1.8 Tools & Resources
For the next lesson, we’re going to take a quick look at the expansive range of tools that are available to help you research property and advance your knowledge base.
Securing the dream home or investment property largely comes down to information: have you got the right information on the area that you’re looking to purchase a property in and is the pricing information accurate? Furthermore, what else can you glean to give you an advantage, find the off-market opportunities and have the edge in negotiation?
Some online tools are free and while you might be initially hesitant about that price tag (“free” isn’t usually synonymous with “good quality”, after all), you can actually use property websites like www.realestate.com.au and www.domain.com.au to learn a lot about a market. At the very least you’ll be able to find information on almost any property that you’re looking at, when it was last sold and what it was sold for. These are the tools that I check daily myself and one of the first things I teach clients is how to use them to get the maximum amount of data out.
However, no matter how proficient you get at those tools, at some point you’re probably going to want to go more deeply into specific addresses, and then to look at a suburb to find other comparable data.
When you’re ready to get started with this advanced searching, you may want to access subscription services, such as RPData / Corelogic (which is the main site Australian buyers are familiar with). These subscriptions aren’t overly expensive; they’re generally around as little as $100 per month for the period you are in the market looking to buy.
Property Data Research
When deciding on your top two target suburbs, the emergence of property research data platforms are a great way to pinpoint your preferred location. Most of these pay as you go platforms offer great insight into the top performing suburbs throughout the country that should help make that final buying decision a lot easier. Some of the key metrics the Hello Haus research team like to focus on in these reports are the growth rates, days on market, auction clearance rates, rental yields, median sale prices infrastructure projects and weigh that against infrastructure projects, properties listed and properties sold. A lot of this information can be found for free by clicking on the links below:
- REA Explore Australian Suburbs
- Domain Suburb Profiles & Property Market Trends
- SQMResearch Free Property Data
Key Reminders
You are researching something that you may be planning on holding on to for decades and what might seem incidental now can have long term implications. A property that enjoys an annual growth rate of 5%, and one that records a 7% growth over the same time, works out at a vastly different end value when you’ve held the property for a long time. So be open to investing in a bit of help upfront, as the return on investment (ROI) over the long term can be massive, see table below for an example.
Source: HelloHaus
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