Doing area research - economic growth, employment, crime etc

[AYB]

Hey all

I was wondering if anyone could share some good sources for researching towns/areas outside major cities.

Things like population and job growth, average/median incomes, economic development strategies. I've had a bit of luck looking on wikipedia, but it's hard to trust it, and also looking at council/local govt websites, but again they have some bias (rarely do they say "actually our area is a dog").

Also, what would be the minimum population of a town before you'd consider investing in it? I have been looking around Sydney but yields are still very poor, 3.5% - 4%, and I see some good deals (well, reasonable yields) in smaller towns (pop ~20k) a few hours out (goulburn etc), but im not sure about the growth prospects there, hence wanting to look for historical trends, and anything on the horizon.

Thanks!

 

[wade75]

I like to use a free suburb report at the rpdata site. http://www.myrp.com.au/showProductDetail.do?reportTypeId=1&propertyId=
not sure if that will be a link but it is the address anyway. Goulbourn does look ok but returns are still only around 5%, can acheive similar returns and in my opinion better capital gain investing in north side of Brisbane at the moment.

Hope this helps.