There is no single "best suburbs" list worth trusting for your own purchase, this year or any year. What works for one buyer's budget, property type and plans will not fit the next buyer's, and a ranking built for a general audience cannot know your brief. What follows is a method: how to research an area yourself, with evidence you can check the source and date of, so you end up with a shortlist you can explain rather than one borrowed from a list.
Start with your brief and shortlist by fit
Before you compare areas, write down what the property needs to do: your budget ceiling, the property type you are after (house, townhouse or unit), and anything the property must deliver for you, such as being tenant ready, close to transport, or on a block large enough for what you have in mind.
Use that brief to build a shortlist of areas that fit on the basics: the property type and budget you have written down, and anything genuinely non-negotiable, such as a school catchment or a strata scheme that allows pets. Keep the list short enough to research properly. Three to six areas is more useful than a long list you never get through.
Gather dated evidence: sales, rents and listings
For each area on your shortlist, collect:
- Recent sales of comparable properties (same property type, similar size and condition), with the sale price and settlement date
- Current asking rents for comparable properties, and how long they have been listed, from the major listing portals
- The source and date behind every figure you note
Keep house and unit figures apart, keep suburb-level and postcode-level figures apart, and note anything you cannot confirm or that looks too old to rely on. A figure with no date attached is not evidence, it is a guess with a number on it.
Check the demographics and housing mix
ABS Census QuickStats gives you the population, age profile, household types, dwelling mix (houses, townhouses and units) and the split between owner-occupied and rented dwellings for an area, drawn from the national Census. Search the suburb by name, and check which Census the figures are from: a Census is taken every five years, so the numbers can already be some years old by the time you read them.
A high proportion of renters compared with owners is not, on its own, a signal to act on. It is one more piece of dated, sourced context to weigh alongside everything else you gather.
Check planning, supply and hazards
Your council and your state planning department both publish information on zoning, development applications and infrastructure projects. The distinction that matters is between proposed, funded and built. A project mentioned in a strategic plan, a project with a funded budget and timeline, and a project already open and operating are three different things, even when a listing or an article describes all three as "planned". While you are there, check for approved developments and applications near your shortlisted areas: new supply nearby, whether new dwellings or a new commercial precinct, changes what your property will be competing with and compared against.
Flood, bushfire and coastal hazard information is published through state government portals and local councils, and it needs to be checked at the address, not the suburb: a single suburb can span more than one flood or bushfire zone. Look up the specific property, not just its general area.
Get an indication from an insurer for the specific address before you are locked into a contract. Confirm with your conveyancer or solicitor from what point the contract makes you responsible for insuring the property, since that varies by state and by the contract.
A suburb checklist
For each area, work through:
- Recent sales of similar properties: property type, price, settlement date and source
- Current asking rents for comparable properties, with days listed and source
- ABS Census QuickStats: population, dwelling mix, owner-occupier/renter split, and the Census year the figures are from
- Planning and zoning status from the council and state planning portal, checked as proposed, funded or built
- Nearby approvals or developments that would add supply
- Flood, bushfire and coastal hazard information for the specific address
- An insurance indication for the specific address
- Anything missing, unclear or too old to rely on, noted as such rather than left out
Moneysmart's guide to buying an investment property is a useful companion checklist for the wider costs and risks to weigh up alongside the area itself.
Comparing two areas on the same evidence
Example: you are comparing Area A and Area B for a three-bedroom property.
In Area A, a comparable house sold for $780,000, settling three weeks ago. A comparable house nearby is currently advertised to rent at $650 a week, listed nine days ago. Annualised, that rent is $650 × 52 = $33,800.
In Area B, a comparable townhouse sold for $705,000, settling nine weeks ago. A comparable townhouse is advertised to rent at $600 a week, listed five weeks ago. Annualised, that rent is $600 × 52 = $31,200.
Laid out like that, the two areas are not ranked against each other. Area A's sale evidence is fresher. Area B's is older and worth treating with more caution, not because the area itself is worse, but because more time has passed since that price was set. The two areas' figures also cover different property types, a house and a townhouse, so neither the prices nor the rents are directly comparable. What you have is a set of dated facts for each area, not a verdict.
From here, the work comes back to the individual property: its condition, its title or strata records, and rent and cost evidence for that specific property rather than an area average.
Doing this in Virtual Buyers Agent
Once you have a specific property in mind, Location in its Property Hub shows the map, places nearby and Census figures for the area, each with its source. It does not grade the suburb or forecast growth. The planning, hazard and insurance checks above stay with the official sources and the professionals named there, which is where the current status of a project or the risk on a specific address actually lives.
See how it works.
Reviewed 28 September 2026.