Property Update 2025: Market Trends with Arjun Paliwal

Australian real estate just hit a jaw-dropping $11.3 trillion and that’s just residential. 😲

In the latest episode of Get Rich, Molly is joined by property data expert and InvestorKit Founder Arjun Paliwal to break down what that means for you — and how to get ahead.

We cover:
✅ Where the best value suburbs are hiding
✅ Why inner-city areas might be making a comeback
✅ The unexpected city on the rise (hello Darwin 👀)
✅ What’s coming for first-home buyers in 2026
✅ And why waiting could cost you $$$

🎧 Ready to make your next smart money move?

This episode is brought to you by InvestorKit, Australia’s #1 Buyers Agency for 2023 and 2024. They specialise in helping investors find high-growth properties utilising industry leading AI and data driven research process across Australia. 70%+ of the properties they purchase are off-market and they have consistently outperformed national average capital growth rates by over 49%. Whether you’re looking to build your property portfolio or secure your first investment. Check them out here.

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Welcome to Get Rich & Molly’s Money Mission
01:18 – Market Update Intro with Arjun Paliwal
01:43 – Fun Fact: Aussie Residential Real Estate Hits $11.3 Trillion
03:01 – National Property Trends & 12-Month Growth Breakdown
04:02 – State-by-State Update: Darwin Leads, Canberra Lags
04:52 – Regional Standouts: SA, WA, QLD Shine
05:54 – Why Darwin Is Booming Again
06:25 – Interest Rate Forecast: What’s Ahead
08:50 – What Falling Rates Could Mean for Buyers
10:27 – First Home Buyer Changes Coming in 2026
12:02 – Why Buyers Might Wait (or Act Now)
12:26 – Where Arjun Sees Value: It’s Not About Location
13:38 – Affordable vs Premium Suburbs: Who’s Winning Now?
14:43 – Why Inner Suburbs May Be Next to Surge
16:17 – Inner vs Outer Market Trends Explained
17:27 – Recap: Where Value Is Hiding in 2025
18:54 – How to Book a Free Chat with Arjun at Investorkit

LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

InvestorKit Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/investorkit-podcast/id1656185147
Explore Australia’s Property Data & Market Trends - https://www.corelogic.com.au/ 
Government Grants for First Home Buyers - https://www.revenue.nsw.gov.au/grants-schemes/first-home-buyer

CONNECT WITH ARJUN PALIWAL

Website: https://www.investorkit.com.au/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arjpaliwal/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/propertybuyersagent/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@investorkit

CONNECT WITH LADIES FINANCE CLUB

Join our free Facebook group - Ladies Finance Club Money Chat
Website: https://www.ladiesfinanceclub.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladiesfinanceclub/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ladies-finance-club/

TAKEAWAYS

• Australian real estate is valued at $11.3 trillion, significantly larger than other markets.
• Nationally, the market has seen a modest growth of 3.2% over the last year.
• Capital cities have grown at a slower rate compared to regional markets.
• Interest rates are expected to decline significantly in the next 12-24 months.
• First home buyer incentives are set to increase, allowing for higher purchase prices.
• Affordable properties are currently outperforming higher-end markets in growth.
• Investors are showing increased interest in markets like Darwin due to affordability and rental yields.
• Understanding quartile pricing can help identify value in the market.
• The inner markets are expected to catch up as interest rates decline.
• Consultations are available for those looking to navigate the property market effectively.

SOUND BITES

"We're already seeing more people now."
"First home buyers price caps are being lifted heavily."
"The more affordable markets have performed better."
"You can have a free consultation with our team."

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Molly: Welcome to Get Rich, the podcast that helps you do just that. Get rich and stay rich. Hey, I'm Molly Benjamin. I'm the founder of Ladies Finance Club, one of Australia's largest financial education platforms for women. But before I started helping thousands of women take control with their money, I was a hot financial mess when it came to my own finances and not the fun kind of hot, more like crying in a supermarket, wondering where all my money went kind of hot.

[00:00:29] But here's the thing, if I can go from financial mess to owning a share portfolio, investing in property, and building wealth. Then you can too. My mission is simple to make women rich because when we have financial freedom, we have choices, confidence, and control over our future. Every week on Get Rich, I sit down with some of the best experts in the industry to break down how we can all start investing, growing our money, and creating long-term financial security without the jargon, boring bits or overwhelm.

[00:01:02] Because when women get rich, we don't just change our lives, we change the world. So if you're ready to start making some smart money moves, hit that subscribe button and let's get Rich together.

[00:01:18] Hello Arjun, and I am excited to hear from you about the monthly market update.

[00:01:26] Arjun: It's good to be on and, uh, keen to share a bit about what's been happening. Molly, there is lots going on in Australian real estate right now, but I think the big thing I always like to start off with is more like beyond just this month, some fun facts, and I might do that every little segment.

[00:01:43] Share a few fun facts about the market. The first little fact I wanted to share, which might get people intrigued is that Australian real estate. In terms of residential real estate is now crossing $11.3 trillion in value, which is more than three times the Australian stock market and more than two and a half times the Australian superannuation market.

[00:02:09] And. Actually almost 10 times, but not quite there of the commercial real estate market. So when I go through today's market update, that's a fun fact for everyone. And why that's important to know is that you know, when you buy a property to live in or invest, you're buying one house on a street. In a suburb, in a city, in a state, and so like when we go through macro and micro trends, what's more important though is your specific search and your specific property.

[00:02:37] Because there's so much real estate out there with 11.3 trillion, these data and chart and trends will not move your decision or make it better or worse for your one singular decision you can make.

[00:02:48] Molly: Wow. Okay. So maybe let's start with, oh, have you got any more fun facts before we get into kind of state by state?

[00:02:54] Arjun: No, look, I, I'll do, uh, one, one big fun fact each episode and, uh, kind of share out what's been happening in the market following that.

[00:03:01] Molly: Awesome. So do we wanna start state by state? Where should we go first?

[00:03:06] Arjun: I can start a bit of a national picture and then come down a little bit. So firstly, nationally, the market has moved about 3.2% in the last 12 months, and so that means it's not a huge amount of growth happening across Australia at a national level.

[00:03:21] It's probably one of the lower times of growth since going back to August to 2023 and the three months growth though. Is around 1.1% over the last three months average for the country, which means if you do annualize, that that is higher than our 12 month, last 12 month data, 4.4%, which means we're now trending upwards a little bit more than we were the last 12 months.

[00:03:42] The other big difference, I'd say, on the national level is that the capitals versus regionals, so capital cities have grown about. 2.6% over the last 12 months with regional markets at about 5.3% over the last 12 months. So definitely the smaller centers across the country are pushing a little bit more growth from a national level.

[00:04:02] So yeah, that's the national level data. But coming towards now state level, some big standouts, what's been a, a really big standout of the capital markets has been the market of Darwin. So over the last three months, Darwin has grown by 3.4% as per core logic. Where in comparison to the more slower moving markets over the last three months, it has been Canberra as one example at about 0.6%, only over the last three months, and Hobart at 0.9% as well over the last three months.

[00:04:33] Some more slower moving markets there now. In terms of the regional centers, regional SA has been the biggest standout at about 3.5% leading the country for the last three months. And then regional WA in Queensland equaling things at 2%. So that's kind of the standouts at a state level.

[00:04:52] Molly: Hmm. And just a quick question on Darwin.

[00:04:54] Why are we seeing this growth in Darwin? Is that because there have had just not a lot of growth over the last kind of decade that we're now seeing movement.

[00:05:03] Arjun: So I would put it down to three things. The first is there's a lot of infrastructure and major projects in the pipeline that are clearly exciting.

[00:05:11] Some people to say there could be something happening here. None of those major projects are like fully cemented happening, for sure, happening asap. Clearly mapped out to that, that level of scale. But some is starting to come to fruition. Number two is investors are really attracted here. It's one of the most affordable capitals out there.

[00:05:30] In line with the highest rental yields, and as you pointed out, it hasn't had a lot of growth in the last 15 years. The lowest performing capital city over the last 15 years in Australia. The third and final point is that when you've just also seen not just the lowest growth over the last 15 years, but how much other markets have done so well, it's kind of made people a little bit of that feeling to go, can others keep on keeping on?

[00:05:55] Or could I maybe switch some insights into other areas? Now, I think all of that's great, but it does really take. A lot of the local market to strengthen its economy and also the local market to get on that journey alongside the investors to make this a sustainable wave of growth over multiple years rather than just the start of 2025.

[00:06:16] But definitely some good signs ahead for 2025 for Darwin with the current trends in the start to the year, and that's without huge, huge declines in interest rates.

[00:06:25] Molly: Awesome. And Arjun with interest rates, what are you thinking we will see happen in Australia?

[00:06:32] Arjun: Yeah, I think interest rates are likely to drop fairly heavily over the next 12 to 24 months, even within the next 12 months.

[00:06:41] So there's many data sets out there, and I know whoever you ask is gonna have different opinions on how they look at the data, and that's the beauty of it, right? We can all talk about in different ways and see different signals. The main thing I'm seeing clearly is the sluggish spending data happening, and I think that sluggish spending data that's happening is going to create a follow-up effect to the economy in due course.

[00:07:04] I think some data has been creating some false positives to say like, oh look, the unemployment rate isn't skying up as it should, and then also the jobs levels are still being added at healthy numbers. Yes, that's great having resilience, but we don't need that resilience to keep getting tested more and more with the spending data.

[00:07:23] And it's not like just because we've reached a target band of inflation suddenly, you know, yeah, we have to decline heavily. But it's more like you'd also want to avoid future issues from coming up if you can foresee them coming up. Mm-hmm. I think, uh, the thing here is that interest rates are likely to go into the direction of.

[00:07:42] Down. Yeah. But I think how aggressive is the question? That's really gonna be up to the RBA, but there's no question about it. That direction is down over the next 12 to 24 months, and I would personally say that the RBA cash rate needs to be in that sort of two and a half to three point a half percent as a cash rate to what I call balanced or standard or pretty healthy rather than where we are now.

[00:08:06] We use a value metric called overvalue, undervalue analysis, which is like looking at mortgage repayments against, you know, the average incomes in certain areas post-tax. Yeah. And I just see that not the income ratio, but repayments to income, not ratio of house price to income is a far better measure, and that measure is getting stretched in many areas, essentially calling for interest rates to be declined.

[00:08:30] Molly: Okay, so then if we see interest rates lower, for those people who are, you know, they've been thinking about buying, they've been thinking about buying for a while, would you say this would be a good time then to actually take action? Because we're gonna see, will we see more people be wanting to buy because of this low interest rate?

[00:08:50] Arjun: We're already seeing more people now. We are fielding inquiries like never before seen, and what we are noticing is that people are sensing what we are sensing on this chat right now, which is, I think they're gonna head down, I dunno exactly how much by when, but a fair bit to go. So rather than when I can.

[00:09:10] For sure have the everything perfect and wait for all the stars to align and everything is coming down. Borrowing capacities up. Things are cheaper. I know that a lot of others are gonna be in that same feeling like I'm gonna be. I'd just like to do that one step earlier. That is a clear trend. We are noticing in conversations we are having with clients.

[00:09:30] That to me, is a big difference maker in the attitudes and minds of what people are thinking. I think really. We're gonna see a lot of movement in people's, uh, you know, positions when interest rates do come down heavily. And when I say positions, I mean people's ability to borrow, people's ability to hold onto certain cash flow in property.

[00:09:49] Like for example, if someone could only hold onto, say. $500 or a thousand dollars, a $1,500 negative cashflow per month, then that number suddenly starts increasing of what they can hold onto because of the interest rates improving. Um, then what happens there is that now property's not as negative cashflow and suddenly they can look at more cities across the country.

[00:10:10] So I think it's gonna be a big shift when that all of this starts to happen.

[00:10:14] Molly: Yeah. And just with the recent election we saw, have you seen any kind of changes to lending or government grants by incentives that we should be aware of? I.

[00:10:23] Arjun: There are some big changes ahead in 2026, and that's for first home buyers in particular.

[00:10:29] The first home buyers price caps are being lifted heavily, like not just a small five or 10% index, or a three or 5% index. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in gain for first home buyers. So what this will mean is that suddenly, instead of first home buyers being forced into the absolute outer rings or into the smallest possible unit.

[00:10:50] To use a grant in major cities like Sydney and Melbourne, they are gonna have a lot of options open up. Now, what does that mean? I think three things are gonna happen as a result of this. Prices under $1.5 million are gonna see a substantial increase around many parts of New South Wales in 2026. Mm-hmm.

[00:11:10] Second part is that many buyers are gonna look to position themselves now because they understand that that's gonna happen. And these are the non-first time buyers. The third part is we may also see many first timers actually hold off their decision making just to wait for them because they could access a hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in purchase price, but just for maybe five, 10 or 20 K more in a deposit.

[00:11:32] Yeah, so that's never been seen for such a long time, which where, where people can make, get that much of a stretch on their price. Likely that two and cheaper interest rates and only have to save a little bit more to make that much of a jump in price. So I think there's gonna be a lot of pent up demand where first home buyers are just gonna hold off all across New South Wales waiting for that moment to come up where they can actually stretch their budgets a fair bit.

[00:11:58] Awesome.

[00:11:59] Molly: And Arjun, where are you

[00:12:00] Arjun: seeing types of value at the moment? Yeah, so I always look at value Molly by something called the Quartile pricing Review. And so what we're seeing is if we divide markets, like, I'll give you an example, say Perth. If we look at Perth and we divide markets into three quartiles.

[00:12:18] The 25th percentile, the 50th percentile, and the 75th percentile. So it's like the, the bottom end of markets, the middle end of markets, and the top end of markets. Mm-hmm. What's been really fascinating is that the last three months of data has the Perth bottom end of markets rising by 1.6% in value, which is quite healthy, and the top end of markets rising at 0.3% of value, which is quite low.

[00:12:44] This is a trend that's happening across a lot of markets, maybe apart from Darwin, but across a lot of markets. We are seeing the lower parts and apart from Sydney, but we're seeing a lot of markets across Australia where the lower parts of the cycle are really, really winning in price growth, meaning under 500, under seven 50 K properties are starting to really perform a lot more and have been for a few years now.

[00:13:10] But what I would say when you think about value is what's next? Mm-hmm. I think as interest rates start coming down lower and lower over the years ahead, that money that hasn't been able to flow as freely for those with a higher price point is gonna start. Coming back into action. So that Perth example where the inner market only, you know, grew 0.3% over the last three months, I would expect that to switch places with the outer market, where the outer market starts to stay calm and the inner markets play catch up and they start to grow because typically cycles have seen inner markets and more expensive markets lead the price growth first and then the outer follows.

[00:13:53] But since we've gone through this latest interest rate hike, we've seen. Outer markets grow first, inner markets lag behind. So I would imagine the flip happens where outer markets are so close and priced to inner people can upsize or sell and move location in the same size dwelling, and they can suddenly have owner occupied demand shift.

[00:14:14] And then also investors will see value in those higher markets where they are getting better and better rental yield. Prices haven't grown as much and now they start taking off. So that is my thoughts on some value where if you can stretch that budget during this higher interest rate period, I would say that 700 K and above price point will start seeing value in places like Perth as an example.

[00:14:35] When I use that city, or even prices of 1 million plus in places like, you know, Melbourne will start to see a lot of improved value too. So. That's my thoughts on, uh, the value markets.

[00:14:45] Molly: Great. And arja, when you say inner and outer, what do you mean by that one?

[00:14:50] Arjun: Outer. I look at markets where it's outside of, say, the 30 kilometer ring of certain cities, and when they're away from the CBD, they tend to be cheaper.

[00:15:00] Not every pocket, obviously in the northwest of Sydney you ask anyone, things are pretty pricey, but if you go further and further out from the CB, D, prices are lower. And that's where a lot of what we call lower quartile price point sit. So like well below the median of the city. Price points in those suburbs.

[00:15:16] And then if you go inner, that's more like getting close to the CBD distance wise, where prices are higher. And so the inner markets across Australia haven't grown as well as the outer markets have over the last three years. And if interest rates do start taking a fairly big reduction over the next two years, which is expected, it's likely the performance will start to flip in many cities where the inner markets do perform better.

[00:15:41] Molly: Okay, so. Would that be like the inner cities perform better than the outer cities? So inner city versus regional?

[00:15:48] Arjun: I would say more inner cities of any city, regional, all capital. Yeah. Wherever it's a little bit prier in that market. So even if you take a, a city like say Toowoomba, Toowoomba's a a city, uh, it's a regional center and that city there has some suburbs that are pricier.

[00:16:04] Places like Rainville is a Prier suburb and that particular suburb has. Higher cost property. Same with East Toowoomba. Mm. Now, those last couple of years, that suburb has had a little bit slower growth than more affordable suburbs like Harris Town. Yeah. In Toowoomba. And those affordable suburbs have performed better, I would say, as interest rates come back down, we're gonna see the likes of.

[00:16:27] East Toowoomba and Rainville strengthen up more if we're just using a regional city example. And the same can occur in capital cities. Where in Adelaide we have a council called Onkaparinga, and we also have a council in the northeast called Salisbury. Yeah. And those two councils have performed much more than the inner councils of Adelaide.

[00:16:47] And we do expect that turnaround to happen as years go on and interest rates keep coming down.

[00:16:52] Molly: So that was a great overview of where we're at nationally. Where are you seeing some good value in the market right now?

[00:16:58] Arjun: Well, where I'm seeing good value right now actually isn't a place, it's what I call a price quartile.

[00:17:04] I. So across different cities in Australia, we have a median price. Mm-hmm. And in those cities, the median price is essentially the middle of the market. And then you have suburbs and outer ring suburbs, like places that are, you know, further away from the CBD that have cheaper prices in comparison to locations closer to the city, whether it's a regional center or a capital center.

[00:17:27] And right now, over the last two years, Molly, since interest rates have increased a lot, it's the more affordable markets in cities across Australia, which has performed better. I. I'm looking at, say an example like Perth, where the affordable suburbs over the last three months grew 1.6%, but the higher price suburbs in the inner ring grew by 0.3%.

[00:17:51] I'm expecting that to flip the other way, where the more expensive properties in, say Perth, as an example, are likely to perform better as interest rates reduce more and more. So I think that typically we've seen. Increasing prices in the prier markets first, and then affordable prices catch up. We're about to see that come back again when interest rates decline more and more.

[00:18:16] Molly: Awesome. So Arjun, if people are listening to this and they're wanting to get in touch, 'cause potentially they wanna look at buying a place, what's the next steps in the process?

[00:18:26] Arjun: The next steps is jump on investigate.com au. You can have a free consultation with our team and I hope that they've found, if you're tuning in today, uh, more insights from the national update.

[00:18:37] And you found the fun fact of value too, that Australian real estate is a big place. So we wanna make sure through helping you in buying in the right areas. And buying for the right price. You can look across the country and buy where there is value, and that's what I wanted to highlight today.

[00:18:51] Molly: Awesome.

[00:18:51] Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your knowledge with us.

[00:18:55] Arjun: Thanks, Molly. Take care.

KEYWORDS

Australian real estate, market update, interest rates, first home buyers, property investment, market trends, economic outlook, property value, investment strategies, housing market