The General Forecast: Combining Everything We Know About a Suburb
13 factors. 1.2 million data points. A single outperformance score for every suburb in Australia.
Most suburb forecasting picks one signal and runs with it. Population growth. Auction clearance rates. Median price trends. Each tells part of the story. None tells enough.
We asked a different question. What happens when you combine everything? Not just the headline forecast. The transport connections, the rental yields, the vacancy rates, the demographics, the housing supply, the price momentum, the urban environment. All measured. All weighted by what actually predicted growth in the past.
The result is a single number for every suburb. Not absolute growth. Outperformance. How much better or worse that suburb is expected to grow compared to the national average over the next two years.
What Goes Into the Number?
We feed 13 different measurements into the system and let it figure out which combinations matter. It learns from 1.2 million real suburb outcomes going back to 2006. Not rules we wrote. Patterns it found in what actually happened.
Why combinations matter. A suburb with low vacancy and low prices is a different proposition from one with low vacancy and high prices. The first has room to run. The second might already be fully priced. The system figures out which combinations actually predicted growth in the past. No single factor drives the final score.
Does It Actually Work?
Claims are easy. Proof is harder. We used walk-forward backtesting across six separate windows spanning 12 years: March 2012 to February 2024. The system was retrained at each window on only the data available at that time. No future data. No cherry-picking.
The top-5 picks were even stronger: 81.5% hit rate and +8.0% per year average outperformance. This 12-year test period covers the post-GFC recovery, the 2014-2017 Sydney and Melbourne boom, APRA restrictions, COVID lockdowns, stimulus packages, regional migration, rate cuts to near zero, and the fastest rate-hiking cycle in a generation. The General Forecast picked suburbs that outperformed through all of it.
What the General Forecast Picked and What Happened
In June 2014, the General Forecast ranked Appin in south-west Sydney as the number one suburb in Australia out of 6,300+ scored. It predicted +10.3% annual outperformance. The actual result was +27.8%. That month, every single top-20 pick outperformed. 20 out of 20. Picks came from 7 different states.
Ranked #9-12 from March to July 2014. Part of Sydney's outer south-west growth corridor. The system identified the Wollondilly growth wave before prices moved.
Ranked #3 in April 2015. A mid-ring Western Sydney suburb with strong transport links and growing multicultural demand.
Ranked #6 in March 2016. Affordable outer Melbourne with new infrastructure, growing population, and low stock. Spotted the south-east corridor three years before peak growth.
Ranked #1-2 from March to July 2020. The system identified Berry's transport links, low vacancy, and relative affordability five months before regional NSW prices surged.
Ranked #4-15 from January to March 2021. Small Gippsland town with strong cultural and environmental scores. Not a suburb anyone was talking about.
Can It Tell Good Suburbs from Bad Ones?
The real test is simple. Do suburbs ranked near the top actually grow faster than suburbs ranked near the bottom? We split all suburbs into five equal groups based on their predicted ranking, then checked what actually happened.
Top vs bottom. Suburbs the system ranked in the top 20% outperformed by 2.46% per year on average. Suburbs in the bottom 20% underperformed by 1.90% per year. That is a 4.4 percentage point annual gap. Over a two-year hold on a $600,000 property, that gap adds up to roughly $52,000.
A Full Month: June 2014 Top 20
To show this is not cherry-picked, here is the complete top 20 for a single month from 12 years ago. Every prediction. Every actual outcome. All 20 outperformed the national average. Picks came from 7 different states.
| # | Suburb | State | Predicted | Actual |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Appin | NSW | +10.3% | +27.8% |
| 2 | Treeby | WA | +9.2% | +12.6% |
| 3 | Chester Hill | NSW | +7.9% | +24.6% |
| 4 | Karrabin | QLD | +7.7% | +6.6% |
| 5 | Douglas Park | NSW | +7.4% | +31.1% |
| 6 | Beaumont | NSW | +7.3% | +7.1% |
| 7 | Wahroonga | NSW | +7.2% | +18.8% |
| 8 | Wadalba | NSW | +7.1% | +5.9% |
| 9 | Tallawong | NSW | +6.9% | +13.0% |
| 10 | Macclesfield | SA | +6.8% | +9.3% |
| 11 | Whites Valley | SA | +6.6% | +12.1% |
| 12 | Thornhill Park | VIC | +6.4% | +1.7% |
| 13 | Junction Village | VIC | +6.4% | +0.5% |
| 14 | Durack | NT | +6.4% | +6.4% |
| 15 | Elizabeth Park | SA | +6.2% | +0.1% |
| 16 | Daleys Point | NSW | +6.0% | +13.6% |
| 17 | Cedar Creek | QLD | +6.0% | +6.6% |
| 18 | Tatura East | VIC | +5.9% | +6.3% |
| 19 | Bugle Ranges | SA | +5.9% | +3.2% |
| 20 | Bruce | ACT | +5.8% | +0.5% |
Average prediction: +7.0% pa outperformance. Average actual: +10.4% pa outperformance. The system was conservative. Every pick delivered. Picks spanned NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, NT, and the ACT. The system found outperformers in every corner of the country.
Why Not Just Use the Market Timing Forecast?
The Microburbs Market Timing Forecast on its own is already strong. Backtested to 1990 with 85% accuracy. But it looks at a specific set of signals. It does not know about transport infrastructure. It does not see vacancy rates or rental growth. It cannot measure urban heat or cultural diversity.
Each of those signals carries information the Market Timing Forecast misses. Some of it is weak on its own. But when you combine weak signals with a strong base, the combination outperforms either piece alone.
Think of it like a medical diagnosis. A blood test tells you something. An X-ray tells you something different. Neither is complete. But a doctor who looks at both makes better decisions than one who looks at either alone.
Want the full performance breakdown?
Our whitepaper covers month-by-month results, the conditions it was tested through, and what it does not do.
Read the WhitepaperMethod
- Training data: 1.2 million suburb outcomes from 2006 to 2024
- Inputs: 13 factors covering the Market Timing Forecast, transport, environment, price, rent, vacancy, supply, and demographics
- What it predicts: How much a suburb will outperform (or underperform) the national average over the next 2 years
- Walk-forward backtest: 6 windows from March 2012 to February 2024. The system is retrained at each window on only the data available at that time. 144 monthly predictions. Over 876,000 suburb-month predictions in total.
- All growth figures are relative to the national average. A suburb showing +5% is expected to grow 5 percentage points per year faster than the national market.
Find Out Where Your Suburb Ranks
Every suburb in Australia. One score. Based on everything we know.