I have generally refrained from commenting on these things, but I thought I might suggest my point of view.
I have money to spend right now.
If I was looking to increase my holdings in Adelaide, there would be several areas I would be buying in (houses in inner suburbs or CBD) - there are markets within markets, and I can see opportunities in some of these areas. They are expensive now and not exactly bargains, but over the long term I know they will do very well, and I know I can add value to them. What's more, because I know the market really well, I can make judgements about what the market there will do and what will and wont work.
I was also looking to buy a house in Brisbane as a potential future PPOR in case we ever decided to move there. The property would be bought in an area we liked, not in an area we thought was great value. However, the fundamentals still need to be there since the property would be an investment and may never actually be a PPOR. My selection criteria would work slightly differently when choosing this property than a pure IP - and I would be strictly looking at long term potential - it would be a long term buy and hold property. However, we have changed our minds about this approach in the short term, since our current medium term plans see us staying in Sydney.
Our current plan is to buy a PPOR in Sydney. There are a couple of areas we are looking at, and we are working on a strategy to be able to afford the property that we want. We are prepared to wait several years before we do purchase, and any other investments we make in the short term need to be carefully considered to determine whether they will harm or enhance our goal. Currently I am aiming for a purchase late in 2005 or perhaps 2006. I expect by then that the market in the area of Sydney I am looking at will be just about to kick off again by then after a couple of quieter years (I don't expect house prices to drop except in isolated cases in this area, but I don't expect any significant growth either). We will be using that time to build our funds to the point where we are comfortable taking on a purchase of this magnitude.
Our strategy is based around something we want for ourselves, it is not based around trying to guess future growth patterns - we are simply looking to buy a house that is quite livable, but with potential for adding value as well, and that we think will see good long term growth, in an area we want to live in.
So I am currently out of the property market. I don't have time to look for quick money deals - I don't have the money to gamble on short term speculative growth properties. I do have plans for my money over the short term, but I'm not going to go into details on that.
In summary - if my current goals were different, I would still be buying now in certain select markets, for certain select purposes. My short term goals at the moment dictate that purchases now would be counter-productive, so I am planning to wait for a couple of years before I do buy.
My point is that the question is a meaningless one to ask on its own without context. The answer to "when is the best time to buy" can only be answered by "it depends on what your goals are and where it is you are trying to buy".
It took Brissy awhile to kick off while Sydney and Melbourne were already well into the boom.
