Real estate consumers tend to place their attention on the markets receiving the most media headlines, which primarily are the ones that have shown the biggest growth in the past month or the latest quarter or year.

But that is not the best measure of which locations have been showing the best growth.

To get a better picture of locations that out-perform, you need to look at longer time frames, such as the past THREE years, not the past week or the past month as media tends to do.

News media continues to obsess over the Perth market where prices currently are rising the fastest and they tend to imply that this boom will keep on rolling for years to come.

It won’t. Perth has already had a couple of years of major price growth and there are already signs that the market has peaked.

One of the things that would be more useful is for the media to take a broader focus of price performance, to give consumers a more enlightened picture of where the best growth has been.

For example, where in Australia have we seen the biggest growth over the past three years?

It would no doubt surprise many to learn that there are a dozen regional centres across Australia which have had considerably higher growth since 2021 than Perth – and most of the other capital cities as well.

Research published by one of Australia’s best real estate analysts, Simon Pressley of Propertyology, shows that the best performers on capital growth over the past three years have been regional cities - and that the best of the capital cities has not been Perth, but Adelaide.

So which location has recorded the highest growth in median house prices in the past three years?

According to Propertyology, the answer is Bundaberg in Regional Queensland, where the median price has risen 63% in three years.

Close behind comes Wagga Wagga in NSW, which has grown 56%.

Then we have little-known Gympie near the Sunshine Coast, up 51%, alongside Hervey Bay a little further north in Queensland, which also increased 51%.

In fifth place we have the first of the capital cities, Adelaide, which is up 50% on the pricing levels of 2021.

Next, in order, we have the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Mandurah in WA, Rockhampton in Queensland, Tamworth in NSW, the Gold Coast in Queensland and Albury-Wodonga at the NSW-Victoria border.

In 12th place, up 40% over three years, is Perth.

Now, I’m happy to report that every one of those out-performing locations across the nation have featured strongly in our hotspots reports over the past 3-4 years.

And we featured them BEFORE that big period of three-year growth started.

In the 2020 editions of our National Top 10 Best Buys report, the Sunshine Coast was our top pick – and went on to be a national leader on price growth over three years.

In the 2021 editions of Best Buys, Bundaberg, Tamworth, Albury-Wodonga, Wagga Wagga and the Gold Coast, as well as key locations in Adelaide and Perth, all featured in our national top 10 lists – BEFORE the three years of growth happened.

And remember that, back in 2020 and early 2021, economists and the media generally were telling us that prices were going to crash everywhere. We simply did NOT agree – and we got it right.

This speaks to the essence of intelligent investing – accessing good research reports that tell you where the highest growth will happen BEFORE it happens.

NOT diving into markets where the media says prices have grown the most in the past year. That is the essence of BAD investing.