Most of what’s written about a suburb is written to sell you something in it. Listings, price guides, top-ten-reasons-to-move-here posts – most of it aimed at convincing you to love it. Far less of it helps with the question underneath: what is this place actually like to live in? Which café would you walk to on a Saturday morning? What types of people does the neighbourhood attract? What you give up by choosing one pocket over another?
So we’re documenting the neighbourhoods we work in properly – one at a time, in full.
North Brighton is first because it’s where we work from and is, arguably, our favourite part of Brighton. Our office is located at 67 Asling Street, and we’ve been listing and selling across this neighbourhood for years – the parkside pocket, the waterline, the streets either side of the Martin Street strip. We’ve walked buyers through the trade-offs between them often enough to know where the real lines sit, and what the true draw cards are of each one.
But we did notice something as we were writing it.
Whilst North Brighton is a suburb often referred to by name, North Brighton isn’t actually a suburb in official terms. Check the mail of someone living opposite North Brighton station and it says Brighton. Gardenvale station is the same – it technically sits in Brighton. Search it on any property site and North Brighton isn’t specifically mentioned anywhere – no boundary, no price record, no evidence it exists. But it’s how locals give directions, it’s how agents describe this particular pocket of Brighton, and it’s where we’ve lived and worked for many years.
So we drew the boundary ourselves: North Brighton is everything north of Bay Street, across four distinct pockets.
That’s what this is. Not a suburb guide – a neighbourhood guide. Everything we know about living in North Brighton, for people who live here or people who want to. All in one document you can read front to back, or section by section.
If you’re looking for a quick read, keep reading below for some of the key details we cover in the full guide. That said, if you want the full information, you can get access full guide HERE.
Who is North Brighton for?
In short, North Brighton suits people who want to live without depending on a car for every single trip out of the house – two stations, two strips, a supermarket, a cinema and a library all inside a walk.
If you’re a downsizer who wants to stay in the postcode, or you’re a family who wants a quiet weekend and to stay for the long run. It doesn’t suit anyone chasing a big night out, and we’ll always tell you that’s the point of living here.
Four pockets, four different markets
Just like there are many pockets to Brighton as a whole, North Brighton isn’t just one market.
The Parkside pocket runs on club sport and Elsternwick Park – and is a pocket that’s home, incidentally, to Elsternwick Primary too. A point that we always find interesting, considering the suburb of Elsternwick, across Nepean Highway, is in a completely separate Council – Glen Eira City.
The Core Grid between the Martin Street and Bay Street strips is where families buy and stay for fifteen years.
The Waterline, from St Kilda Street to the water, is small, tightly held, and misses the tourists entirely. It contains North Point, and funnily enough, the Elwood Pier.
And the Eastern pocket, between the train line and the highway, is the perfect entry into the Brighton postcode.
A few extra things you’d only know if you lived here
1. The Elwood Bowls Club is in North Brighton.
2. Gardenvale station isn’t in Gardenvale – it’s here.
3. The cinema really is four doors from the platform on Bay Street.
4. And as of this spring, weekday trains run every ten minutes, with direct services through to Melbourne’s west for the first time.
Want to see the full North Brighton Neighbourhood Guide?
Everything we’ve spoken about above is the short version.
The complete guide holds the rest – every pocket with its streets worth knowing, both strips venue by venue, the school zones, the parking fine print, what your money buys, and the trade-offs nobody mentions at the open home.
It’s free, it’s built to be saved and shared, and it lands in your inbox straight away:
Check it out HERE
And if you’re looking to buy or sell in North Brighton, we pride ourselves on being the absolute experts in our suburb, that as we know, isn’t actually a suburb.
– Joel and the Fredman Team