Where to find the best spring property deals in Brisbane

Brisbane recently gained the dubious distinction of having the second most expensive capital city property market in Australia, moving ahead of Canberra but still a long way behind Sydney’s eye-watering home prices.

It comes on the back of another stellar year in the Queensland capital, which saw property values soar 15% in the 12 months until the end of August.

According to CoreLogic, Brisbane’s median home price is now $875,040.

But does that mean the city is now “unaffordable”?

And now Spring is here, with the real estate market picking up pace after a Winter lull. Is now a good time to buy in the place the locals call “Brisvegas”?

My answer is an emphatic “yes”, and I’ll explain why…

Seize the moment

There are more properties on the market in Spring - that’s a given.

So if you are a homebuyer or an investor, this immediately gives you more choice of properties.

While Brisbane is no longer a “bargain basement” town for real estate, high interest rates, high rents and the cost of living have either forced or scared many potential buyers out of the market, meaning that if you can afford a property now, there’s actually less competition for quality properties.

Some buyers are also mistakenly sitting on their hands because they think prices will start to fall.

Interest rates will start coming down either later this year or early in 2025 (some of the banks have already started cutting their fixed term mortgage rates in anticipation of this) and I think once that happens, buyers currently sitting on the sidelines will have a major dose of FOMO and jump into the market, driving up property prices further.

So if you find a house you like or a great investment grade property, make a silly offer and work up from there.

You may find a nervous vendor might accept a low-ball offer because they are terrified there are suddenly lots of competing properties on the market when there were only a handful in Winter.

Where to buy a home now in Brisbane?

If you are buying a home, the questions you usually ask yourself are straightforward:

Does this property work for me and my family?

Is it near to everything I need?

However, with Brisbane now the second most expensive property market in Australia, many first home buyers will be more keen to get a foot on the property ladder and then hopefully later “trade-up” to another home that is nearer their work and other family members.

So where can you buy a home in Brisbane that is relatively affordable, but which has the potential to grow faster in value than other suburbs to give you a speedy increase in capital gain?

One of the great things about Freedom Property Investors is that I co-founded the company with Lianna Pan, an actuary and data scientist who insisted that we establish a property advisory with a large research team so the advice we give our members can always be data-driven.

So, I asked our team to come up with a list of suburbs that met the following criteria:

1. “Relatively affordable” - We decided to define this by ruling out suburbs where the median price was over 80% of Brisbane’s citywide median dwelling price. So basically, anything over $700,000 was out. 
2. Excellent value growth - As I noted before, CoreLogic says dwelling prices in Brisbane jumped by 15% last year,  so for both houses and units, the brief was to find suburbs that are growing considerably faster than the already extremely impressive citywide median.
3. Commute times - Presuming some residents have to work in the CBD, we looked for suburbs where regular commute times should not exceed an hour and where big, non-CBD employment hubs were, preferably, less than 30 minutes away.
4. Strong local economy - We considered metrics like infrastructure spending, local employment opportunities, and projected population growth to help determine whether price growth in the suburb would stay strong because of continuing demand.

This is what the Freedom research team came up with:

As you can see, the suburbs in the lists for both houses and units represent exceptional value—particularly for first-time home buyers, with the median house price in the most expensive location (Newtown) is only 71% of the median city-wide dwelling (that includes houses and units).

When it comes to units, the most expensive location (Waterford West) sees a median unit price of just 46% of the median city-wide dwelling price.

Yet the suburbs see property values growing at an astounding pace, especially units.

For first-home buyers who do not have a big deposit, these locations are ideal places to get a foot on the property ladder to rapidly build up equity.

Where to invest now in Brisbane?

If you are an investor, the main questions you should be asking yourself are:

Does this property stack up from an investment point of view - what’s the rental return, what’s the yield, what’s the capital growth potential?

So, I asked our research team to come up with a list of suburbs that met the following criteria:

1. Once again, we used the “relatively affordable” definition to rule out suburbs where the median price was over 80% of Brisbane’s citywide median dwelling price. 
2. Excellent value growth - again, the brief was to find suburbs where year-on-year values are growing at around double or more than the citywide median.
3. Commute times - presuming tenants may have to work in the CBD, we looked for suburbs where regular commute times would not exceed an hour and where big, non-CBD employment hubs were, preferably, less than 30 minutes away.
4. Strong local economy: We considered metrics like infrastructure spending, local employment opportunities, and projected population growth to help determine whether price growth and rental demand would stay strong in the suburbs.
5. We looked for suburbs where the current vacancy rate was less than 2%.
6. We looked for suburbs where rental yields were at least 4% for houses and 4.5% for units.

This is what we came up with:

Again, the suburbs in the lists for both houses and units represent exceptional value - particularly for first-time investors who do not have a big deposit.

Being able to pick up a unit for less than $350,000 in Woodridge for example, yet still get a gross annual rental yield of over 5% is an extremely attractive proposition.

The take-out

While hopefully the figures we have come up with are useful, the bottom line is that you have to do your due diligence when it comes to real estate.

We recommend getting some good independent advice, particularly if you are looking at building a property investment portfolio.

Nevertheless, Spring is here, and it’s a great time to buy residential real estate.

Don’t listen to what the media are saying about the possible direction of property prices or stories about a

The simple truth is that the property you like will probably never be cheaper than it is today.

And that’s especially true in a booming market like Brisbane.