How to read a suburb profile in ten minutes

Start with trend, not level. A $2m median tells you what a suburb costs; the 5-and-10-year growth lines tell you what it's doing. Consistent compounding beats a single spectacular year that usually mean-reverts.

Next, days on market and clearance. These are the market's pulse: when homes sell in under 30 days and clearance runs hot, buyers outnumber sellers and negotiating power flips to vendors. Rising days-on-market is often the earliest visible sign of a cooling market — it moves before prices do.

Then depth: how many sales actually happen a year. A median built on 40 sales is a statistic; one built on 400 is a market. Thin markets are noisier, slower to exit, and their medians jump around simply because of what happened to sell that quarter.

Only then look at yield and the renter/owner mix. High owner-occupier suburbs tend to hold value in downturns (owners don't have to sell); high-renter suburbs respond faster to investor sentiment and interest rates.

Last, zoom out to the dwelling mix. A suburb can have a booming house market and a flat unit market at the same time — supply pipelines differ completely. That's why every PropertyCheck suburb profile splits houses and units rather than blending them into one misleading number.