Suffolk Park | SA1 micro market analysis | Melanie Bosward
Suffolk Park.
Why this matters
Most buyers agents work at suburb level. Suburb averages hide the details that actually determine where you want to live — the pocket of public housing on the next street, the SA1 where most households are short-term renters, the blocks where work-from-home is the norm. This analysis drops to the Statistical Area Level 1 — the smallest census unit the ABS publishes (typically 150–250 dwellings each) — to show the true micro-geography of Suffolk Park relative to the rest of the Byron Bay SA2.
The Suffolk Park cluster is one of the Northern Rivers' quiet outperformers. It has the demographic stability of a Byron Bay township premium without the concentration-of-disadvantage pockets that exist just to its north. This map lets you inspect every SA1 across eight independent data layers — including direct ABS public housing numbers from Census table G40 — so you can make an evidence-based call, not a suburb-marketing one.
Headline finding: only 4 public housing dwellings exist across all 11 Suffolk Park SA1s (0.7% of rentals). The rest of the Byron Bay SA2 contains 53 public housing dwellings (6.2% of rentals) concentrated in SA1s to the north. Toggle the Public Housing % layer on the map below to see the pattern.
Data Layer
Scale
Suffolk Park vs Rest of Byron Bay SA2
Suffolk Park — The Owner-Occupier Read What the SA1 data is telling us
Suffolk Park sits directly south of Byron Bay township and is demographically distinct from it in ways that matter to an owner-occupier. Across the eleven SA1s that form the Suffolk Park cluster, the median household income averages $2,032 per week — roughly +25% above the rest of the Byron Bay SA2 — and the SEIFA decile averages 7.6 out of 10, placing the cluster firmly in the upper third of Australian catchments for socio-economic advantage.
The dwelling mix is overwhelmingly 69% separate houses, with only 3% flats — a profile that supports long-tenure families, not the short-stay accommodation model that dominates parts of central Byron Bay. Owner-occupation sits at 65% of dwellings (35% outright, 31% mortgaged), with rental share at just 34%.
Perhaps most telling for a lifestyle-migration buyer: 30% of employed Suffolk Park residents worked from home in the 2021 Census reference week — roughly double the Australian average and a structural signal that the cluster has absorbed knowledge-economy migrants who have permanently shifted their workbase. This is why median incomes hold up despite the area's regional-coastal setting.
The public housing footprint confirms the picture. Drawing directly from ABS G40 Landlord Type data, the Suffolk Park cluster contains just 4 public housing dwellings across all 11 SA1s — 0.7% of rentals, or 0.23% of all dwellings. By contrast the remaining 14 SA1s in the Byron Bay SA2 contain 53 public housing dwellings (6.2% of rentals) concentrated in the township north of Suffolk Park. Include community housing providers and the gap widens further: 2.4% social-housing share in Suffolk Park vs 13.7% across the rest of the Byron Bay SA2.
Evidence points
SA1-by-SA1 Profile Browser
Prepared by
Melanie Bosward
Melanie has lived and worked across the Northern Rivers for years and brings over 25 years of real estate experience to Suffolk Park buyers. Her edge is depth — she doesn't sell suburbs, she analyses SA1s. This is the kind of block-level evidence other buyers agents either can't or don't produce, and it's what separates a confident purchase from a hopeful one.