July, 2017

To be fair, the affordability issue centres largely on Sydney and Melbourne. If your objective is to buy a first home in our southern capital cities, it might be a case of adjusting your search radar. For example, if you venture 12 kilometres from the Sydney CBD to Dulwich Hill or Summer Hill in the inner west, you’ll find 2-bedroom apartments from $650,000.

I’m also a big advocate for looking at some of our boom growth centres such as Bathurst and Wagga in New South Wales, Geelong in Victoria, Queensland’s Toowoomba and Mandurah in Western Australia. In regional NSW, for example, in towns that are just 2-3 hours from Sydney you can buy a house for $300,000. Moreover, these towns have affordable real estate, are achieving decent population growth and have diverse economies, which can underpin real estate capital growth long-term.