Dear Kev,
Checkout my post below.
http://www.somersoft.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=303
For general information it is important to have multiple info streams to get the best overall picture.
First work out what you want to find out about?
Are you looking for a report to tell you where to invest?
-If this is the case reports that have pure statistics used alone can be misleading. Are you investing in an area because it has achieved stunning growth? An example is the top performing suburb in Brisbane was Sherwood with the median house price going up 37% in the March 2002 quarter. In the recently released June 2002 quarter however, the median house price decreased by 18%.
Therefore if you had tried to invest purely on trying to follow the leaders you would have missed out in the short-term. For a buy and hold strategy a better way is to go back to the fundamentals of what makes an area good to invest in and then develop a set of rules that you feel comfortable with that would qualify properties in the target area.
Therefore you can choose properties where the fundamentals are right and invest in them BEFORE it becomes trendy and overpriced.
Generally check out the various information sources that are listed in the Information Resources section.
The QLD property & lifestyle investor gives a good quarter sales breakdown for all suburbs, number of sales for quarter, %percentage change over quarter and mean for 12 months to June 2002 and mean for 12 months to June 1997. Also gives all the real rent increases based on bond lodgements for the last two years. This information separated into houses, townhouses/units and also has sales prices for vacant land. However as the name suggests it only covers QLD.
With the Australian Property Investor I understand that it covers all states but tends to alternate between the bi-monthly editions which parts of sales/rental information it includes for each state.
To start you off with Victoria without cost checkout:
http://www.reiv.com.au/pdfs/medianprices/updatemarch2002.PDF
http://hnb.dhs.vic.gov.au/OOH/OOHCH...71c000be005/c55bdee0183800e44a256b68000a8f04/$FILE/Victoria%20March%20Qtr%202002.pdf
Cheers,
Sunstone.
