Choosing an area

Every listing comes with a story about its suburb. Read the suburb’s numbers before you read its brochure, so the area you choose rests on evidence as well as appeal.

The data that matters (and the noise that doesn’t)

Suburb medians make headlines and mislead buyers. A median jumps when a few expensive homes sell and slumps when a unit block settles; it tells you what sold, not what anything is worth. The numbers that actually describe a market are the same four sellers should watch, read from a buyer’s point of view:

• Days on market. Under 30 days, sellers have the leverage and you’ll need to move fast and clean. Past 60, the leverage is yours.
• Auction clearance rates in auction cities. Sustained clearance above 65 per cent means crowds and overshooting guides; below 55, passed-in properties and negotiable vendors.
• Total listings. Rising stock month on month means more choice and softer prices. Falling stock means the opposite, whatever the headlines say.
• Vendor discounting. The average gap between asking and sale price. A wide gap is a market where asking prices run well above results; calibrate your offers accordingly.

All four are free on the portals’ suburb pages, and our suburb profiles and suburb comparison put the rest side by side. An hour with them tells you more than a month of weekend drive-bys.

Growth signals worth trusting

Nobody reliably picks the next boom suburb, but the ingredients of growth are not mysterious:

• Population pressure. People arriving faster than dwellings are built. State population projections and building approval counts are both public.
• Infrastructure that is funded, not promised. A train line under construction moves prices; a corridor study does not. Check the project’s status, not the press release.
• Land share of value. Land appreciates; buildings depreciate. A house where land is 60 to 70 per cent of the value has more growth engine than an apartment where it’s 10 per cent.
• The ripple effect. Suburbs bordering an expensive one inherit its priced-out buyers. If the neighbour has run hard and yours hasn’t, the gap usually closes.
• Supply constraint. Water, hills, heritage overlays and built-out streets limit new stock. Growth corridors with unlimited flat land must share their growth with every new estate.

School catchments: the boundary is the price

Sought-after public school catchments carry measurable premiums; buyers routinely pay 5 to 10 per cent more for an address inside the zone, and agents price accordingly. Two cautions. Check the official catchment map on the education department’s site, not the agent’s flyer, because “close to” and “zoned for” are different products. And remember boundaries get redrawn; a premium paid for a zone is a premium that can be rezoned away.