Shellharbour real estate

Shellharbour is the original village of the district, built around a small boat harbour on the coast between Barrack Point and Bass Point. It began as the private town of Peterborough, laid out in 1851 on land granted to D'Arcy Wentworth, and its main streets carry the names of his sons-in-law, Addison, Towns and Darley. It is a separate suburb from Shellharbour City Centre, the shopping and council district inland.

The housing is a mix of ages. A handful of nineteenth-century cottages survive near the harbour, alongside houses from most decades since, blocks of units and new homes built on older lots. Shell Cove is the next suburb south and Barrack Point the next north. The village draws downsizers, retirees and families who want to walk to the beach, the harbour and the cafes.

Council

Shellharbour City Council

Population (2021 Census)

3,520

Median age

46

Addison Street is the main street, lined with cafes and shops and finishing at the Ocean Beach Hotel opposite the harbour. Beside the harbour, Little Park has a playground, picnic shelters and a saltwater ocean pool with a wading area for small children, and it hosts the Harbourside Markets. Shellharbour Beach runs north to Barrack Point and is patrolled at both ends in summer, and South Beach runs toward Bass Point.

Bass Point Reserve, just south of the village, holds one of the last stands of littoral rainforest in the Illawarra and was a campsite for Aboriginal people for thousands of years. Bushrangers Bay, inside it, is a protected aquatic reserve where snorkellers and divers go. Shellharbour Public School is on Mary Street and Stella Maris Catholic Primary School on Wentworth Street. The nearest station is Shellharbour Junction in Dunmore.

Public schools in Shellharbour

• Shellharbour Public School · Primary School

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021 Census of Population and Housing, Shellharbour (SAL13548). © Commonwealth of Australia, CC BY 4.0. Tenure shares are of occupied private dwellings and don't add to 100% where some households didn't say.

Price in the village comes down to walking distance: to the harbour, Addison Street and the two beaches. Ocean views add to it, and so do larger, level older blocks that allow a rebuild. The age and condition of the house matter more here than in the newer suburbs around it, so we look closely at each one. Our office is in Shell Cove, the next suburb south.

Renting it out instead? We manage rental homes in Shellharbour too, where houses in the postcode lease for around $810 a week.