It’s hard to imagine, but there was a time when Bronte was a new suburb, Blacktown was the countryside and Vaucluse was considered affordable for a moderate-income home buyer.

Sydney real estate has unsurprisingly changed a lot since the days of the late 19th and early 20th century. Properties are no longer priced in pounds, and there aren’t vacant blocks aplenty waiting to be snapped up.

Cafes and a vibrant dining scene have long replaced good soil as a hot suburb attribute, and you’re unlikely to see electric light and running water proudly noted on real estate advertisements.

Far from the in-demand suburb Bronte is today, the seaside suburb was just starting to taking shape more than 100 years ago.

Subdivision plans and advertisements digitised by the State Library of New South Wales show it was touted as “the new seaside suburb” in 1882, when subdivided blocks of Bronte Estate were offered for sale through Watkin & Watkin Auctioneers.

More than 30 years later, blocks in Bronte were still available, being sold through Richardson & Wrench, who (assuming all buyers would be male) described them as “the foundation for a long, healthy life for yourself, wife and family”.

Buyers in 1915 were urged to get in quick if they wanted a block with “a nice slope sufficient for drainage purposes” in the once barely known suburb with shade trees and tea houses, which was becoming increasingly popular.

In the same decade, a block of land in the now affluent suburb of Vaucluse could be snapped up with a £5 deposit (approximately $430 in today’s terms).

A 1918 ad for Lock’s Seaview Estate on the South Head marketed the land as a “chance for a person of moderate means to acquire a home site fit for a millionaire”.

However if you did secure the “very cheap land” you had to construct a building that would cost no less than £250.

In 1918 buyers were told it was now or never if they wanted to purchase in Vaucluse. Photo: Courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales.

Around that time, a similar-sized deposit could get you a beachfront block in Bondi, which offered a “congenial climate”, or a property on the Pittwater at Church Point, which offered a deep water frontage.

As it was unreachable by public transport, the auctioneers offered to meet buyers at the Narrabeen tram stop and drive them to the Church Point site.

Interested buyers were driven to properties at Church Point in 1920. Photo: Courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales.

Meanwhile in Rose Bay, Hardie & Gorman and Raine & Horne were selling blocks from 45 shillings per square foot, and offering free stone to build new homes with.

By 1929, the western Sydney suburb of Blacktown also had subdivided blocks for sale for a £5 deposit.

While today it’s far from the city fringes, it was once dubbed as the suburb “where the city meets the country” which offered “plenty of space for vegetable and poultry, and the best soil in the district”.

This advertisement, believed to be from 1929, was for a subdivision on the now closed St Andrews Golf Course. Photo: Courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales.

Agents at the time were also keen to promote the health benefits that could come with buying away from the city centre.

“[Beecroft] is strongly recommended by the Medical Profession as being the most healthful as it is one of the most picturesque suburbs,” reads a 1915 advertisement for the first subdivision of Eaton Park.

A 1915 advertisement for a Beecroft subdivision. Photo: Courtesy of State Library of New South Wales.