Data & methodology.

Prices & growth

Heatmaps visualises median house and unit prices across postcode, suburb and statistical area layers. Growth is calculated as year-on-year change in both dollars and percent, where sufficient observations are available.

Small transaction counts can distort suburb-level growth, so charts and rankings use sales counts as a confidence signal and avoid implying precision where the sample is thin.

Rents & yields

Rent layers show the latest available median or average rent data by property type and geography. Gross yield is calculated as annualised rent divided by the property value.

Rent sources and evidence-volume definitions vary by state and geography. Government postcode records can represent new rental bonds, while suburb-profile observations can come from market-profile series whose volume is an estimated market observation count. Heatmaps therefore treats the count as source-dependent rent evidence rather than universally calling it new bonds.

Yield is useful, but it is not a complete investment measure. It should be considered alongside growth, liquidity, supply risk, income, schools, crime and other suburb context.

Stock on Market & listing supply

Stock on Market estimates the share of existing dwelling stock currently advertised for sale: active sale listings from publicly available sources ÷ selected estimated dwelling stock × 100. Houses and units are measured independently. The preferred denominator is an address-based dwelling-type proxy; an estimated current-stock fallback may be used where needed.

A denominator must be at least 100 dwellings. A successful observation with zero active listings is valid and displays as 0%. Listings are a current snapshot and can change quickly, so only sufficiently fresh observations are used. Lower percentages receive higher comparison scores within the national same-dwelling formal ranking cohort. Stock on Market contributes 5% to Best Overall.

Missing observations remain unscored individually and are neutral only inside the combined Best Overall score; missing this optional measure does not change formal ranking eligibility. Stock on Market is not a rental vacancy rate and is not, by itself, proof of oversupply.

This indicator measures current advertised resale supply. Development approvals instead indicate a possible future construction pipeline. Address and dwelling-stock proxies can differ from the true saleable stock, while listing snapshots can include timing, classification and duplicate-listing effects. Interpret the measure alongside prices, sales, Days on Market, approvals and local research.

Development approvals & oversupply

Development approval layers use recently approved dwellings from local councils and national building approvals data. Higher approval counts or value can indicate incoming supply and should be interpreted as a supply-risk signal, not a standalone forecast.

Suburb-profile approval figures marked with an asterisk are approximate allocations of Statistical Area 2 totals using the suburb-to-SA2 share. They are rounded to the nearest whole approval and are not direct suburb-level source counts.

Demographics

Income, owner-occupier balance and social housing layers use Census 2021 data. These signals add long-term suburb context to the faster-moving property and rental data.

Median weekly household income is used as one proxy for household capacity and local affluence. Owner-occupier share is used as a neighbourhood composition indicator, with 66% treated as a broad Australian midpoint in the overall scoring model.

Schools & crime

The schools layer uses ICSEA 2024 and NAPLAN-related school data where available. The crime layer uses multi-state crime rates per 100,000 population for NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA and ACT where available.

Crime and school indicators are contextual signals. Missing optional signals are treated carefully in rankings rather than automatically excluding a suburb.

Source coverage

Property and rent data

• Property sales use publicly available official sales records and market observations, processed and quality-filtered by Heatmaps.
• Rent coverage uses publicly available tenancy records and rental-market observations. Evidence-volume definitions can vary by geography and source.
• Suburb-profile rent coverage may use a separate market-profile series where public tenancy records are available only at postcode level. Its volume is treated as source-dependent rent evidence rather than universally as a new-bond count.
• Stock on Market uses publicly available active residential sale-listing observations. An address-derived dwelling-type proxy is preferred as the stock denominator; an estimated current-stock fallback may be used where the preferred proxy is unavailable or invalid.

Building approvals and land supply

• Publicly available official building-approvals data, customised and processed by Heatmaps. Data covers approvals through 2026 Q2.
• Urban release land polygons include NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, ACT and TAS public planning data sources where available.

Census, schools and crime

• Publicly available Census 2021 data, including tenure, landlord type, social housing and median household income tables.
• Crime indicators use publicly available state and territory crime statistics where qualifying coverage is available.