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 prices tanking, especially in Melbourne!

Hmmm… interesting isn’t it?  So let’s assume you purchased a median value property in these markets ‘broadly’ speaking.  This data is telling me that my property would have enjoyed some terrific growth over this period.  How much so, well let’s move from a percentage measure to the real value measure in dollar terms:

Gardenvale: $748k to $995k, a capital gain of $247k

Lake Wendouree: $500k to $620, a capital gain of $120k

Parkville: $704k to $901k, a capital gain of $197k

No matter what way you look at it these are some very pleasing numbers when you consider what performance most other investments are returning in these present times. And naturally within our business we are striving to achieve the very best investment outcomes for our clients when they engage us to help select, negotiate and buy investment properties for them.

But this eye catching headline supported by the great investment results just highlighted is not actually the main message of this piece.

The real message I wanted to convey is the same consistent message that has been part of my investment ethos since I started advising and building investment property strategies and plans for our clients.  This message relates to my strong held belief that with such a large property market, it’s only logical that there will always be opportunity within any sub-market, and by sub-market I’m talking about markets that are the size of suburbs (200-1000 properties).

Now one might consider this a very small marketplace taking into account there are over 8.6 million residential dwellings within Australia. However if we bear in mind that most share investment analysts spend their entire working careers studying the ASX 200 hundred  and they see opportunity in this space most of the time, you can start to get an understanding of where I am coming from with my view of seeing property investment opportunities within markets around 200 properties or more.

So again for the record, I don’t care at all for what the commentary is saying about the overall Australian, State or City marketplaces, I’m only interested in the demand and supply drivers that would influence the sub-market in which I see value and growth opportunities.

*Source: Australian Property