Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Property boom or blocked drain? Bushy breaks down 2025

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you think 2025 was a property boon, you've been lied to. Prices went up, but not for the reasons you've been told. In this episode, I'm going to show you why some Aussies quietly made a year's wage on equity, while others sat on the sidelines or bought the wrong property, in the wrong place, in the wrong price band, for the wrong reasons, even though they don't even realise it yet. I'll reveal the three real forces that push prices up in some locations, even while affordability hit rock bottom. I'll show you the simple filter that separated the smart investors from the FOMO mob. And if you stick with me right to the end, you'll walk away

Starting point is 00:00:41 with a clear three-step checklist that you can use before you buy anything in 2026. Because in property, the early bird doesn't get the worm, the patient bird gets the whole paddock. See you on the inside. Welcome to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, the leading weekly show for Australians who want to learn how to unlock their full self, health and wealth potential. I'm your host, Bushy Martin, and each week I go deep with the best investors, experts, leaders and founders to find out what it takes to break free from the grind, discover freedom and to live by design. Subscribe now and join me and get invested in the life that you really want. Let's get started. Hi, Printed Fighters. You might be wondering after all this year's rate

Starting point is 00:01:28 moves and headlines, am I actually getting ahead or just running faster on the same hamster wheel? Has the big boom in prices already passed me by or is there still a smart window to get into property without betting the house on it? Are the government's grand housing promises and the RBA rate cuts really going to make it easier for you to own more and owe less or are they just pouring more fuel on the affordability fire? And most importantly, what simple moves can you make in the next 12 months so that this time next year you're not kicking yourself saying I wish I'd done something back when I first heard this episode. To help you answer these questions today we're not just looking back at 2025 we're peeling it open like an onion to see what really

Starting point is 00:02:14 went on in Australian property. Because 2025 was one of those tricky years. The kind of year that looks simple from a distance but up close behaved like a Rubik's tune held by someone with greasy fingers. Every time you thought you'd line things up, something slipped sideways. Headline shouted boom. Buyers screamed too hard. An economist shrugged so often they could have dislocated something. And through all that noise, the truth sat quietly in the corner waiting for someone to actually pay attention. Well, that's where we're going today. Not the headlines, not the hysteria, not the TikTok 10 suburbs to buy now videos recorded in the back of a ride share. it. We're going deeper, wiser, clearer, and yes, we're going to have some fun along the way.

Starting point is 00:03:03 Let's start with the truth that will make purists flinch. 2025 wasn't a boom. It wasn't a rally. It wasn't a surge. It wasn't the second coming of the COVID property rocket. It was a blocked drain. Yeah, funny analogy, I know, but water wasn't rushing in. It simply had nowhere else to go. Supply collapsed, construction flatlined, population surged, affordability tanked, policy shoved everyone into the same narrow price aisle. It was the real estate equivalent of 400 people trying to buy the last packet of Tim Tams at the airport lounge. That pressure didn't come from prosperity. It came from constraint. And once you see that, you see the entire year differently. Before we dive into the numbers, let me share something from my best mate's flying days.

Starting point is 00:03:58 Every pilot, no matter how experienced, starts each new flight with a look back at the last one. Where the turbulence was, where the weather shifted, where the unexpected force adjustments were made. Because if you don't learn from the last journey, you repeat the wrong parts of it. But investors rarely do this. They race into the new year like shoppers at the Boxing Day sales. caffeinated optimistic and only loosely aware of what oil they're in. Today we're going to do the pilot work for you. We're reviewing the flight log of 2025 so you can fly at 2026 with clarity confidence and an actual flight plan instead of guff fuel mixed with google. So let's start wide

Starting point is 00:04:44 nationally median dwelling values rose roughly six to seven and a half percent which is around the long-term average capital growth per year of about 6.8%. Not bad, right? But averages and medians hide more sins than they reveal, because behind that tiling number was a market behaving like it had a secret life. So here's the real story. Listings across Australia were down around 15% to 18% below their five-year average, in some locations up to 25% to 40% sure. In Perth and Adelaide, supply was so tight you needed a microscope and a warm jacket just to find an open home. In Brisbane, competition was so fierce you could almost hear buyers sharpening their elbows. In Melbourne and Sydney, more stock appeared, but still not enough to call

Starting point is 00:05:34 it normal. Low supply doesn't mean strong markets. It means the shelves were empty. And empty shelves push prices up regardless of quality. The next key metric is that construction didn't recover, it retreated into its shell. When we talk about current construction, if property supply were an animal, in 2025 it was a turtle. Construction didn't stabilise, it didn't pick up, it didn't even hold the line. It pulled its head and all four legs straight back into its shell. The UDIA's latest state of the land data showed that housing pipelines are shrinking, apartment completions are a decade loads and developers are sitting on their hands like they're at a yoga retreat. Specifically national greenfield lot sales were still about

Starting point is 00:06:23 22% below the long-run average. Developers released around 42,700 lots but that's still 9% under the long-term norm and almost half the volume we saw back in 2021 meaning that the pipeline of new land coming through is a long way short of what's needed. At the same time the average land price jumped around $1,116 a square meter which is up more than 8% in a year. Put simply we're paying more for smaller blocks with fewer new lots coming through than we need which is a big part of why affordability keeps sliding, even as demand is screaming for more homes. So here's the kicker. Today's construction drought becomes tomorrow's price pressure. And migration? Still a blowtorch. Strong inflows, high household formation, more pressure,

Starting point is 00:07:17 and a really limited supply. So 2025 wasn't a boom, it was a backlog. Let's now turn to the perennial debate of the media's favourite topic of affordability. Because the media has made it absolutely obvious that affordability hit the floor. Well, prices hit the ceiling. Here's the paradox that had economists scratching their heads bald. Affordability fell to one of the worst points in modern Australian history. Prices at 8.2 times incomes, just at a time when the banking regulator but APRA is about to impose debt-to-income ratio limits of six times for high-percentage LVR lending starting pretty soon. But more on this in a future episode.

Starting point is 00:08:00 Mortgage repayments are now adding 45% to 50% of gross earnings. Deposits, 11 to 12 years to save if you're disciplined. If not, pretty much forever. So deposit hurdles are rising faster than wage growth, and serviceability buffers are still at punishing levels. Logically, prices should have softened. Instead, they rose. Why? Because scarcity outweighed sentiment. Simple, powerful, counterintuitive. 2025 wasn't a boom. It was a squeeze. And if you don't understand that, you misunderstand everything. Property values didn't

Starting point is 00:08:40 rise because they were healthy. They rose because they were hungry. Now here's the detail the headlines missed entirely. Government incentives, stamp duty thresholds, bank calculators, income caps, rent versus buy decisions and average serviceability settings all squeezed buyers into the same narrow price corridor in the roughly $550,000 to $850,000 range. So instead of shopping freely across the store, everyone was herded into the same aisle like cattle heading toward a very well-let shoot. It didn't matter whether you were a teacher in Adelaide, a nurse in Brisbane, an IT professional in Melbourne or a young couple in Newcastle. Everyone was battling in the same price band. This wasn't competition, it was compression. And compressed markets

Starting point is 00:09:28 behave like overheated engines, fast, noisy and prone to seizing up once the pressure shifts. So 2025 will be remembered for one big phenomenon, the great affordability chase. Buyers didn't move because opportunity shifted. They moved because affordability disappeared. The chase went like this, from Perth to Adelaide, South East Queensland, Regional Queensland, Regional WA, Regional Vic, then down as the final frontier. It was like the country was playing musical chairs,

Starting point is 00:10:01 and each time the music stopped, a different city copped the crowd. Here's the one thing that most pundits missed. when affordability chasers leave so does the short-term heat. That means that some 2025 hot spots could slide sideways like flat pancakes for years while the quiet achievers with fundamentals begin their slow steady climb. That's where contrarians get rewarded over momentum chasers. All right that's the national picture through a clear lens and a cheeky grin. Now let's zoom into the states and regions, because if a national market was a messy Rubik's cube,

Starting point is 00:10:41 the stakes were an entire table of different puzzles, each at different stages of being solved. This is where the nuance lives, the opportunity lives, and the real learning lives, as it has always done. Now if a national market was a block drain disguised as a boom, the states and regions were a collection of very different kitchens, each with its own leaks, pressure points and occasional bursts of brilliance. Same country, same economy, very different outcomes.

Starting point is 00:11:09 That's the quiet truth of Australian property. The national average is the blur in the photo, but the real story lives in the pixels. So let's zoom in and see what 2025 actually looked like on the ground, starting with good old New South Wales, as Australia's a four-season state. New South Wales this year felt like standing in one spot and experiencing four different seasons at once.

Starting point is 00:11:34 A little sunshine here, a gust of reality there, a cold front drifting through the outskirts and a warm patch inland that no one expected. Cotality has the median dwelling value in Sydney sitting around 1.27 million after rising roughly 5% over the last year and more than 37% since COVID first hit. So Sydney has done its best impression of a city

Starting point is 00:11:57 with a split personality. The blue-chip belts, the established inner-ring pockets with tree-line credibility and brunch menus longer than some people's pre-approval letters, held their ground beautifully. Meanwhile, the outer mortgage belts felt the rate pressure like a teenager cleaning the room only because someone kneeled at them. Values across the Sydney mega-region are now tracking near or above previous peaks, which tells you that despite rates, title lending and scary headlines, The city's golden mile and inner middle rings are still acting like a financial magnet,

Starting point is 00:12:32 pulling in population jobs and incremental long-term capital growth of a very high median. So Sydney's not collapsing, not spiralling, just begrudgingly adjusting. And that's the nuance with Sydney. Even on a quiet year, its inner rings behave like legacy wine and its fringy belts behave like fresh pod juice. Still good, still useful, but more sensitive to the weather. Move a little further out into the regional New South Wales areas and 2025 becomes a patchwork quilt stitched together

Starting point is 00:13:03 from four very different fabrics. Outside the Bixmoat, regional New South Wales has actually outpaced Sydney over the last year with values up about 6% and sitting at almost 50% above pre-COVID levels. Some of the standard hubs have been Tamworth Gunnedah up around 13% to a medium near 530,000, Maitland up about 11% to the low 800s

Starting point is 00:13:26 and Albury and Orange both clocking solid high single-digit growth with mediums around the $600,000 to $760,000 mark. So the story in regional New South Wales this year hasn't been a bust, it's been a re-rating with well-located inland job hubs quietly compounding away in the background. Lifestyle regions like Byron and the Southern Highlands

Starting point is 00:13:47 finally came down from their COVID-era sugar high. Free-change towns like Orange and Mudgee settled back into their dependable long-term rhythm. Employment hubs like Albury-Bernonga and Wagga quietly stayed in the game with low vacancy and stable local economies. And university towns felt the ebb and flow of student-driven demand, a reminder that not all regions danced to the same beat. You say South Wales wasn't up, it wasn't down, it was choose your own adventure. with very different endings depending on where you open the book.

Starting point is 00:14:24 Let's now move south to good old Victoria, what I'm calling the market of many mood swings. Victoria in 2025 felt like a city and a state moving through a thoughtful reset, not a crisis, not a comeback. More like that moment halfway through a marathon when you stop checking your pace and start checking your posture. Melbourne in particular seemed to take a quiet breath this year. In the suburbs, with heritage charm and coffee shops that could win small awards, continued their subtle city rhythm.

Starting point is 00:14:55 Totality shows Melbourne dwelling values up a bit over 4% for the year. Meanwhile, the growth corridors, the wide open spaces that ballooned during the pandemic, experienced something between digestion and recalibration. Regional Victoria grew by just over 5%. So not failing, not faltering, just processing the last few years of hyper-demand and hyper-development. And the inner-city apartments, well, they stage a gentle recovery, the kind where you don't show confetti, but you do raise one eyebrow and say something like,

Starting point is 00:15:29 hmm, interesting. Out in regional Victoria, 2025 showcased the full spectrum of possibilities with growth of just over 5%. Geelong and Ballarat held their line with 9% growth, with late buyer's agent hotspot upticks. Bendigo is whispering early signs of an S-curve awakening at 10% growth per year in a way that only Bendigo seems able to do.

Starting point is 00:15:54 Steady, unassuming, empowered by strong community foundations and local industries that just never stop ticking. And Mildura and Shepparton quietly outperformed on the strength of national buyer's agent affordability hotspotting, given its remoteless and its pretty much isolation from everywhere. The catch in Victoria is that Melbourne is still a touch below its 2022 peak, whereas many key regional centres are hovering close to record highs. So Victoria really has been the market of mood swings, flat in some pockets, but quietly resilient where jobs, infrastructure and lifestyle all line up. So in Victoria, we saw some early upswing, some mid-cycle plateau and some late cycle fatigue, but the herd never checks the gauges.

Starting point is 00:16:42 Victoria wasn't loud this year, it was layered, and layers are where long-term opportunity hides. Let's now turn to the Sunshine State of Queensland. Because if New South Wales were four seasons, Victoria was mood swings, Queensland was definitely a three-trapped rollercoaster, all connected, all moving, all thrilling, each with its own speed, its own altitude

Starting point is 00:17:05 and its own surprising turns of possibilities. Quotality shows Brisbane dwelling values jumping about 13% over the year taking the medium to just over 1 million while regional Queensland wasn't far behind chalking up roughly 11-12% annual growth Since COVID struck, Brisbane and regional Queensland values are now more than 80% higher making the Sunshine State one of the clear long-term standouts on the national growth ladder Brisbane's growth has been based on structural momentum rather than speculative heat.

Starting point is 00:17:40 Think less rampaging bull and more well-fed racehorse with a clear path ahead. Infrastructure investment, income growth, lifestyle migration, Olympics runway, Brisbane's had reasons, not reactions, behind its performance. Just outside the city, South Heats Queensland performed the property equivalent of a well-timed ripple of possibilities. Moreton Bay, all about infrastructure corridors.

Starting point is 00:18:05 Logan, the affordability lifestyle balance that quietly nails Ipswich, that perfect storm of jobs, transport and sheer practicality. Meanwhile, regional Queensland continued its comeback tour. The Granite Belt and Darling Downs Pockets have clocked annual gains between 70% and 20%, with mediums still mostly in the $500,000-$600,000 range. Toowoomba is up around 70% to a medium in the high 700s. while coastal job centres like Cairns, Townsville and Rockhampton posted growth between 13% and 15% for the year. Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville, Bundaberg all showing the kind of industry-backed resurgence

Starting point is 00:18:46 that doesn't make mainstream headlines but does make very satisfied investors. But the hyped-up Herb couldn't tell. They bought everything that wasn't nailed down regardless of whether it's extreme weather or insurability risks. Queensland didn't boom in unison. it blossomed in pockets. And pockets are where you find

Starting point is 00:19:06 the best price performance asymmetry. Turning now to South Australia, we saw the quiet compounding maestro because if 2025 were an orchestra, South Australia was the violin section. It was the quiet achiever, the steady eddy, consistent compounding,

Starting point is 00:19:23 no fireworks, just fundamentals. Not the loudest, not the flashiest, but consistently on pitch and carrying more of the melody than you actually realise. Across the year, Cotality has Adelaide dwelling values up just over 8%, with regional South Australia doing even better, and a bit over 10% annual growth.

Starting point is 00:19:43 Zoom in on the regions and you'll see the Eyre Peninsula and South West up around 12-14%, the Limestone Coast and Florio Kangaroo Island rising between 10-11%, all off-medians still mostly in the $380,000 to $780,000 range, which for now at least still leaves South Australia as one of the more affordable growth stories in the country. So Adelaide continued its now famous habit of ignoring national drama and just simply performing. Inner ring family suburbs stayed strong. Middle ring pockets followed suit.

Starting point is 00:20:16 Outer belts kept their affordability advantage but showed their sensitivity to rate pressure just like everywhere else. Adelaide's never noisy, it's never a circus, it's never the stage diver at a rock concert. It's the slow, steady, compounding engine. Small steps, strong steps, repeat. And 2025 was just another stat. Heading out to the Wild West, we saw the powerhouse with a split personality. Because WA was a state with the loudest applause and the biggest asterisks.

Starting point is 00:20:49 asterisk. Cotality shows Perth values up around 13% over the year and more than 85% higher than pre-COVID levels, one of the strongest capital city results in the nation. So Perth was a pressure cooker masquerading as a boom. Vacancy near zero, population inflow less than so low it should have been listed as endangered species. But inside that big headline there are three very different stories. The inner south and middle corridors with genuine foundation driven growth. The northeast pockets waking up from a long nap and stretching into a new cycle. And the outer fringes where the affordability stampede push prices beyond fundamentals are a reminder that not every rising tide lifts boats forever. And regional WA, well they're quietly impressed.

Starting point is 00:21:41 Geraldton, Bunbury, Albany, Busselton. Cotelity has regional WA values up more than 15% in the year and nearly 90% above their pre-COVID levels. That's the strongest from pre-COVID gain of any regional state of the country. Drill down to the top areas and it's a who's who of resources and lifestyle towns with Albany up over 22%, Midwest, Manjin up and the Wheatbelt all delivering mid-teens annual growth and Augusta, Margaret River, Bustleton and Bunbury

Starting point is 00:22:10 all posting double-digit rises on mediums around about the $700 to $1 million mark. So while the East Coast was arguing about whether prices are peaked, much of regional WA just kept quietly doing its only mini-boom. No hype, no circus, just solid locally-backed markets with tight rentals and steady demand. So WA rewarded good selection, not broad participation. And now finally to Tassie and the NT, the breather and the snapper.

Starting point is 00:22:42 Over in Tassie, 2025 is the exile after years of headline level action. Cotality has Hobart dwelling values growing at around 4.5% to 5% over the year, with regional Tasmania tracking slightly lower around that 4.5% annual growth. So not falling, not faltering, just letting the heat out of the room. And in the Northern Territory, Darwin continued his well-known crocodile-perv behaviour. Still, still, still, snap. Long stretches of stillness, then sudden sharp movements in very specific pockets. Around 70% annual growth as part of the great affordability chase being hyped up by buyer's agent influencers, but very uneven.

Starting point is 00:23:24 by contrast regional NT had barely moved up only about two to three percent over the year which really highlights how hyper local the territory story is strong demand and tight rents in Darwin but very patchy conditions once you head out into the remote regions so some suburbs early upswing some overheating some flat as a pancake many cheap and cheerful but lacking critical mass that will make gross sustainability very challenging long term so watch that space. But the buyer's agent hype just got the herd moving and didn't care. They're too busy competing with themselves to notice. If you knew the streaks and understood the sentiment, you'll win. If you didn't, you'll learn the hard way in the years to come.

Starting point is 00:24:12 So across the board, 2025 wasn't one story told many ways. It was many stories told at once, which is how property has always been up until pandemic so a bit of a further return to normal. Cities at different speeds, regions at different angles, suburbs at different moments on the rest of us. This is where opportunity hides, not on the hotspot lists, not on the influencer predictions, not in national bias agent funnels but in the misalignment, in the quiet pockets that haven't moved yet

Starting point is 00:24:42 but are quietly warming below the surface. And through all of this complexity, one truth kept resurfacing. The truth that turns a confusing year into a clarifying one. And that's where we're heading next, to the forces that shape the year beneath the surface. The forces that matter. The forces that repeat. The forces that help you understand what 2026 and beyond are all about to deliver. Now, when you lay all those state stories side by side, the picture becomes clearer. because underneath the unique quirks of each city and region,

Starting point is 00:25:16 there were deeper forces quietly pulling the strings. And these forces weren't loud. They weren't flashy. They weren't the sort of thing that gets shouty headlines or makes it into a TikTok of a neon arrow pointing at a chart. They were subtle, consistent, predictable, if you were paying attention. So let's bring them out of the shadows.

Starting point is 00:25:36 Firstly, the pressure principle. This year felt like someone put property into a pressure cooker. you could almost hear the hiss. On one side, you had the heat. Migration running hot, population surging, rental demand skyrocketing, rents rising at double digits, households forming at record speed, people desperate for a place to live. On the other side, you had the lid. Low listings, low construction, low approvals, low investor confidence, low political courage, low pipeline volumes, so heat rising, lid locked tight. Pressure building, that's the 2025 recipe.

Starting point is 00:26:15 It's not fancy cuisine, it's not degustation, it's basic physics. And eventually, pressure finds the weakest point and pushes through. But rather than every suburb rising evenly, pressure didn't spread. When supply says no, prices say yes. Every puzzle piece in 2025 keeps circling back to the same foundation. There wasn't enough property to go around. It's not the most exciting explanation. It's not as thrilling as the market's exploding or we're in a once-in-a-generation boom,

Starting point is 00:26:48 but it's the truth. If property were a restaurant in 2025, the kitchen would be fully staffed, reservations left would be overflowing, and the chef would be quietly whispering, sorry folks, we ran out of ingredients two hours ago. And yet everyone still just keeps lining up. That's the tension we all lived through this year. Listings were rare, new construction was rarer, builders retiring and under-resourced became a quiet abedink, state incentives pulled demand forward without increasing supply, and the population kept marching in like it was Black Friday and someone just announced a half-priced TV sale. Pressure, not prosperity, was the driving

Starting point is 00:27:27 force and pressure always reveals where markets are strong and where they're overstretched so let's reveal the price band pile-up of the great australian property funnel because the second force was the price band squeeze this is the piece that no headline told you 2025 was the year that australia created an ever-tightening funnel a nationwide buy funnel between appless servicing buffers, lender policy restrictions, high interest rates, state government incentives, 5% and 2% deposit schemes, first home buyer thresholds, stamp duty brackets, lending calculators, median incomes, household expense models, almost every buyer in the country ended up swimming in the same price pool.

Starting point is 00:28:14 And that pool was between $550,000 to $850,000, a pool the size of a small backyard. and with the number of swimmers you'd expect at Bondi Beach on Boxing Day. This wasn't demand, this was design. Policy pushed buyers inward, rates pushed them downward, affordability pushed them sideways. Now usually property markets are like supermarkets, different buyers shop different aisles. One aisle for first home buyers, another for investors,

Starting point is 00:28:44 another for upgraders, another for downsizers. but in 2025 everybody somehow ended up on the same aisle fighting over the same trolley of reasonably priced homes. It didn't matter who you were, nurse, tradie, teacher, tech, FIFO, professional the price you could comfortably afford was squeezed directly into that $550,000 to $850,000 grand funnel. It was like the entire nation had been gently herded through the same door at the same time. He said the doorway was designed for about a tenth of the crowd and the rest just keep squishing in this wasn't a neat affordability issue this was a structural choke point a national pile up and pile ups always distort prices not evenly not logically not sustainably but powerfully

Starting point is 00:29:29 this is why entry-level homes exploded while premium homes acted all calm and sophisticated like they were still sipping a latte in the Qantas lounge this wasn't an equal boom it was a price band boom, a funnel, a compression, a bottleneck. And bottlenecks create bubbles, temporary self-fulfilling bubbles, which is why some of the areas that jumped hardest this year may sit flat once the herd actually moves on. Not because the assets are bad, not because the buying pressure was artificial, policy made, not fundamentals made. And that's why smart investors don't chase a frenzy. They watch the pressure points, then move where that he will shift to next before anyone else does.

Starting point is 00:30:13 Let me share a story from the trenches. A young couple I work with early in the year, let's call them Tom and Jess, are doing everything right. Saving hard, paying down debt, learning, planning. They've been pre-approved to buy around $720,000. But you would have thought they were trying to buy a unicorn. Everything they touch had 12 other offers on.

Starting point is 00:30:34 Half of them were emotional first-time buyers waving bank checks like they were at an auction for Taylor Swift tickets. Now Tom said to me, Bushy, they're not buying a house, we're competing in the Hunger Games. And he wasn't wrong. This year felt like that. But here's the point. They weren't doing anything wrong. They were stuck in the funnel, in the narrow band where the whole nation was trying to

Starting point is 00:30:57 buy at the same time. After a proper strategy session, as we like to call it, and revisiting their freedom numbers and checking their bear facts. And after zooming out to 20 years instead of 20 minutes, we opened up their options and found a location outside the frenzy. Quiet pond, strong incomes, tight rentals, early S curve signs. And guess what? They secured a cracker.

Starting point is 00:31:22 It was near zero competition at a fair price while the herd was biting over scraps. They were feasting. That's what a strategy gives you. Perspective, options and oxygen. so the myth this year was everything's birthing no everything was congested there's a big difference 2025 wasn't a rising tide it was a rising pressure system and pressure doesn't lift everything it breaks weak things and concentrates around constrained things that's why smart

Starting point is 00:31:57 investors don't look for noise they look for choke points where suppliers choked but demand is breathing hard that's where you get movement not hype not youtube predictions not the top 10 hot spots for 2025 but choke points where fundamentals create opportunity not frenzy so let me give you another story imagine you're in a supermarket during a storm warning shelves are empty lines are long everyone's panicking sounds a bit like for covid lockdowns and there's only one or only loaf of bread left sitting there technically it's worth about three But today, it's suddenly worth $9. Same bread, same supermarket, same ingredients, different pressure.

Starting point is 00:32:41 That was 2025. We didn't have better bread. We had less bread and much more panic. Investors who understand scarcity cycles, they don't freak out. They don't chase the last life. They calmly walk to another supermarket in another aisle in another suburb where the shelves are still full because they know pressure isn't permanent. But position? Yeah, that's permanent. Position beats panic. Strategy beats stampede. Clarity beats chaos. Next, we need to

Starting point is 00:33:15 bring in the FOMO freight train, fueled by Instagram, not in-car. This was the psychology of 2025, and psychology was louder than economics. This was the year that the fear of missing out graduated from a nagging whisper to a full-blown freight train barrelling down the track with its horn blaring. And the fuel? Not wages, not borrowing capacity, not long-term planning. The fuel was social proof, buyer's agent and property podcast influencer hype, sensational headlines, and the magical phrase, Perth, insert the town of your liking, is booming so get in now or you're going to miss out FOMO in 2025 had an unusual flavor it wasn't greedy FOMO it was panic FOMO the kind where buyers weren't trying to be clever they were

Starting point is 00:34:04 trying not to be left behind now that's not a strategy that's survival mode and survival mode rarely makes long-term good decisions which has led us to the great herd migration Australia's longest running fashion parade, which is another force that showed 2025. You could almost feel the national rhythm. Perth had its moment, Adelaide had its moment, Brisbane had its moment, then the regions, then NT, then the strugglers circled back to whatever was left. It was like a property fashion parade moving from city to city. A trend went viral, everyone rushed there. Then when prices rose too fast, everyone rushed somewhere else. Not because economics changed, not because income shifted, not because infrastructure suddenly appeared, but because affordability

Starting point is 00:34:50 and social media hype nudged the herd in that direction. What makes this so important for investors is simple. Herd movements create noise. Fundamentals create wealth. When everyone's looking in one direction, the opportunity is usually emerging somewhere else. A final force was one of the least discussed and the most valuable for strategic investors. Different locations were sitting at different stages of their S-curve of growth. Some were in the upswing, some were in the lull, some were digesting the last cycle, some were quietly gathering the ingredients for the next one.

Starting point is 00:35:23 But here's the ticker. None of it lined up meagrely. 2025 wasn't a national cycle. It was a mosaic of micro-cycles, overlapping, colliding, resetting and reawakening at their own pace. This is why one superb could rise 12% while the next one moved just 1% and the one across the freeway I did nothing at all. It wasn't inconsistency, it was timing. And timing is the difference between riding the ripple and missing the tide.

Starting point is 00:35:51 So when you stack these forces together, pressure, price compression, fear-based momentum, herd migration and cycle mismatch, you begin to understand why 2025 felt so confusing on the surface but so predictable beneath it. And once you understand these forces, you can help but notice, you can't help but notice the elephant in the room. Because 2025 was also the year a certain industry trend reached peak volume and left the long trail of misguided purchases and overpriced properties in its wake. It's something that needs a bright spotlight shining

Starting point is 00:36:26 directly on it. Something that has cost and will continue to cost Aussie investors millions in 2025 and beyond. And it'll continue to do so into the future if we don't call it out. This is one of the biggest and most dangerous property trends of 2025. It's a trend that's costing good hard-working Aussies like yourself a truckload of current and future money and will create more heartbreak than break-even points. You know exactly what trend I'm talking about and it's time that we talk about it properly with facts, with wit and with full transparency. Now, I'm not here to bash anyone but I am here to speak the truth because you deserve

Starting point is 00:37:05 the truth. And the truth is, if 2025 was joked by pressure, timing and herding, it was one group right in the middle of the herd waving the brightest flag and playing the loudest flute. And that was the rise and rising wave of national buyers agents and high-profile podcasters. Or as I've quietly nicknamed them in the 2025 flight log, the Pied Pipers of property.

Starting point is 00:37:30 This year they went from a tool to a trend to a trap. Their present wasn't subtle, their marketing wasn't modest, and their impact, well, let's just say they left quite a footprint on the behaviour of buyers and the shape of the market. It started as a good idea, but has been stained by bad execution, driven by greedy business practices. In theory, having someone help you find a property anywhere in Australia sounds brilliant. Borderless, efficient, sophisticated, but in practice, becomes the equivalent of calling an Uber from someone who's never driven in your city? Yes, they've got a map. Yes, they can type

Starting point is 00:38:06 an address. But do they know the back streets, the school zones, the dodgy intersections, the flood plains, the pride pockets, the absolutely not pockets? Do they know where the locals actually want to live? Do they really know what the property's worth? Of course not, because they're not locals. They're not in the community. They're not talking to residents. They're not walking the streets. They're not aware of generations of inbuilt sentiment. And as I always say, property is local. Always has been, always will be. But the national BA model pretended it wasn't. And that's where the cracks have begun. So let's unpack this sensibly, professionally, and with just enough wit to make the truth memorable. Because the national bias agent promise is borderless

Starting point is 00:38:50 brilliance in a laptop bag. Yes, the idea on paper looks great. A property professional who can help you find a great deal anywhere in Australia. Sydney today, Perth tomorrow, Townsville by lunch, maybe even inspect something in Hobart while waiting for the Uber back to the airport. The pitch was polished, data-driven, borderless, national reach, unbiased insights, all markets, all properties, all scenarios. It sounded like the Swiss army knife of real estate, except if you've ever actually tried to use a Swiss army knife for anything serious, you realise it's brilliant for opening letters and useless for building houses. The same thing happened here. A national promise delivered through a very narrowed lens because desktop decisions don't replace footpath truths.

Starting point is 00:39:35 This is the quiet floor that became deafening this year. Many national bias agents rely on desktop data, heat maps, dashboards, algorithms and clever colour gradients and AI splashed everywhere. Useful? Sure. Sufficient? Not even close. Because property isn't sold on spreadsheets. It's shaped by where locals actually want to live, which streets have pride, which pockets have stigma, where renters behave, where residents invest in community, the unspoken reputation of a neighbourhood, and which side of the street cops the afternoon sun versus the Friday night noise. No national dashboard can tell you which street has the barking dog that never sleeps, or the alley that gets rowdy after local posers

Starting point is 00:40:17 or the subtle, no one quite explains it but locals all know its sentiment around a particular block. Data reveals patterns, locals reveal truths and this year proved that again and again and it'll only be in the years to come that those who've bought sight unseen are going to find out that big mistake. So enter the year of the hyped cycle.

Starting point is 00:40:41 hotspots manufactured on weekdays and milked on weekends because one of the biggest continuing issues this year was the rise of manufactured hotspots. A national buys agent, a high-profile podcaster or YouTuber would point to a suburb on a Thursday, film a punchy video, drop a bold prediction and by the following Monday, half the eastern seaboard was placing offers on anything with walls.

Starting point is 00:41:04 The market wasn't rising because fundamentals shifted, it was rising because someone with a big audience said it was rising. This wasn't forecasting. This was creating competition. And a self-fulfilling boom is a dangerous boom because when the creator has milked the location to build their business at your future expense and then moves on to the next data-manufactured hotspot,

Starting point is 00:41:25 the heat leaves faster than a tradie's lunch left on the dashboard in winter. Suddenly, the suburb sits still, not broken, not doomed, just flat, for years. The investor thinks they've missed something, but what they really missed was the difference between momentum and fundamentals. And they end up with a lemon with a laminated stat sheet.

Starting point is 00:41:46 I saw too many investors this year who made the same painful comment. It looked great on paper. Of course it did, because the paper was polished. The stats were curated. The charts were colourful. The pitch was persuasive. The suburb report had more graphs than a year 12 maths exam. But once the glow fades and time passes,

Starting point is 00:42:04 they really realise that they didn't buy a future-proof asset. they bought the wrong street in the right suburb at the wrong price in the wrong phase for the wrong reasons. Not because they lacked effort, because they lacked the local truth. Buying based on dashboards alone is like choosing a restaurant based solely on the menu photos and then discovering later the kitchen has health inspectors on speed dial. The real cost? Mentum makes you look smart short term and stuck long term. The hard part for me was watching good people, hard working, well-meaning trying to get ahead just like you get caught in that wake they bought on the heat of 2025's affordability chase often paying 20 30 grand sometimes 50 grand above fair value

Starting point is 00:42:50 not because the property was extraordinary but because the competition was artificially inflated by national recommendations and here's the harsh truth a property purchased 10 to 20 percent above intrinsic value needs years simply to get back to neutral. Momentum is a flattering liar. It makes the inexperienced look brilliant and it leaves them with a long-term burden once the music stops. So here's a big tip. If you're interested in the area because you've heard about it on a podcast or YouTube video, you're already too late and you'll end up competing with hundreds of others who are doing exactly the same thing and will end up overpaying for a less than ideal property that you don't even have the time to complete proper due diligence, and it's

Starting point is 00:43:34 likely to soon go sideways. And always think about the agenda of who and why they're talking up a location. How do I stand to benefit? If they get paid when you buy a property, then be very careful and circumspect. So if you hear about a location on a podcast or a YouTube video, run, because it's too late and it will all be too pressured. Instead of starting with a location where you buy whatever you can afford to get, start with your strategy or what I call strategy that combines your ideal lifestyle freedom numbers

Starting point is 00:44:09 with your bare facts capacity to determine how much you can actually afford to spend and then at that price for a three to four bedroom growth home, find a future growth location based on the scarcity model of the three I's and three P's that I've unpacked previously on the show at your affordable price point. This is a subtle change in approach that will have a massive impact on your future results. So what if there's a smarter model that combines this borderless reach married to local intelligence? Because I want to talk about a unique antidote. The issue isn't borderless thinking, it's borderless guessing.

Starting point is 00:44:46 So borderless paired with independent local expertise is not only powerful, it's essential. That's why our model doesn't rely on one national expert pretending to know 15,000 markets. It relies on, firstly, a personalised strategy that's anchored to your freedom numbers and your bare facts capacity so that your destination decides the direction. Secondly, a totally independent national local specialist who just looks at location with no bias, no inventory and no agenda. whose only job is to match your strategy to the right two to three region options at your affordable price based on hard fundamentals, not hop.

Starting point is 00:45:28 Then thirdly, local on-the-ground proven buyers agents who know which streets to pursue, which to avoid, and which to run from while they're offering free asbestos. And fourthly, independent inspectors, independent property managers and independent conveyances,

Starting point is 00:45:43 each keeping everyone else honest. And over the top, Like the property world's secret services, your guide dog and watchdog, I can personally, quietly verify and validate every step and every claim only if and when you need me. No cheerleading, no corner cutting, no trust me bro analysis. Just structure, scrutiny and straight answers. Delivered with your long-term success as the only agenda.

Starting point is 00:46:10 This isn't a single expert with a laptop. It's a fiercely independent proven team with complementary strengths and conflicting interests removed but with built-in checks and balances so you can make better fully informed decisions that are in your best interest not someone else's and that changes everything because once you see the problem with herd-driven guidance and once you understand the power of aligned expertise you start to recognize something profound the biggest wins in 2025 weren't achieved by the fastest followers but by the calmest thinkers. The ones who stepped back, looked deeper and positioned themselves in the quiet

Starting point is 00:46:48 corners while everyone else was busy bracing for the noisy ones. And that brings us to the real heart of this year's lesson. What smart investors actually learned from the chaos of 2025 and how those lessons became a strategic advantage heading into 2026. When you take a thoughtful step back from all the noise, all the movement, and all the misdirection that defined 2025, a pattern emerges. Because despite the chaos, the contradictions, and the crowd psychology, 2025 was one of the clearest teaching years we've had in recent memory. Not because it was easy, not because it was predictable, but because it revealed the difference between fast followers and future builders, between investors who rely on momentum and contrarian investors who rely on meaning.

Starting point is 00:47:37 So let's pull the big lessons out of the turbulence and into the light. Lesson one, pressure isn't a problem, it's a professor. Pressure doesn't distort markets, pressure reveals them. 2025 showed us that when stock tightens, when builders retreat, when lending gets restrictive, when population pops and when buyers flood into the same narrow slice of the market, you don't get healthy growth, you get amplified behaviour. Some suburbs saw their best year because they had strong incomes, tight rentals and deep owner-occupied demand. Others simply inflated because too many buyers' agents had buyers queuing and competing for too few options.

Starting point is 00:48:17 But a wise investor doesn't mistake pressure for performance. They know pressure tells you where the cracks are and where the opportunities are quietly forming. Lesson two, scarcity outweighs sentiment every single time. There were cities this year where consumer confidence was low, option clearance rates were soft, and journalists were forecasting Armageddon in comfortable shoes. Yet, prices rose. Why? Scarcity.

Starting point is 00:48:48 No stock, no bills, no capacity, no alternatives. Scarcity is the gravitational force of property value. You can disagree with it, you can resist it, you can shout it, add it on Twitter, but you can't stop it. 2025 reminded us that sentiment is a sugar hit, but scarcity is the metabolic engine. Lesson three, strategy or strategy beats stampede. So many buyers on 2025 weren't following a plan,

Starting point is 00:49:15 they were following feelings. I heard Perth's booming. Everyone's buying in Adelaide. My cousin just bought in Queensland. A buyer's agent on YouTube said this suburb's a better take off. This wasn't investing, it was stampede. And when the herd runs, it runs fast, but rarely. in the right direction. Your strategy is the antidote to stampede. It tells you what you're

Starting point is 00:49:36 buying, why you're buying it, how long you're holding, what it needs to achieve, what you can afford, and which locations actually fit your trajectory. And your strategy is your GPS compass. Everything else is weather. 2025 rewarded investors who held a compass, It punished, and will future punish, those who followed clouds. Lesson four, local insight isn't optional, it's oxygen. This year proved beyond any doubt that you can't buy property from the stratosphere. You can't outsource street-level nuance to a heat map. You can't replace local truth with national templates.

Starting point is 00:50:15 Every investor who bought well in 2025 had one thing in common. They had someone independent on the ground who actually understood where the pride pockets were, where the stigma streets lived, and which side of the suburb had the momentum for reasons that never show up on a chart. 2025 is a masterclass in the value of local wisdom, and the rare investors who learned it

Starting point is 00:50:37 are walking to the next decade with a very distinct advantage. Lesson five, momentum makes you feel smart. Fundamentals make you wealthy. Every boom lot this year had the same soundtrack. Rising prices, buyers queuing, buyers agents on property podcasts, videos going viral, newsrooms cheering,

Starting point is 00:50:57 social media doubling down. Momentum always feels like validation. But momentum's not mastery. Momentum's not a moat. Momentum's not a strategy. It's a sugar rush. Exciting for a moment, exhausting when it fades.

Starting point is 00:51:12 Fundamentals, on the other hand, the three I's and three P's of growth, like interdependent infrastructure alignment, industry diversity, income growth, employment depth, owner-occupier appeal, future pipelines, S-curve timing, population trends. These are the forces that create compounding, and compounding is how wealth quietly overtakes noise. 2025 is a loud year, but the wealth will be built in the quiet corners. So when you stitch these lessons together you see that 2025 not as a chaotic year but as a clarifying year a year that said here is how property works when stress kicks in here is how hot buyers behave here is how scarcity strikes

Starting point is 00:51:54 here is how cycles misalign here is how hot misleads here is how fundamentals endure these are not just insights for a year in view these are insights for your next decade and before we wrap there's one more layer we need to acknowledge because 2025 didn't just reveal what happened this year it quietly revealed what's setting up for next year because when you stand back and look at the last year with a clear lens you start to notice something quite powerful he didn't tell us what happened he quietly whispered what's coming next not in a crystal ball sense not in a print the hotspot list sense but in the pattern sense because markers don't move in straight lines but they do move in rhythms and 2025 was rich with

Starting point is 00:52:42 rhythm you could hear it in the pressure points you could see it in the s-curve mismatches you could feel it in the buyer behavior you could sense it in the supply constraints the signals were subtle but they were there no signals are worth paying attention to not because they tell you exactly where to buy but because they teach you how to think how to observe how to interpret how to position, how to make decisions that outlive the news cycle because the truth is this, you don't need someone to hand you a fish you need to understand the tide, the currents, the depth, the season and the behaviour of what swims beneath so you can fish for yourself

Starting point is 00:53:20 and feed yourself forever. Once you understand this, you can cast your own line confidently for the rest of your life and that is far more valuable than any list of up and coming suburbs that was ever printed. so without spoiling the conversation we'll be having in an upcoming episode there are a few themes quietly forming beneath the surface deserve your long-term attention and i mean themes not locations forces not forecasts because both of these are dangerous i'm not going to become part of the market moving problem that i've just talked about so the themes are how lending settings shape the price bands where people can actually buy how limited listings and construction pipelines or

Starting point is 00:54:02 the lack of them create tomorrow's scarcity, how population flows aren't random, they follow employment, lifestyle and affordability in predictable arcs, how early stage escorts often hide in plain sight because they don't look exciting until after they've already awakened, and how sentiment cycles, fear, relief, hesitation, confidence, repeat more reliably than most economic rules. These are the ingredients of intelligent investing, not the next boom suburb but the next underlying force that shapes the playing field. Because if you understand the forces, you don't need someone to tell you what to chase.

Starting point is 00:54:40 You know how to read the water and the tea leaves yourself. So why does this matter for you? Well, the most sustainably successful investors I've ever worked with over the last 40 odd years share one defining trait. They don't chase, they position. They're not rushing towards momentum, they're quietly moving towards meaning. they've learned to recognize the difference between a shiny moment and a solid decade

Starting point is 00:55:03 and that's exactly what an upcoming episode will help you do we're not talking hot spots not talking predictions we're not talking crystal balls we're talking pattern literacy how to read the landscape with clarity so you can make good grounded decisions without waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and say bye here that's the kind of education that lasts and that is where we'll be heading in the upcoming episode. But before we get there, before we jump into the art of understanding the year ahead, there's one final thought we're holding onto as we wrap up this look at the year that was. A thought that turns all the chaos and the contradiction of the last year into confidence for your future. When you step back from the

Starting point is 00:55:46 twists and turns of the year, from the pressure points and the price funnels, from the herd movements and the hype megaphones and the scarcity and the sentiment, the fog clears. And what you're left with isn't confusion, but clarity. Because 2025 didn't just show us what happened in property, it showed us how property behaves under stress. And that's one of the most valuable lessons any investor can ever learn. When markets tighten, many reveal themselves. Some panic, some freeze, some follow the loudest voice with the brightest advertising, but others a smaller, calmer, more deliberate group, step back, breathe, observe and make decisions that will quietly compound long after the headlines have moved on. That's the contrarian group that

Starting point is 00:56:30 I want you in. The group that sees through noise, the group that invests from intent, the group that holds a plan when others hold their breath. Because property isn't a sprint, it isn't a guessing game, it isn't a once-off event. It's a series of well-timed, well-considered steps taken with clarity, courage, and consistency. The kind of steps that aren't driven by panic or prediction, but by purpose. And purpose is what transforms a single investment into a life lived on your own terms, a life by design. 2025 wasn't the year to be the fastest person in the race. It was the year to become the most thoughtful, the most observant, the most strategic, the most grounded. Because thoughtful investors beat reactive investors. Strategic

Starting point is 00:57:15 investors beat opportunity investors. And calm investors beat hurry ones every single decade. So as you walk away from this review of the year, hold on to this. You don't need to predict the future. You just need to understand the forces shaping it. And once you do, you stop running after the market and you start aligning yourself with it. That's the moment everything changes. and in an upcoming episode we're going to take the clarity that you gained today and turn it into the lens that you'll use to read the year ahead. So you can navigate 2026 with wisdom, with confidence and with a calm certainty that comes from knowing exactly how to think about property

Starting point is 00:57:53 no matter what the market and the conditions are doing. Thanks for joining me and Freedom Fighters, here's to the lessons learned, the clarity gained and the freedom you're building one smart decision at a time. And before we close, I need to finish with the old buck-covering disclaimer that the information in this episode is general in nature and doesn't constitute financial, legal or taxation advice. All examples are indicative only and must be confirmed with your local

Starting point is 00:58:19 and licensed accountant, advisor or professional before acting. No responsibility is accepted for any third-party reliance and please seek personalised advice for your circumstances. That's all from me, so remember to always invest in the property between your ears first and always get invested thanks for tuning in to get invested on the property hub podcast channel your home for property investment insights and inspiration make sure you subscribe to property hub for free get your weekly dose of get invested inspiration along with every episode of realty talk australia's top online property show for red hot property

Starting point is 00:58:55 investing news and insights direct from industry leaders and influencers and finally i'll see you next time

Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Property boom or blocked drain? Bushy breaks down 2025

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