NSW Historical prices of Central Coast vs Upper North Shore suburbs

Hi all,

I am a newbie to property investment so will need a lot of help and advices so thanks in advance. I read the forum and it seems there are a lot of helpful and knowledgeable and experiences people here so I stumble onto the right place.

I just started looking at property investment more closely recently – I know it is late and should have done that years ago, even last year, but I guess late is still better than never. Cant keep working, paying all in taxes and still no money to live off during retirement!

The first step for us to look for some suburbs to invest – we have been looking around; many nice suburbs but they are all super expensive as we all know. That is the market so leave that for later – first is to look for the areas / suburbs we should consider investing in.

The aim is to chase capital gain, in 10-15 years at least. I understand we need to look at long term like that to make sure we catch 1-2 cycles. We can afford some negative CFs (have to I guess), but hopefully not massive every month. However, CG is the main game.

We are thinking of Sydney Upper Northshore (e.g. Asquith) or Central Coast because we live in upper north shore, so at least we know the suburbs or we can drive and view properties; plus also think it has potential. I read that many people suggest to buy in Brisbane or Adelaide but as a virgin, a bit scared to buy unseen. We also prefer suburbs along the train line (can explain criteria in another post and ask for your advice about that).

To choose the suburbs, I started looking at historical price changes (historical performances don’t guarantee future, but I guess that is still an objective measure; we then look at subjective aspects later). I used different websites you guys mentioned in the forum – onthehouse, microburb, realestate.com.au. However, the historical median price changes of these north shore and central coast suburbs in the last 10 years seem extremely similar- basically they all double in the last 6 years; suffered dips in 2018&2019.

So my questions are:

1. Am I missing something when I see the price history are mostly the same for 10 years? Or that is correct because these suburbs are in the same “big region”, but median prices only give half of the story?
2. Is there any website that can give a longer price history? E.g. 20 years; and should I look at that longer history or less relevant that far?
3. Are there better ways to research for the historical prices per suburbs?
4. Any advices if my thinking and approach is on the right track or anything else I should do?

Thanks a lot.

 

what type of property and budget? Houses and units are very different markets.

 

RP data would be your good friend, though the estimate isn’t always accurate (too low) during a boom like what we are experiencing now due to the data lag.

What is your budget and is this going to be a PPOR? If you are looking for an upper north shore property, I personally wouldn’t go beyond Hornsby.

 

Thanks guys.

I am looking for houses and yes, I did compare house price from Sydney suburbs and house price from CC suburbs and I saw very similar returns which surprised me hence I asked.

I am looking for IP only. Lower than Hornsby is probably a bit too stretch so I might have to look from Hornsby up; some decent properties around Asquith for example for 1.5m; but I am not sure that is a better investment than something in CC for 8-900k. It depends on the capital gain between them - if similar price percentage changes then CC seems better investment.

So you would recommend RP / core logic for the suburbs price history comparison? But would they give me different answer though if they are still same / similar return?

thanks.