The latest real estate figures showing a surge in Perth property prices will encourage even more investors and first home buyers into the housing. However, investors and first home buyers should consider longer term property trends rather than short term surges in the property prices when deciding where to buy a home in suburbia or an apartment.

Over the last year most suburbs in Perth continued to perform very strongly because of very low levels of unemployment, rising wage levels and the perception that interest rates will remain low.

The positive publicity about these strong price growth rates over the past year creates an emotional environment for first time property buyers to quickly purchase a property in the expectation that they will gain instant wealth.

Rather than just relying on the price growth rates in a particular suburb over the last year, home buyers should at least look at price growth rate trends over the past five years.

Longer term past price growth rate trends in a suburb help to give property buyers a forward indicator of what property price trends could be in the future years.

Want to receive more of these updates? Please fill in our mailing list and we shall email them on to you.