Transcription
So before we crack into where the smart money is going this year, what are Australia's leading analysts actually expecting for the 2026 Australian property market?
Well, my personal favorite is utilizing the SQM boom bus report that Lewis Christopher puts together every single year. Now, his second scenario, which is no rate cuts until the end of 2026 and sticky inflation, looks like the following: with Sydney and Melbourne property prices to go up somewhere between 2 to 6%. Brisbane to go up somewhere between 8 to 12% in 2026. Perth being the leader at 10 to 14%. Adelaide looking really strong at 9 to 13% and then CRA at 1 to 4%. So, across the board, every capital city is expected to rise according to the Boom Bus report. You know, we've been buying that Boom Bus report now for most of the last 10 years and it's been incredibly accurate.
But what about some of the other big dogs? Like what's Domain saying for 2026? Domain's a little bit more bullish in Sydney and Melbourne with Sydney to go up 7%, Melbourne up 6%. Now, they're expecting Brisbane, Perth, and Canra all to rise by 5% in 2026 and Adelaide at four. So, once again, across the board, property prices to rise in 2026.
And I think one of the challenges that we all have as investors, picking the next sweet spot or the best performing market in the new year is just the contradiction or the variety in the data out there. So, as always, take everything we say and what all of these guys say with a grain of salt. But in terms of what will work in 2026, and to be honest with you, I haven't seen a year that looks so good across the board in a long time now, probably since 2021, 2022.
What are some of the actual fundamentals that we have seen work time and time again in Australia, Europe, and America over the last 100 years that people can apply in 2026 to make the best investment decision possible? Now, it's really simple because these things haven't changed and won't change in the future. And at the end of the day, it all boils down to supply and demand. How many people are moving into these locations? How many properties being built in these locations? How affordable is it to own a home or an investment property in those areas? Is there demand from a rental perspective? And are the vacancy rates trending downwards? And then another one I love is how much money is being spent on infrastructure and amenities? Not just from a public perspective, but also from a private perspective. Where are the biggest businesses, where are the biggest organizations investing their money?
So, an example of this leading into the new year is obviously Melbourne has had a real hard time as we all know, um, since co, but we also all know that it is Australia's least favorite capital city for investors right now. Completely get it and as the tide turns, we'll see more and more Australians going down there. But if we look at Melbourne and go, well, it's really a tale of two cities. The eastern side and the city center and the Morningington side is absolutely popping. It's gone up really in alignment almost with Sydney over the last 10 years. But then the southwestern, northwestern and western sides of the city are dirt cheap, extremely affordable. So when we talk about pop growth, infrastructure growth and what the biggest businesses in the world are doing, give us an example of the Northwest at the moment up there in that sort of Melton region.
Now, something that you said there just reminded me of Warren Buffett's saying, which is be fearful when others are greedy, but be greedy when others are fearful. And that's what gets me really excited about Melbourne. On top of that, all of those fundamentals looking really strong. Um, more importantly, the infrastructure spending on both public and private sides. So out in the Melton region in that cobble bank suburb, you've got the Victorian government spending $900 million on a brand new hospital out there because of the population growth that's occurring. You've got Stocklands and Murvac, the two biggest property developers in Australia that are going to be releasing over 8,000 new sites over the coming years. You've also got Amazon, one of the biggest businesses in the world that just acquired over $135,000 square meters of land out there to put in a $50 million brand new data center. On top of that, you've got international immigration which is flooding to that market right now due to the affordable properties and the affordable rentals at the moment. You know, and all those things get me personally excited to the point where I'm looking at buying an investment property down there next year.
But what are some of the other big rocks that investors are looking at to help them make better decisions?
So, I like something that you said off camerara and that is investors in 2020 could have basically bought anything in any market in Australia outside of maybe Melbourne and Canra and absolutely cleaned up. But as we move into 2026, it's far more important to use the fundamentals and the history of Australian and international property to make the best decisions possible, you know. So, the biggest rock for me is really making sure you get your strategy right. And for those people out there that haven't seen our two properties or our three properties to financial freedom videos, they're an incredible place to start. We're effectively we know where we want to be longer term, which is hopefully living a life filled with choices. The choice to do work that you enjoy, to spend time with people that you love, to train, to travel, to help others, and to do meaningful purposeful work. But on top of that, once you've got your strategy right and you've got an incredible team of people around you that you can sort of work with to sort of collect ideas and collect different ideas, then the biggest rock for me is really history. So we know when we look back to Simon Presley's research in Australia over the last 50 years leading up to 2022, um, effectively the average of Australian property has done about 8.2% 2% peranom making it one of the strongest and highest quality investments on leverage in the world over that time. Now, once we know that the history has favored the major metro markets and the major regional markets around Australia and then we also remember that it is also favored houses and town houses where you own a bigger percentage of the land. It's really just reducing it to where you personally want to be as we move into the new year. I personally really like the look of the data around Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast as well as the likes of Melbourne and Jalong. But ultimately, we just want to get the highest quality investment that we can afford in the highest quality market we can afford as close to the city or the beach as we can afford. And it really doesn't have to be more complicated than that. And it's super important to recognize that everybody's at a different stage of life. Everybody's at a different stage of their investment journey with different budgets, with different goals. And at the end of the day, those things are really going to dictate what you should actually do.
Now, what we're noticing is a lot of our really wealthy clients that reached out to us back in 2016 through to 2020 and they absolutely crushed it in the Brisbane property market and now calling up and asking questions about the Melbourne property market. Same situation for myself and my brother Ben here is we've done really well in Brisbane. And whilst we still like the short to medium-term outlook of Brisbane, we are really excited about what's going on down in Melbourne, the fact that it is just not on people's radar at the moment. And for me, I've only got a budget of $650,000 right now. So to buy a house in a major metro market, I can really only do that in Melbourne and maybe Darwin at the moment. But because Melbourne's a bigger city with a better historic performance in comparison to Darwin, that's where I'm choosing to spend my money. And I think everybody needs to have, as you said, the great team of advisers around them to help them understand where they're at right now and help them get to where they want to be in the future. And as you said, in this current market, there's just so much variety.
So, a couple of weeks ago, we worked with an absolute legend called Eliza. She had a 500k maximum budget and we were able to get her a small home in Melbourne for just 420K, which is in complete contrast to another one of our clients in Sydney, Brian, who actually recently engaged Simon and I to buy seven properties for him in 2025 and 2026. And he had a $1.5 million budget for each of them. And he already had a great portfolio in Sydney, a great portfolio that we helped him buy in Brisbane and now he really wanted to rip into the Melbourne and Jalong markets. So, I think for me personally with good exposure to the Sunshine Coast and a lot of exposure recently to the Brisbane market, I'll be personally looking at Melbourne, but I also get that Melbourne is so early in its journey. And it's not everyone's cup of tea. And there are plenty of other incredible markets like your Perfs and like your Brisbane where a lot of Australia's smartest money is moving into short term. And that's not just backed up with the SQM stuff, expecting it to do somewhere between sort of 8 and 14% in the next year, but it's also backed up by the likes of the Australian Financial Review, where seven of Australia's leading analysts are expecting house prices, and this is from an older article, going from about an 800K average to around about that $1.4 million mark by the 2032 Olympic Games. So regardless of where you look and regardless of your budget at the moment, there are some incredibly high-quality areas in Australia.
Now, regardless as to where you're at, one of my favorite things to do at the end of the year is to look back at what you've been able to achieve over the last 12 months and start planning for what you want to achieve over the next 12 months. And if one of those goals is to get out there and purchase an investment property, then make sure you follow the history. Make sure you follow the fundamentals that we've talked about today. And if you're open to it, follow where that big money's going as well.
Good day, guys. My name is Ben and I'm the director here at Pumped on Property. And I just want to say a massive thank you for watching our content today. Now, if you're thinking about buying an investment property in the next 3 to 12 months, then the team and I would love to offer you a one-on-one strategy session. In that session, we can talk about exactly where you are right now, where you'd like to be longer term, and we can deeply educate you on the Australian market. And then you can take that information and go and absolutely smash it on your own or potentially become one of the small number of clients that we work with each week. To book your session, all you have to do is go to www.pumpedonpropy.com and click that book your free strategy session button. But either way, we wish you all the best on your journey as an investor to financial freedom.
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