Most expensive council rates in NSW, 2026-27

The 20 most expensive councils in NSW

The top of this list is not a wealth ranking, which is the first thing that surprises people. Cobar and Wollondilly sit beside Ku-ring-gai Council, and what they share is not affluence. It is a small number of ratepayers carrying a large service area.

Several of the dearest are regional. Maitland, Kiama, Shellharbour and Bega Valley all charge more than most of Sydney does.

The 10 least expensive councils in NSW

Every council down here is in the far west or the Riverina. Rates are struck against land value, and where land is cheap the same percentage produces a small number. These councils also lean harder on grants than on ratepayers.

So read $144 for what it is. Not a bargain, and not a sign of efficiency. A reflection of what the land underneath is worth.

What the ranking shows

The gap runs about 17 times from top to bottom. Most of that is land value, but the mechanism that keeps it there is the rate peg. IPART caps how much a council's total rates income may rise, and it applies that cap to what the council already collected. A council raising a lot in 1990 is still raising a lot, because every year since has been a percentage on top of the year before. The peg preserves history rather than correcting it.

New South Wales reports an average residential rate. For a sense of how another state measures the same thing differently, all 79 Victorian councils are ranked here on an average per property assessment that covers every property type.

Inside Sydney the spread is narrower and more useful. Woollahra charges $1,894 and Waverley charges $1,344. They share a boundary that runs through Bondi Junction. Two similar houses a few hundred metres apart, $550 a year different on rates alone.

Rates are the smallest of the four costs a household pays, and the other three vary far more by address. To see what a suburb actually costs to run once water, commute and insurance are counted, run it through the calculator.

Here is the part worth carrying away, and it is the opposite of what the ranking implies. Rates are the least variable of the costs that change by suburb. Across the Sydney metropolitan suburbs we cover, the middle eighty per cent span about $692 on council rates and about $4,867 on the drive to work. The commute moves roughly seven times as much. A council near the top of this table can still be the cheaper place to live once you count everything.

Which means the honest use of this page is not to pick a council. It is to know whether yours is unusual, and then go and look at the number that actually decides it.