OD #19 - The Great Property Divide: Why Australia’s Market Is Splitting in Two

Australia’s property market is no longer moving as one.

In this episode, we break down the growing divide between major cities—why some markets are surging while others are stalling, and what’s really driving the shift beneath the headlines. From Perth’s rapid growth to Melbourne’s reset and Sydney’s affordability ceiling, this is a city-by-city analysis of where the opportunities are forming… and where risk is quietly building.

If you’re still thinking about property as one national market, you’re already behind. This episode will change how you see it—and how you move within it.

Transcript

One Country Many Property Games

Oscar Don 0:00

Right now in Australia, two people can buy property in the same month in the same country and walk away with completely different financial outcomes. One builds momentum, the other feels stuck. Not because one is smarter, but because they chose a different market. There is no longer one Australian property market. There are multiple markets moving at different speeds, driven by completely different forces. And if you're making decisions based on the national headlines, you're already behind. Because the game now isn't just whether you buy, it's where you choose to play.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Welcome back to another episode of the Finance Bible Podcast.

Quick Disclaimer And How We Help

Oscar Don 0:41

Zeke here and your co-host Oscar. But before we get into it, please note that nothing in this podcast should ever be considered as personal financial advice.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Although, if financial advice is what you are seeking, let us know we can get you in touch with the correct team. But for now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Let's get into it.

Perth Boom And What Drives It

Brisbane And Adelaide Steady Climbers

Sydney Price Ceiling And Borrowing Limits

Melbourne Reset Phase Not Collapse

Choosing The Right Market Now

Closing And Follow The Show

Oscar Don 1:03

Welcome back to another episode. Today I'm going to give you a bit of an overview of the Australian property market and break down city by city for the first quarter of the year, 2026, and just give you the numbers behind the different cities, what we're seeing, what broader country is seeing as a whole, and kind of where you can go from there. If you're wanting to purchase a property yourself, this might be able to assist you with just starting the conversation and getting a bit more information about where you think is a better opportunity than somewhere else. So let's just zoom out for a second. So on paper at the moment with property in Australia, everything looks relatively stable. Nationally, we've got around 0.7% growth in March alone. And over the quarter, we're talking roughly 2% growth. So if you're just reading the headlines, you'd assume it's healthy, but averages hired realities. Because that 2% growth is not coming from everywhere, it's being driven by a handful of outperforming cities really carrying the weight on their own shoulders while the others are flat or declining. And this is what we call a fragmented market. And fragmentation is where things get quite interesting. Because when you're in a type of market like this, strategy matters, location matters, timing matters, and most importantly, understanding the why behind each market and each city is the difference between getting ahead and getting left behind. So let's start with Perth. Perth itself, as everyone has seen the last three to four years, has been one of the strongest markets in the country. And that continues at the start of this year. Growth has already been pushing past 7% in just the first quarter of the year. So that is extremely aggressive. And markets don't move like that without pressure building underneath. So what is actually driving the Perth market? So number one, you've got structural undersupply. So for years, Perth has been underbuilt, construction slowed down, development lagged, population growth quietly continued. And now we're all seeing the consequences of that. If you're in the Perth market, it's actually a good thing for your property growth, but there's too many people competing for too few properties. And when supply is tight, prices accelerate. Basic supply and demand. Number two, the affordability advantage. So when you compare Perth to Sydney and Melbourne, um, especially a year ago, obviously now it's caught up, Perth still feels you know quite affordable and accessible. And that is important because markets don't move based on desire, they move based on capacity to act. And if it's affordable and people can actually purchase these properties without feeling the sting. And obviously, as well, if you're purchasing in Perth for an investment property, you want to make sure the rental yields stack up. So in Sydney and Melbourne, for example, historically, it's been quite expensive for what the yields are. So that's where everyone has kind of looked at Perth. But now it's kind of changed a bit. So people might want to buy in Sydney, but they can buy in Perth. And that shift in behavior fully redirects the demand. And then you've got the capital flow from investors. As the East Coast markets slow, investors start looking elsewhere. So what investors follow, and what we generally follow, we follow a lot of different variables, but these are three main ones is the yield, growth momentum, and lower entry points. And Perth does tick all three, which creates a feedback loop. You've got more investors, you've got more competition and faster growth. So Perth as a whole, as an investment market, is no longer early. It's moving. A lot of people have already been left behind. You might have missed the boat because what you could have got two years ago for 450 grand is now around the 800 to 900 grand mark. So, yes, you might have missed the boat. So it's no longer about entering the market there. It's about identifying where supply is still constrained because yes, there are some areas. Perth is a big city. You can go even further down south, southwest Perth, in a region Bunbury. So there's there's a whole hostline. Now let's talk about Brisbane and Adelaide. These are markets that look last 12 to 18 months, Queensland as a whole, Brisbane, Gold Coast, the Golden Triangle, as they call it, has been going really well. A lot of people have been, well, A, moving up to Queensland with COVID, especially from Victoria with all the lockouts, etc., like that. And prices there have really, really moved. But they don't get as much attention as you know, your Melbourne and Sydney's because they're the biggest cities in the country. But both Brisbane and Adelaide have been performing very consistently. Not explosive, but reliable. And that consistency is driven by balance. So you've got the population movement. So there's still a really strong internal migration into both these cities. People are leaving your high-cost areas like Sydney and Melbourne, and they're looking for better lifestyles, like living 20 meters away from the beach on Gold Coast or a five-minute drive in Brisbane. So you're looking at better lifestyle and also affordability. The main thing is you're also looking for affordability without being technically cheap and looking for a you know a cheap, nasty place. So these markets sit in a unique position. They're not bargain markets, but they're still within the reach for a large portion of buyers. And that's a very, very good place to be because that creates sustainable demand over a long term, not just speculative. Another point I want to talk about is both these cities have balanced supply conditions. So unlike Perth, they're not severely undersupplied. But unlike Melbourne, they're not oversupplied either. So this creates a steady upward pressure without the volatility. And both Brisbane and Adelaide, they're compounding markets. They don't rely on the hype. They purely reward patience. If you're in it for the long run, like you will be fine. They reward time in the market and solid fundamentals. And that's exactly what builds long-term wealth. Now let's talk about Sydney. Sydney is, as everyone knows, one of the most expensive cities in the world, actually. Definitely the most expensive city in Australia. I live in Sydney at the moment, and it is not cheap. It is tough for a lot of people to even just buy your groceries down here. It's just, yeah, it's it's ridiculous. But Sydney's not weak in terms of property market. It's just been constrained. So prices have softened slightly, but this isn't a collapse. Obviously, you've got your eastern suburb properties like in you know, Bondi, Bronte, Clavelli, Cooji, which are always, you know, so expensive and slowly always increasing. But what has been happening with Sydney? So we've got borrowing capacity limits. With the price points at the moment at Sydney, even a tiny change in lending conditions has a massive impact on prospective buyers. So when rates rise or even just borrowing tightens, the buyers don't disappear. There's buyers out there wanting to buy, but they just purely lose the ability to compete and actually try and buy property because you're looking at minimum, you know, one$1.2 million for you know one or two bedroom apartment. And that's an apartment. If you look over per three years ago, you could get a four-bedroom house on the water for around$500,000. And I'll tell you what, it's a better lifestyle than living in Sydney. It's just crazy how prices in Sydney are just so inflated. Then you've got the psychological ceiling. So there is a mental barrier. When prices reach a certain level, buyers generally hesitate. Not because they don't feel and believe in the market, but because the stakes feel higher and that slows the whole momentum. Sydney as a whole has already had very strong growth cycles. So right now there's a bit of less urgency, there's a little bit of less FOMO, fear of missing out, and because there's a bit of less urgency, the competition drops off too. So Sydney as a whole, if you're a first-time investor wanting to get into the market, I think it's just completely overpriced. And good luck getting in if your budget is tight. There's definitely a lot of other areas where it's cheaper and could be a better opportunity for you. But all it is is it's a timing market. The opportunities appear when the sediment is quiet in Sydney. But you know, Sydney rewards long-term conviction. You've got people who snatched up properties over in Bondi 25 years ago and look at them now. You don't even need to look at the actual numbers. You can just you understand that they would have made quite a bit of money. So obviously, your major cities over time, you will do all right. It's just pending if you can afford it at the moment. Now, let's talk about Melbourne. Melbourne has been copping a bit of a hard time over the last few years by interstate investors, the government in Melbourne, everything and everyone is hating on Melbourne's property market. And yeah, I see, I see why, based on what's what's been going on the last couple of years. But it's probably the most misunderstood market right now because you've got all the other cities rising, and Melbourne at the moment has declined around 0.9%. And most people, seriously, when they look at those numbers, they're scared. They are not going any further. They're stopping right there. And that's purely surface level thinking. So Melbourne has higher available supply, it has more housing stock relative to demand. You've got more choice means less competition per property, and you know, less competition slows price growth. And this is what we've been seeing in the last you know two to five years, hence why Melbourne has slowly dropped off. And you've also seen a pure investor pullback. Like, why would you have invested in Melbourne two to three years ago and when there's really not much going on when you could put your money to, you know, for example, WA or Brisbane or Gold Coast or even South Australia, where it's more affordable and you've got a lot more going on. So that's what a lot of people did in the last two to three years, and now things have kind of changed. So there's been a shift in investor sentiment, whether it's whether it's the policy, the returns, investors had become more cautious in Melbourne. Um, and that's where you know when investors pull back, the demand softens. But the most important part people miss about Melbourne is it's not declining randomly, it's purely just transitioning. And every major market goes through phases of growth, plateau, reset, regrowth. And Melbourne, as the way we see it, it's purely in a reset phase. So this is where experienced investors pay attention because the opportunities don't always come from growth. They purely come from timing sentiments. And if you know the property clock and you know where some of these properties stand, you can really get ahead of the market and get a bit of a one-year start on the others. And when a market is out of favor, that's often when the groundwork for the next cycle is being laid. So, what does all of this actually mean? Like everything I've spoken about. It means the old way of thinking is outdated, as simple as that. There's no single market. There are multiple markets, each with different risks, different drivers, different opportunities. And if you treat them all the same, you will get average or you know, even below average outcomes. So stop asking, is now a good time to buy. Start asking yourself which market aligns with what's happening right now? Because every market is different. Every market has there's a good time to buy at every stage of the market, every different city. So in today's environment, clarity beats timing and strategy as a whole is the most important thing with all of this. And that is why you need to speak to professionals who do this day in, day out. If you don't know anything yourself, that's why they exist. But if you're doing it yourself, make sure you do a lot of research and look at all the numbers in the past because that gives you a really good indication. But I hope that gives you a good understanding of kind of where the the property market is at the moment in Australia and yeah, give you gives you some insight of why some are a bit cheaper, why some are a bit more expensive, and kind of where things are moving towards and some and some good opportunities. But until next time, ciao.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Well, that is the end of the episode. We hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, you know exactly what to do. Hit that follow button, like button, subscribe, share it to your friends, family, or even a co worker. If you're really feeling generous, you can send it off to an ex. But catch you next time. Hope you enjoyed it. Damn it.

Oscar Don 13:21

Chew.