and the harbour-edge suburbs – occupies a category defined by scarcity that no other Australian city can replicate. When that category softens, it does not stay soft. It creates a window.
“Mosman doesn’t sit in the same risk bracket as a high-density apartment market or an outer-ring suburb. It softens for the same macro reasons everything softens – rate pressure, sentiment, fuel costs. But the harbour doesn’t move. The land size doesn’t grow. The school catchments don’t change. Those are the things buyers are acquiring, and right now they’re acquiring them at prices that reflect a market in a soft patch, not a market in structural decline.”
JEREMY MARTIN
Director, Mazar Martin Buyers Advisory – Buyers Agents, Lower North Shore
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The March 2026 data from the Lower North Shore’s new listings confirms the premium at work. Nine new house listings came to market in the final week of the month, with an average guide price of $5,816,667. The standout is 32 Stanton Road, Mosman – 841 square metres with an eastern aspect and an EOI guide of $12.5 million. In Cremorne, 120 Macpherson Street guides at $6 million. These are not properties that compete with the Gold Coast’s top end. They are benchmarks in an entirely different category of Australian real estate.
The divergence between property types is also relevant here. Nationally, units cleared at 73.9 per cent in the most recent week compared to 61.3 per cent for houses. On the Lower North Shore – where 72 per cent of year-to-date transactions have been apartments – the unit market in Neutral Bay, Crows Nest, and Cammeray remains active and relatively liquid. The premium house market in Mosman, Cremorne, and the harbourside suburbs, however, is where the most compelling opportunity currently sits.
That context matters enormously. The buyers pursuing prestige homes on the Lower North Shore right now are negotiating against a vendor market that has recalibrated, not collapsed – and the properties they are securing sit within a global luxury cohort that continues to attract demand independent of local rate cycles. Mazar Martin is actively working with prestige buyers in this space, and the negotiating outcomes being achieved today would not have been possible at any point in the past two years.
“The properties in Mosman and Cremorne that we’re working with clients to secure right now – the ones with the real land component, the harbour proximity, the established bones – these do not become more available when rates come down. They become less available. The competition comes back. The door closes.”
GERARD MAZAR
Director, Mazar Martin Buyers Advisory
The luxury divide is real. Sydney leads the national prestige market. The Lower North Shore leads Sydney. And right now, all of it has softened – creating the kind of entry point that comes around once in a cycle. Our team is in this market every week, securing prestige properties for clients who recognise exactly what this moment is.
Gerard Mazar
DIRECTOR · MAZAR MARTIN BUYERS ADVISORY
Gerard is a specialist buyers agent on Sydney’s Lower North Shore with deep expertise across Mosman, Neutral Bay, Cremorne, and the wider harbourside market including suburbs surrounding Willoughby to Chatswood. His buyers advisory work is built on long-standing agent relationships and intimate knowledge of the LNS micro-markets.
Jeremy Martin
DIRECTOR · MAZAR MARTIN BUYERS ADVISORY
Jeremy is a specialist buyers agent on Sydney’s Lower North Shore with deep expertise across Mosman to Cremorne, but also Lane Cove, Cammeray, Crows Nest. His buyers advisory work is built on rigorous daily market intelligence, long-standing agent relationships, and an instinct for identifying motivated sellers and off-market opportunities before they reach the public market.
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