Across 22 measured months our number one pick grew 28% over the year that followed, against 9% for the country. Every call is here, including the ones that went the wrong way.
By Luke Metcalfe · Founder, Microburbs Research · 7 September 2026Every property publication puts out a list of suburbs to watch. Most never go back and check. The list comes out, the year passes, and a fresh list appears as if the old one had never existed.
A few do publish a record, and that is where it gets strange. One large Australian real estate data provider's public evidence page currently reports 135 recommendations and 135 winners. A perfect record. Nobody who forecasts property is right every time, so a record with no misses in it is a brochure rather than a record.
We publish a dated forecast for a suburb every month, and those old forecasts do not disappear. This page is us going back and checking, in public, with the calls that went the wrong way left in.
Every month we rank every suburb in Australia, and we have been publishing those rankings for years. This covers 22 sets of monthly calls made between July 2023 and June 2025 that have a full twelve months of results available. Each pick is measured over its own following year, against what the country did over the same twelve months.
The shape is the useful part. The advantage is largest at the very top and fades as you go down, until it disappears into the ordinary market. That is what a working forecast is supposed to look like, and it is why this page is about the top of the list rather than the whole of it. A hundred-suburb list is not a hundred recommendations, and we have never told anyone to buy our hundredth-best suburb.
These are illustrations, not the proof. The proof is the 22 months above, misses included. Each one was ranked, in writing, in the month named, before the year that followed. Under each we have put what the public property sites show for the same suburb, so you can check us against somebody else.
Ranked second in Australia, August 2023. Over the following twelve months the middle price of the 199 houses sold went from $650,000 to $820,000. The country moved 8% over the same year.
26.2% growth over the year, compared with 8% across the country
Our second reading of the same suburb says 22.6%, so the two agree closely, and 199 sales is a real market rather than a handful of trades. Check it yourself: Your Investment Property and Smart Property Investment both have Yokine up 23.8%, Real Estate Investar 22.4% and HtAG 13.1%.
Ranked number one in Australia, November 2024. Over the following twelve months the middle price of the 28 houses sold went from $920,000 to $1,025,000. The country moved 10% over the same year.
11.4% growth over the year, compared with 10% across the country
Our second reading says 12.6%, so the two agree. A modest win rather than a spectacular one, and it is here because it was the number one call, not because it was the biggest mover. Check it yourself: Domain has Mount Druitt up 24.7%, Your Investment Property 11.2%, Smart Property Investment 10.8%. HtAG is the outlier at 3.1%.
Ranked fifth in Australia, July 2023. Over the following twelve months the middle price of the 32 houses sold went from $1,015,000 to $1,161,000. The country moved 8% over the same year.
14.4% growth over the year, compared with 8% across the country
Our second reading says 16.1%. Only 32 houses sold here over the year, so this median moves on fewer trades than the other two, and the public sites spread wider on it as a result. Check it yourself: Real Estate Investar has Fairfield up 21.1%, Your Investment Property 17.3%, Smart Property Investment 14.5% and HtAG 9.3%.
A track record that only shows the winners is not a track record. Of the 209 top-ten calls across the two years, 55 finished behind the country, or roughly one in four.
A typical miss finished about 5 points behind the country, and most of them still went up. That is what a bad call actually looks like here: the suburb rose, the country rose faster. These four are the middle of the misses, picked deliberately rather than the worst four, because the middle is what you should expect when one goes against you.
| Suburb | Named | Rank | It grew | The country grew |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broadmeadow, Newcastle, New South Wales | March 2024 | 2nd | 4.9% | 7.8% |
| Heidelberg Heights, Melbourne, Victoria | December 2024 | 4th | 6.1% | 10.9% |
| Newport, Melbourne, Victoria | December 2023 | 5th | 4.7% | 8.4% |
| Coffs Harbour, New South Wales | November 2023 | 6th | 5.5% | 8.2% |
Newport and Coffs Harbour are big markets, 202 and 383 houses sold over the year in question, so those are not thin numbers moving on a handful of trades. A small number of calls did worse than these and a few fell outright. Three in four of the top ten beat the country, one in four did not, and the average across them is comfortably ahead. Anyone promising you better than that is not counting properly.
Our top ten picks in each month, and how they finished against the national market one year later. All 22 measured months are here, not a selection of winners.
| Month we made the call | Picks with a year behind them | Average against the market | Beat the market |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-07 | 10 | +10.8% | 7 of 10 |
| 2023-08 | 10 | +8.0% | 7 of 10 |
| 2023-09 | 10 | +11.2% | 8 of 10 |
| 2023-10 | 10 | +11.8% | 7 of 10 |
| 2023-11 | 10 | +15.1% | 8 of 10 |
| 2023-12 | 10 | +8.8% | 6 of 10 |
| 2024-01 | 10 | +9.7% | 6 of 10 |
| 2024-02 | 10 | +4.6% | 5 of 10 |
| 2024-03 | 10 | +8.1% | 6 of 10 |
| 2024-04 | 10 | +8.2% | 8 of 10 |
| 2024-05 | 10 | +16.0% | 9 of 10 |
| 2024-06 | 10 | +18.5% | 8 of 10 |
| 2024-07 | 10 | +15.2% | 8 of 10 |
| 2024-08 | 10 | +13.2% | 10 of 10 |
| 2024-09 | 10 | +12.1% | 9 of 10 |
| 2024-10 | 9 | +7.7% | 6 of 9 |
| 2024-11 | 10 | +6.4% | 6 of 10 |
| 2024-12 | 10 | +6.1% | 8 of 10 |
| 2025-01 | 10 | +4.9% | 7 of 10 |
| 2025-02 | 10 | +2.0% | 8 of 10 |
| 2025-03 | 8 | +2.7% | 5 of 8 |
| 2025-06 | 2 | +13.3% | 2 of 2 |
The suburb-by-suburb list stays in the reports rather than on this page.
Every month we rank every suburb in Australia, and every suburb gets its own dated report. Those rankings are archived and they do not get quietly revised. Yokine was our number two in August 2023. Mount Druitt was our number one in November 2024. Fairfield was fifth in July 2023. Each of those is a dated position in a list, written down before the year that followed.
That is the part worth holding us to. A forecast you can only see after the fact is not a forecast. Every suburb in the country has a current position and a dated report sitting behind a subscription, and either one can be held against us in twelve months exactly the way this page does. Look one up without subscribing and you will see a worked sample of another suburb, so you can judge the report before you pay for it.
Three things change once you can see a forecast's history.
Every suburb in Australia has a current forecast and a current position in the list. Yours is there too.
We forecast every Australian suburb every month and have done since 2008. Every figure on this page is measured against the national market over the same period, so a strong year for the whole country does not flatter the result, and every one comes from real sale prices.
This page covers the calls made from July 2023 to June 2025, because those are the ones that have since had a full year to play out. It is not a flattering slice. Measured exactly the same way over all 206 months back to 2008, our top five finished about 12 points ahead of the country a year on. Over these two years it is about 12 points as well, so the record on this page is the ordinary one rather than a good run we picked out. The top three did do a little better than usual over this stretch.
Every suburb report carries its own dated forecast, so a year from now you can hold us to it.
