Making the decision to buy an investment property is hugely exciting, and just a bit scary.
Some of the biggest decisions are where and what to buy, but doing your research and spending just a fraction of the amount you intend to invest can save you thousands and minimise the risk of making a costly mistake.
1. Quarterly Economic Report
While property investments are dependent on local markets, it can be hugely helpful to have a macro view. This will help you understand how both the Australian market and the market in your capital city is performing and the economic factors that are driving it. This will give you an understanding of whether demand for property is strong or easing, and how employment, interest rates and mortgage levels are performing.
2. Rental performance reports
When buying an investment property, you want to select a suburb or town that has a good rental yield. A rental performance report identifies the top 50 or so suburbs that are active rental markets where rental yields are strong and vacancy rates are low together with the capital growth over past years and median value so you can work out if a typical property in the suburb is within your budget.
3. Trend Data
If criteria in addition to rental yield is important to your investment decision and you want to be able to filter and compare every suburb in the state, trend data is a treasure trove of insights. Trend data allows you to sort data according to median value, price growth over the past 12 months or three or five years, or rental yields. This can be a helpful way to identify a suburb that is in the price bracket you’re interested in, and from there see which suburb in that price bracket has the best rental yields, or growth etc.
4. Suburb performance reports
You may be considering a particular suburb as a place to invest. In this case, a suburb report can help you understand the investment fundamentals such as median value, value growth as well as rental yields and typical rents. These reports help you confirm if the suburb is right for you.
5. Individual property reports
While suburb knowledge is useful, every investment is determined by how well you buy. An individual property report can be purchased for each property you are considering making an offer for. It helps you understand the value of the property, and will also include some suburb fundamentals. This will help you understand if the asking price is realistic and help you make a logical decision about the return on the property.
Property reports can be purchased from a range of sources, including Propertyvalue.com.au and corelogic.com.au/reportstore.
Kylie Davis
is the Head of Content and Property Services Marketing
at CoreLogic and runs the CoreLogic Report Store.
Disclaimer: while due care is taken, the viewpoints expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Your Investment Property.
