“Hibernation” is probably the wrong word to use- because it suggests one is asleep and doing nothing. These are the times that should be used for tracking and assessing markets, improvement of business strategies and improving future processes, networking, land banking etc so that one is ready to leap when conditions are favourable to investment and property development. Australia is also a place with diverse markets that are, at any particular moment, at differing stages of the property cycle: eg: Adelaide: just coming out of the recessionary phase, Melbourne: development glut, Perth: coming off the mining boom but housing beginning to re-surge. Given this it is possible to find a location, at any particular time where immediate investment and action is warranted. Thirdly a lot of property developers make the mistake of “following” the market, rather than “leading it”: in short they end up buying high and being forced to sell low, rather than the other way around as described in a previous article: it is only by tracking markets that a developer can identify the end of a downturn, immediately before the upswing, that is the best time to buy..