Croydon Park Suburb Review

Where do you go when post-pandemic housing price rises put a damper on your previously fancy Inner West living wishes? Like many others in the same situation, you likely find yourself pushed one rung further back in distance from the CBD, searching for the best of the next ‘tier’ of suburbs in terms of brand-name recognition.

Croydon Park is one such suburb – a slightly “discount” version of neighbouring Croydon, which itself is already a bit of a more affordable take on the more ritzy & fashionable versions of the Sydney Inner West lifestyle available elsewhere at higher prices.

Croydon Park delivers much of what makes Croydon itself appealing, albeit with a touch less convenience and with the occasional handful of messier streets, in return for a (slightly) lower average housing price. At the time of writing, house prices here are around ~15% lower than in Croydon proper, making for a pretty decent chunk of savings for buyers & renters alike – particularly should you opt for a unit or townhouse instead of a detached home.

This makes it something of a slightly more affordable option for those who aren’t among the highly wealthy and/or with decent equity built up, but still want to be within reach of the ‘Inner West experience’ on demand, as well as still keeping Sydney city commutes viable.

Of course, in Sydney terms “affordable” is relative, and this region of the city is still highly desirable due to its handy location overall – and its prices thus reflect that. It’s also not really too much of a compromise in terms of overall quality of life, although there are one or two issues which affect Croydon Park a little in this regard which we’ll get into later.

Location-wise, Croydon Park sits to the west of the Sydney CBD around a 20-25 minute drive away during times of decent traffic, and is a suburb that is largely centred around its main thoroughfare of Georges River Road, which pretty much cuts the suburb cleanly in half. This is a busy, heavily-trafficked arterial road along which most of Croydon Park’s amenities can be found, and which is fairly prone to traffic jams due to its relative abundance of traffic lights and intersections.

The road runs downhill at a slight gradient and connects to countless residential side streets which all flow directly onto it. This means there’s constantly people looking to turn off or on to the road from every angle and in each direction, often making merging a chore – especially if you’re needing to cross lanes in order to go in the opposite direction. 

It’s also exacerbated by people continually needing to stop and parallel park in order to access its various amenities along here; add all these factors together and it’s not one of the greatest driving experiences around.

This ties into one of the main weaknesses of Croydon Park from a connectivity perspective: its lack of a train station. 

While the suburb does see quite frequent bus services and decent bus connections in general, they’re also dealing with the same traffic themselves and result in around a 40 minute bus ride into the CBD during peak morning traffic. Compare that to the sub-20-minute, rail-based commute that Croydon has and, well… there’s a partial reason for your suburb house price discount right there.

It’s not all bad, however. While living directly alongside Georges River Road itself is noisy, Croydon Park’s branching residential streets also tend to be quite quiet, and a lack of a rail line also means less ambient train noise throughout the suburb in general. 

The suburb’s propensity towards detached houses, townhouses and only low-rise buildings also means there’s less total through-traffic needing to access these back streets (i.e, due to no highrises or above-medium-density in general). 

In addition, while it’s got its fair share of roundabouts throughout its back streets, most of these don’t have plants/hedges or signage on them to obscure vision which is quite nice from a driving/visibility perspective. 

Its side streets tend toward the wider & roomier end of the scale as well. The suburb does seem to attract/be home to its fair share of speeding dunces with loud cars, however.

Georges River Road itself isn’t simply a means to get from A to B, either. Croydon Park’s slice of it is home to a decent little hub of terrace-style shops and stores of various descriptions – think cafes, bakeries, newsagents, international cuisine restaurants and the like, as well as larger token takeaway chains such as McDonald’s and Subway. 

This is also where its two major central watering holes – the heritage-style Croydon Park Hotel with its solid selection of classic dishes and (fairly) reasonably-priced selection of tap beers, and the slightly more modernised Croydon Park Club just around the corner that also does some very good food.

This amenities strip extends all the way from end-to end of the street where other smaller pockets of retail & services can be found, as well as several well-equipped service stations (not just for fuel, but with in-built cafes and convenience stores). Pretty much everything amenity-wise in the suburb is either alongside or immediately adjacent to this major road.

The only other notable spot is its small cluster of dining and services on Tangarra Street; for any kind of bigger-box retail or larger stores you’ll have to head over to neighbouring Ashfield or Burwood. 

In addition, while Croydon Park itself doesn’t have an overwhelming range of dining options outside of its own small handful of cafes/restaurants, living here means you’re still located right in the heart of this “Asian dining pocket” of Sydney.

You can therefore head in basically any immediate direction nearby – whether it be towards Strathfield, Burwood, Ashfield or Campsie – and have a cavalcade more Eastern & other restaurants to choose from in short order.

For grocery needs, Croydon Park does have a small IGA, but there’s no large-scale chain supermarket here – your best choice for fresh food and smallgoods instead comes courtesy of its Whole Farms Market on the suburb’s north-western side.

This little complex provides a good selection of fresh fruit & veg, deli-style goods and other more gourmet selections, although some of these come at above-chain-supermarket prices.

Essentially, Croydon Park offers enough to ‘get by’ on a daily basis as well as a base level of dining that’s plenty for residents, but there’s little in the way of specific reasons to want to visit here for a dining, entertainment or shopping experience as opposed to multiple other neighbouring suburbs. This does help keep the suburb somewhat quieter & lower in crime compared to some of these other ‘more lively’ places nearby, however.

Croydon Park’s chief drawcard in terms of any kind of real ‘attractions’ mainly comes courtesy of its range of sizeable parks and green spaces – particularly its extensive, sprawling array of parklands & fields alongside the Cooks River in the suburb’s south. 

This long, winding stretch of greenery spans most of its southern border and consists of multiple different sub-parks all serving a different purpose while interconnected by biking/walking tracks that are relatively flat & easy to navigate on foot and wheel.

In addition to the track itself being a decent place to exercise, you’ve got the likes of Flockhart Park with its children’s playground and pitch for playing cricket, Rosedale Reserve with sporting fields that can be used for soccer and the like, Picken Oval and its attached West’s Rules Club specifically for AFL, and various other patches of green space in between.

Combine these with the aptly-named Croydon Park proper with its own multiple facilities and more sporting fields, and pretty much this entire section of the suburb offers open spaces for adults & kids alike to get a mix of relaxation, sporting, and general outdoor activity. 

While each of these parks aren’t particularly pretty or scenic, and occasionally fall a bit behind in grass maintenance, they’re still highly practical. 

Add in the huge Henley Park on the suburb’s northern border with Enfield and a range of strip-style parks located between several of its residential sections, and Croydon Park performs pretty solidly in terms of greenery. 

It’s fairly nice overall for pet owners due to both this decent array of parks as well as its tendency towards detached housing, and the fact it has a Pet Stock pet supplies store within its borders – it’s only really lacking a dedicated fenced dog park.

This greenery carries over to much of its general streetscape as well, with various streets having either lined-up rows of big, single palm trees dotting the median strips, or at least a decent amount of general tree cover over its footpaths. 

The level of upkeep of these tends to vary by which part of Croydon Park you’re in, however; as maintenance of the suburb is shared by three separate LGA’s, and its portions that fall under the Canterbury-Bankstown jurisdiction tending towards being a bit shabbier than the other two.

For families, Croydon Park is again very solid if unspectacular. Its very low crime rate of course helps in this regard for peace of mind, and it’s home to a decent quality education option for those with kids in Croydon Park Public School while also being close to plenty of neighbouring suburbs with additional chances at alternatives as well. 

Its aforementioned parks are also decently equipped with playground equipment, although there’s not much else to do entertainment-wise in the suburb for kids, and young adults will likely find it a bit lacking as well.

In terms of overall residential atmosphere, as mentioned Croydon Park varies quite drastically from some portions to the next.

There’s two clearly different ‘categories’ of streetscapes within Croydon Park – the messier, dirtier mid-density streets, and the prestigious, leafy and more-manicured larger housing streets dotted with heritage single storey houses with nameplates and classy spiked front gates… often not far from one another.

The suburb mostly leans towards lower-density living options in general, and is predominantly detached housing; only around 20% of Croydon Park is flat or apartment living, and almost half are completely freestanding houses, with the rest made up of semi’s/townhouses.

Most of its outer fringing streets on the south & east side feature the main clusters of these townhouse complexes, as well as plenty of blocks of older 3-storey low rise unit blocks that come in those oldschool 6-pack or 8-pack brick walk-up layouts.

These also tend to be the areas where the nature strips can be a little overgrown in spots, and can be a bit raggedy, but also where things are most affordable. It’s still leafy enough in these areas, but a little more ‘unkempt leafy’ than the rest of the suburb.

Detached houses here also trend slightly toward the smaller side, and are that longer, narrower build that was more common in ‘older’ Sydney. Expect carports or single garages at best, with little shot at a double garage, and often being forced into on-street parking as some homes are old enough to not even come with a parking spot at all.

There’s the the occasional street here and there which bucks the trend, and have far higher degrees of maintenance and more house pride however.

Meanwhile the deeper into the suburb you go, you start to get served some Inner-west-style charming dashes of heritage buildings, and even the odd preserved estate style homes, churches, and the like.

This culminates into a pretty drastic switch toward larger and newer two storey houses on suburb’s western side in particular, with many of the older homes still in original condition and showing those housing styles with “Greek”/Mediterranean white column influences that were popular in these suburbs decades ago.

Some of the higher-end of these are truly gorgeous, with manicured lawns that come down to the residents making the effort to maintain their nature strips due to the sometimes-lackadaisical efforts of local authorities, and this is obviously case of making such an extra effort in the more affluent streets of Croydon Park.

Due to a tend towards heritage, there hasn’t been as much knockdown-rebuild action here compared to some other suburbs in the same ring; some have a fresh coat of paint (and some not even that much, with existing paint flaking off, etc) but still mostly original condition & help it retain a dash of character.

Regardless of how well maintained the houses are, the blocks of land they’re on are all worth over a million in and of themselves these days.

And that’s a bit of the paradox with Croydon Park – what used to be a good value, cheaper area got dragged up in price with all the other suburbs in the area during/after the Covid-19 pandemic, and now houses here are still pretty pricey. Croydon Park’s current median house price sits at $2,022,000.00, which is honestly pretty pricey – this is a good suburb, but it’s not THAT good. 

Considering the lack of rail connectivity and also the fact that Croydon Park does get some slight dashes of airplane noise overhead in spots – which may be exacerbated in future with the new Sydney airport rollout – it’s a fairly hefty price to pay nowadays for detached housing here.

Existing residents who have been here for a while should be happy as they’re getting to enjoy it without having to fork out these higher prices & would have no reason to move anywhere else, but for someone new looking to buy into the suburb that’s a little hard to stomach and there are honestly better value areas for detached housing elsewhere these days.

On the other hand, buying a unit here is actually still very good value. Unit prices in Croydon Park are actually below the Sydney median for units, in what is an above-median-quality-of-life suburb.

The simple house price/unit price ratio indicates this is one of the better spots to buy a unit in semi-inner Sydney, especially given the suburb’s not dodgy, is still pretty handy location-wise, has ample parkland, decent enough amenities, and so forth.

Especially when you factor in its unit blocks are not highrise, and you’re getting a decent land component in buying in a block of six, eight or so units – you can make the case Croydon Park is one of the better buy-old-unit-and-renovate options in this region of the city.

This makes it a good ‘starter’ suburb for those not yet with kids who are content with a unit as their first step, without being miles & miles away from the Sydney CBD or settling for a much less safe suburb.

While there’s not too much entertainment-wise for the younger-adult gen in Croydon Park, suburbs with more to do aren’t far away, and you can get a median apartment for $680,000.00. Go out and party or hang-out elsewhere, and then return back home to Croydon Park for a sound nights sleep not surrounded by drama – that’s a pretty good deal in present-day Sydney.

The Verdict

Croydon Park is quite the varied suburb, and it has enough different sub-sections that can cater to a few different demographics & lifestyle stages/wealth levels as a result.

While in spots it’s essentially a slightly dirtier, cheaper version of Croydon, it also has pockets that are truly gorgeous; and regardless, that’s generally the trade-off many have to make now to save themselves several hundred thousand dollars on house prices in Sydney terms in the present day.

There’s nothing singularly ‘wrong’ with Croydon Park that you can really ding it for; it does pretty much everything at least on an average-or-above level, yet it has no one single truly distinguishing feature that would make you want to pay overs for a detached house to live here.

It’s safe, it’s convenient and well-equipped enough, its greenery is more than adequate, and if you’re a high-ish income earner or have enough equity that you want to relocate a bit closer to the city from further out then it’s a perfectly adequate choice.

If you don’t mind “bussing it” or driving – and you work in the opposite direction of the peak flow of traffic in the mornings – then you’ll no doubt also appreciate living here more. However for a significant chunk of Sydneysiders not having a train or light rail connection can be a bit of a deal-breaker, and given Croydon Park’s no longer cheap that can be a factor.

Where it does stand out however is for unit/apartment living. There are few remaining pockets of value this close to the city that aren’t full of mass-produced, dubious-quality highrises that who-knows-how-long will take before things start falling apart.

Meanwhile Croydon Park gives you the chance at a durable, solid brick build for under 700 grand (and often even less) for a two-bedder that you at least know has already stood the test of time. And you can then use it as a springboard to access plenty of trendier suburbs right nearby, while also enjoying Croydon Park’s smaller-scale amenities & dining on a daily basis when you don’t feel like travelling further. That’s a big win, in our book.

Overall, this is a perfectly adequate suburb for families and older residents with a bit of cash to throw around, and a solid starter suburb for first-home(unit)-buyers. And being nothing more than that in Sydney is just fine, these days.