With more than 15,000 suburbs across the country, determining the best location can be daunting and frustrating, so YIP has done the hard work for you - the 2012 edition of YIP's Top 100 Suburbs Guide.
Your Investment Property’s 2012 Annual Suburb Guide presents the country’s top 100 suburbs based on their potential to generate strong capital growth and consistently high rental return. This year, we’ve zoomed into the investment sweet spot: suburbs with the median price of $500,000 and under.
Chosen from more than 15,000 suburbs across Australia, the Your Investment Property Top 100 is the pre-eminent guide for investors looking to double or even triple the national averages. With the help of our distinguished experts, we’ve identified the suburbs that are worth including in this year’s list.
We’ve spent weeks and months collating the information and verifying the stats to ensure you’re getting an accurate picture of each suburb. Our in-depth research included speaking to local agents and asking them information that would help you make your decision. Each suburb contains all the important facts about the local housing market, where demand and supply are coming from, economic fundamentals that will trigger growth as well as the best buys in the suburb.
Ranking the suburbs has been a challenging exercise as all suburbs possess excellent qualities for investment. It all came down to risk profiles. What are the potential downsides to this suburb compared to the others?
The result was unexpected. Some of the more popular “hotspots” ranked lower than last year due to changing fundamentals and shift in the market cycle, while other lesser-known suburbs charged ahead. So, after painstakingly analysing and ranking each of the submissions, we’re proud to bring you this year’s top 100 list
August 1st October 3rd 2012 and 
- available on newstands from
available directly from our offices
while stocks last!
How did we find No. 1?
1. First, we canvassed a panel of Australia’s leading property experts for their picks of the suburbs that will grow in value and sustain high rental return.
The experts:
Tim Lawless, national research director, RP Data
Andrew Wilson, economist, Australian Property Monitors
Terry Ryder, director, hotspotting.com.au
Jeremy Sheppard, research director, redwerks.com.au, creator of DSRScore.com.au
Peter Koulizos, author, The Property Professor's Top Australian Suburbs
Sam Saggers, founder, Positive Real Estate
Herron Todd White Independent Property Advisors
WBP Property Group
Cate Bakos, Buyers Advocate and Property Advisor, Empower Wealth Property Advisory P/L
PRD Nationwide Analysts
Charles Tarbey, CEO, Century 21
Andrew Paterson, thenexthotspots.com.au
2. Second, reviewed all suburbs we’ve featured in our past articles including those profiled in our state round up section and included a few hot tips of our own to generate a long list of around 250 suburbs that have great investment potential.
3. Then we took all those suburbs and carried out an in-depth research and analysis to help us score each suburb out of five on the following factors:
Demand: Including stats on rental yields, auction clearance, days on market, vacancy rates, online search and population growth
Supply: Level of listing, housing developments currently underway and in the pipeline
Fundamentals: Including job opportunities, demographics, infrastructures, public and private spending, affordability, accessibility, amenities and risk factors
4. After this comprehensive research, we shortlisted the top 150 suburbs and then culled the list further to arrive at our Final Top 100 List. So which suburb came up on top in this year’s list? Follow the countdown here!
