The reviews are nice. The numbers are better.

What we saw: 0.41 months of inventory. There was effectively nothing for sale. Homes were moving in 21 days. And rents had been compounding at 7.8% a year for five years while prices had only managed 3.9%. Rent running ahead of price is the setup we look for.

The buy: $807,000 for a house on a subdividable block, which was the whole brief. The clients run an electrical business, and this was their second purchase with me inside a couple of months.

What we saw: 0.85 months of inventory in an established middle ring suburb, vacancy at 1.51%, and a five year price growth rate of just 3.93% against rent growth of 5.34%. A suburb that had been sitting still while the fundamentals underneath it kept tightening.

The buy: $807,500 for over 1,000 square metres in the heart of the suburb, with a three bed one bath house already on it. The land alone was valued at $850,000 at the time. So the house was free, and the dirt came in $42,500 under its own valuation.

What we saw: an entry point around the mid $600s within a short run of a regional city centre, the deepest sales volume of anything on our list at roughly 500 house sales a year, and a suburb that has run 16.7% in 12 months with vacancy falling from 2.25% to 0.88%. Liquidity like that means you can buy without paying a premium and sell without waiting.

The buy, happening right now: the vendor wanted $650,000. Our inspection flagged problem areas, and the building and pest came back with major defects in the exact bathroom the clients, two builders, were planning to renovate anyway. That report became another $25,000 off, and we secured it at $605,000.

What we saw: a regional service town of 10,000 people with a hospital, a base of wool and agriculture money, and a housing market nobody was watching. Vacancy at 0.55%. A typical three bedder at $428,000 renting for $399 a week. And a modern two bathroom house, the thing tenants ask for first, is rare on the ground there.

The buy: $465,000 for a 2009 built three bed, two bath on 588 square metres. Same-street three bed, two bath stock was selling at $500,000 and over, so this was bought under its own street. The clients' second purchase with us, eight months after their first, and the yield play to sit beside the growth play.

What we saw: the biggest city in northern Australia with a job base that does not depend on tourists. Health care and public administration, which up here means the army base and the hospital, are the two largest employers, and employed residents were up 8% in five years. Houses had just run 21% in a year off a low base, rents were up from $381 to $494 a week in three years, vacancy was tight, and 4,600 houses a year change hands, so the exit is never a problem.

The buy: $608,000 for a house in an established suburb, bought in December 2024 while most people were still calling the city a mining town.

What we saw: this city has the cleanest long price record of any regional city we track. Two down years in sixteen, neither worse than 1%, and houses compounding at 7.9% a year for a decade. Health care is the biggest employer, overseas migration is doing the population growth, vacancy sits under 1%, and rents had gone from $457 to $584 a week in three years. A market that rises slowly and never gives it back, and in December 2024 it had not yet started to run.

The buy: $680,000 in December 2024 for a house in one of the suburbs we had shortlisted, the same month as the purchase above, and the first of two buys in this city inside four months.

What we saw: the same fundamentals three months after the first purchase, with the price starting to move. Vacancy under 1%, rents still compounding, and a council building fewer than 700 houses a year for 179,000 people. The brief this time was a lower entry, so the search went to the suburbs still trading under $600,000.

The buy: $583,000 in March 2025 for a different client, bought under the $600,000 line while there was still stock under it.

What we saw: the Latrobe Valley had sat flat for two years after its Covid run, down 1% in 2023 and up 2% in 2024, while the jobs kept coming. Employed residents up 12.6% in five years, health care the biggest employer, and the cheapest entry in Victoria for a house with a yard, an hour and a half from Melbourne. Flat prices on a rising job base is the setup. You buy before the market notices.

The buy: $473,000 in June 2025 for a house on the quieter side of a two-town market, bought while the suburb was still priced off the flat years.