How we calculate area metrics

Our crime score ranks each council area (LGA) on a 0-100 percentile scale against all 131 NSW council areas. A score of p20 means the area has lower crime than 80% of NSW — a score of p85 means it has higher crime than 85% of NSW.

Data source

NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) open data — annual incident counts and rates per 100,000 population for 62 offence types across all 131 NSW LGAs.

Step 1: Population-adjusted rate

Raw incident counts are misleading — Sydney CBD will always have more incidents than Mosman simply because it has more people. We derive each LGA's population from BOCSAR's own rate data (incidents / rate_per_100k * 100,000) and compute an overall rate per 100K residents. This means a suburb in a large LGA isn't penalised just for having more people.

Step 2: Severity weighting

Not all crime is equal. An area with high shoplifting but low violent crime is safer to live in than one with frequent assaults. We apply severity weights to each offence type before computing the final score:

The weighted total is divided by estimated population to produce a severity-adjusted rate per 100K.

Step 3: Percentile ranking

All 131 LGAs are sorted by their weighted rate and assigned a percentile (0 = lowest crime, 100 = highest). We then map percentiles to labels:

Limitations

• Crime data is at LGA level, not suburb level. Two suburbs in the same council area share the same score.
• BOCSAR data reflects reported crime — unreported incidents are not captured.
• Rate per 100K can be volatile for very small LGAs (under 5,000 population).
• Weights are editorial — reasonable people may weight differently.

We display the ICSEA(Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage) from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). ICSEA measures a school's community advantage on a scale centred at 1000.

How we use it

• Each suburb shows the average ICSEA of all schools physically located in that suburb (not the LGA average).
• We include Government, Catholic, and Independent schools.
• Top schools are listed individually with their ICSEA score.

Interpretation

ICSEA measures socio-educational advantage, not teaching quality. A lower ICSEA does not mean a school is bad — it reflects the socio-economic profile of its student community.

Source

ACARA Data Access Program — School Profile and School Location files (annual, public download).

NSW regulates short-term rental accommodation (Airbnb, Stayz, etc.) at state and council level. We display the maximum hosting days per year and whether registration is required.

How it works

• Greater Sydney: 180 days/year (when host is not present)
• Regional NSW: 365 days/year (no day cap)
• Byron Shire: 60 days/year (most restrictive in NSW)
• All councils require STRA registration via the NSW Planning Portal.

Individual councils may impose additional conditions. The day limits shown are the maximum allowed under the State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing) 2021.

Source

NSW Planning Portal STRA regulations + individual council policies. Manually researched and verified for 48 councils.

We display the residential ad valorem rate(cents per dollar of land value), minimum rate, waste charge, and stormwater levy from each council's published revenue policy.

What we show

• Rate in dollar: The ad valorem rate applied to your land value (from the Valuer General).
• Minimum rate: The floor — you pay at least this even if your land value is low.
• Waste charge: Standard 120L residential bin service, annual.
• Stormwater: IPART-regulated charge ($25 for most councils, $144 for Central Coast).

Limitations

• We currently cover 53 of ~128 NSW councils (the largest by population).
• Some councils use base charge + ad valorem, others use minimum rate + ad valorem — structurally different calculations.
• Financial years are mixed (2024-25 and 2025-26) depending on what's published.
• Waste charges vary by bin size — we show the standard 120L rate.

Source

Individual council revenue policies and operational plans (publicly available PDFs).

• LGA-level data: Crime, STRA, and council rates are all at the Local Government Area (council) level. Multiple suburbs within the same LGA share these metrics. The council name is shown on each area profile.
• Suburb-level data: School quality (ICSEA) is aggregated from individual schools within the suburb — this is genuinely suburb-specific.
• Address-level data: For property-specific data like zoning, flood risk, granny flat eligibility, and lot details, use the address search.
• Data freshness: All data is sourced from official NSW Government open datasets. Crime data is from the latest BOCSAR release (Jan-Dec 2025). School data is from ACARA 2025. We refresh quarterly.