Warrawong real estate

Warrawong is at the north-east corner of Lake Illawarra, between Port Kembla and Lake Heights, in the City of Wollongong. It was farmland until the 1930s, when the Wentworth family began selling lots from its old estate. Those subdivisions were well planned for their day, with wide streets, kerbing, drainage and parkland, and the suburb grew quickly alongside the Port Kembla steelworks.

Thousands of post-war migrants came to work at the steelworks, from Italy, Macedonia, Portugal and elsewhere, and many of their families are still here; it remains a strongly multicultural suburb. Housing is mostly houses from the middle of the last century, with older unit blocks and villas, and renovators here have been drawing buyers down from Sydney.

Council

Wollongong City Council

From our Shell Cove office

About 12 km

Population (2021 Census)

4,659

Median age

41

Warrawong Plaza on King Street is one of the Illawarra's biggest shopping centres, with Coles, Aldi, Big W and Target. The new Southern Suburbs Community Centre and Library replaces the old community centre near King and Greene streets, and the Darcy Wentworth Park playing fields are close by. Warrawong High School, which hosts the region's Intensive English Centre for new arrivals, is in the suburb.

Port Kembla's beach, with its big ocean pool on the northern rocks, is next door, and Lake Illawarra is just to the south-west. There is no station in Warrawong itself; trains on the Port Kembla branch stop at nearby Cringila and Port Kembla, running north through Wollongong to Sydney. Wollongong's city centre is a short drive north.

Public schools in Warrawong

• Warrawong High School · Secondary School
• Warrawong Public School · Primary School

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021 Census of Population and Housing, Warrawong (SAL14185). © 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.

Buyers in Warrawong are mostly looking for value close to Wollongong, the port and the beaches, and the market has widened as renovators draw buyers from Sydney. Condition counts for a lot here: a renovated house and one needing work can sell far apart in the same street. Block size, the scope for a second dwelling and the distance to King Street also shape price. We are south of the lake at Shell Cove.

Renting it out instead? We manage rental homes in Warrawong too, where houses in the postcode lease for around $690 a week.