Michael has been once again voted Australia’s leading property investment advisor by the readers of ‘Your Investment Property Magazine’, but he’s not a theorist… He has been successfully investing in property since 1971 and is a leading property commentator and Australia’s most widely read property investment blogger. Join over 115,000 others who get their updates from Michael and his group of expert guest bloggers and benefit from their perspective.
Australian renters are spending a record share of their gross median household income on housing costs, as a chronic shortage of rental stock drives rents higher across the country. Cotality’s Rental Review Q1 2026 shows national dwelling rents increased 2.1% over the three months to March, up from a 1.2% increase in Q4 2025, indicating…
![Melbourne housing market update [video] | April 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/melbourne-1-270x200.jpg)
Melbourne’s housing market recorded a 0.2% decline in March, marking the fourth consecutive month of falling dwelling values. This persistent weakness has resulted in a cumulative decline of 0.9% since November 2025. The downturn is primarily concentrated in the detached housing sector, while units have shown a relatively milder contraction during this period. The market…
![[PODCAST] The Property Strategy Most Investors Ignore (Financial Buffers Explained) with Brett Warren](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/769-Ignored_Property_Strategy-BW-Youtube-cover-270x200.jpg)
Most property investors think success comes down to buying the right property at the right price. But the truth is… the real difference between successful investors and those who struggle has very little to do with the property itself. It comes down to strategy. Because the investors who build long-term wealth don’t just buy property – they build a…
The national housing market recorded a 0.7% rise in March, taking the quarterly growth to 2.1%. While values continue to trend higher, the pace of appreciation is gradually losing steam compared to the 2.8% lift seen in the final quarter of last year. This national average, however, masks a significant and growing divergence between the…
SQM Research released its latest data on residential rental property vacancy rates. Australia’s national residential vacancy rate fell to 1.0% in March 2026, down from 1.1% in February. The total number of residential vacancies declined to 31,732 dwellings, marking a continued tightening in rental market conditions nationwide. The March result indicates that strong tenant demand…
![[PODCAST] Why Some Property Markets Boom While Others Stall – The Hidden Force in Property Investing with Simon Kuestenmacher](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/777-The_Hidden_Force_in_PI-SK-Youtube-cover-270x200.jpg)
You’ve probably noticed that some property markets surge ahead while others seem to tread water… even when the broader economic conditions are the same. It’s easy to blame interest rates, government policy, or media sentiment, but those factors only tell part of the story. The real drivers sit underneath all of that, and they’re far more predictable if you know where to look. In today’s Wealth Retreat Conversations episode, I want to give you a taste of the type of thinking and insights you’ll experience at Wealth Retreat, where leading demographer Simon Kuestenmacher will be joining us…
One thing I’ve noticed speaking with many property investors is… While on the one hand, a small group has done very well over the last few years, initially spurred on by the recent once-in-a-generation property boom in 2020 – 21 and then by the strong housing markets of 2023-25 and this was despite the property…
It’s not often we see a statistic that tells such a clear story about wealth creation. But right now Australia’s property market is doing exactly that – quietly delivering record profits to homeowners across the country and reshaping the financial landscape in the process. For the first time in 15 years, over 90% of house…
There is no doubt that our housing markets are facing challenges from all directions, but clearly, they have remained resilient. To better understand what’s happening, this monthly collection of charts from Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) paints an interesting picture. Buying a home for roughly the same cost as renting might sound unlikely in Australia’s current housing market,…
Prices are up again. Headlines scream “new record highs.” Homeowners quietly smile. Renters quietly seethe. And somewhere in the background, a much bigger question gets ignored: As a nation, how expensive do we actually want housing to be? This is the uncomfortable conundrum that leading demographer Simon Kuestenmacher, my co-host of the Demographics Decoded podcast,…
