Experts often say that the great thing about property investment is that it's forgiving if you make a mistake early on, and generous if you did things right - provided you stay in the market long enough.
This view is certainly validated if you look at the housing market's performance over the past decade, as we've done in our article Double or Nothing. The capital gains made in dollar terms are phenomenal. Obviously, the size of your profit (or loss) is directly proportional to the amount you invested. In this case, investors who put their money into premium suburbs 10 years ago have been rewarded handsomely in terms of dollar gains. Investors in Peppermint Grove in Western Australia, for example, have seen their investments more than quadruple over the past 10 years. That's $3.75m in capital gains from one property alone - a neat profit if you had $1.87m to buy a home back in 1999.
Peppermint Grove's performance is replicated in many upmarket and highly desirable locations across Australia. Despite the negative impact of the recent Global Financial Crisis where prestige properties lost at least 20% of their values, houses in these top-shelf locations still achieved eye-popping growth in dollar terms.
The good news is that many lower to middle-range properties have also produced excellent results over the last decade, with property values in some suburbs growing more than five or sixfold over the last eight years. The other great thing is that investors in these areas didn't have to cough up million dollar- plus capital to invest. For example, the median house price in Darch or Hocking was a reasonable $93,000 back in 2001, but has grown more than six times that amount over the past eight years.
This goes to show that when it comes to property investing, there is money to be made in any market at any price range at any cycle, with the right due diligence. This again bolsters the case that no matter how much property prices fluctuate in the near term, investors will still reap good returns if they hold out over the long term.
So if past performance is an indicator of future showing, the top-performing suburbs we highlight in our article, Biggest Gainers over the Past Decade, could just be your ticket to doubling or tripling your money over the next 10 years!
