Property research articles & tips

Which is the best state to invest in?

Note: If you would like more up-to-date information on the Market, Ben releases a monthly property update on The Property Couch Podcast! Get the latest insight into each state and territory here > As a property investment analyst and qualified property investment advisor, I'm often asked which is the best state to buy property in. But that'...

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Future Population Growth Has Meaning for Some Property Investment Locations

Population growth is not the ‘panacea’ for all things property investment certainly not in spotting the next property investment locations. In fact, it’s often used by many property investment spruikers as the way to get unsuspecting Mum and Dad investors excited enough to hook into a lemon location, and ultimately a lemon investment. However...

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Why Do So Many Academics and Economists Get Residential Property So Wrong?

You have to admire those who spend their days trying to improve ours – that’s the pursuit of so many academics and economists all around the world.  They are trying to solve problems and predict outcomes, which makes their work very challenging and also highly rewarding, one would guess, when they do get something right. Knowing these peopl...

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Will Property Prices Keep Increasing – a 38 Year Analysis – part 2

In last month article I highlighted the returns of 3 different Melbourne suburbs over a 38 year period and in this article I promised to explain how this happened.  In doing so, I have included three new graphs of each Suburb to help illustrate my findings. To help you interpret them I will just explain what is consistently measured in each graph...

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Will Property Prices keep Rising? – A 38 years analysis

One of the biggest questions I get asked by the ‘non-believers’ and ‘sceptics’ regarding property values is, will property prices keep rising? As a property analyst and qualified property investment advisor it’s my full time job to analyse and evaluate the market in terms of historical performance and even more importantly to determine w...

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Victorian (Melbourne) Property Price Data – By suburb and property type

This month has seen the release of the Valuer General’s Property Price Guide data for Victoria for the period up until December 2012.  Now you might think this data is a bit old, and should be release earlier, however it’s important to recognise where the data is being collated from and when the data is actually recognised. The data is source...

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Is the Australian Property market about to crash?

The continuing commentary around the Australian property market is a bit like a movie review that you’d read in any weekend magazine – it’s simply reporting someone’s opinion about the subject and quite often results in very conflicting views. It’s not uncommon to read that one reviewer loved a particular movie and rated it very highly wh...

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Why Does Generalised Commentary Help No-one?

It’s fair to say that the introduction of the internet in the real estate space has seen a vast transformation in the amount of information we have available to help us better understand the values of property, but in reality the average consumer is still being short changed with the data that really matters. I recently read an article about a 1...

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2011 Valuer General Data Released For Victoria

Most commentators say that property investing should be a long term investment, and you have no debate on this point from me, but when commentators are asked what is short, medium and long term, that is when you start getting mix responses. My view has always been consistent and I’ll again share with you. Short term in property investing for me i...

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Up 33%, Up 24%, Up 28% in the past 12 Months*

In the ‘House’ market, Gardenvale up 33%, Lake Wendouree up 24%, Parkville up 28%, and in the ‘Unit’ market Abbotsford up 14%, Moorabbin up 29%, Notting Hill up 27% in the past 12 months.... is that right? If I’m not mistaken, recently, the lead stories and media commentary within the press and on TV are all talking about property pric...

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Smart Decisions Boil Down to Smart Numbers

Who knows what a correlation coefficient measurement is? Answer: A very sophisticated measure that determines the degree to which two random linear variables movements are associated. The correlation coefficient is calculated as: The calculation will result in a figure between -1 or +1.  A zero result indicates no linear relationship between ...

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Brokers Top of Class

The latest Core Data ACQUIRE index market research findings has brokers top of the class.  Core Data conducted a mystery shop exercise, surveying home lenders and ranked brokers ahead of banks and credit unions on a range of seven different criteria. On the most important criteria of ‘Understanding – or the ability to understand customers n...

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Population Growth = Value Growth? – NOT ALWAYS

At our final Property Wealth Forum event for 2011, my team and I busted a dozen myths about what drives property values. One of the biggest myths we busted centred around the view that if you get population growth you will naturally get growth in property prices.  Not entirely true - let me explain. Population is seen as a demand driver of value,...

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