Why the next three years could be the best time to invest in property
Stable rates, tight supply and improving confidence are creating a rare three-year window for strategic property investment.
4 min
After the RBA failed to cut interest rates earlier this month, many Australians are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting for “the right time” to buy.
But as every experienced investor knows, there’s rarely a perfect moment. Only windows where fundamentals align.
The next three years look to be one of those windows. This period represents a great opportunity to step into the market strategically, supported by strong long-term tailwinds and a more stable lending environment.
Supply is tight and that’s not changing anytime soon
Australia’s housing shortage has become structural.
The government’s target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 is already slipping out of reach, with completions tracking closer to 160,000 per year.
Construction costs, planning bottlenecks, and labour shortages continue to restrict new supply, while population growth and immigration remain high.
Australian market snapshot
Perth (WA)
4,251 listings (week ending 1 Jun 2025)
2,832 listings (Oct 2025) ↓ 40 % YoY; sales ↓ 3.1 %; median days on market ≈ 12
Significant supply contraction
Despite small weekly lifts, total stock remains 40 % below 2024. Homes under the median are selling within days.
Brisbane (QLD)
Median value $945 k; monthly growth 1.5 %
Median value $992,864 (+1.8 % MoM, +10.8 % YoY); unit listings 45 % below 5-yr avg
Tight supply + rising prices
Affordable pockets < $1 m remain highly competitive. Demand concentrated around family suburbs.
Melbourne (VIC)
Listings below 5-yr avg; mild buyer hesitancy
Supply still below 5-yr avg; tight in inner east, north & inner west
Selective undersupply
Now Australia’s most affordable capital on income-to-debt ratio. Tight supply in established suburbs positions it for rebound.
Across Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne, in particular, demand continues to outstrip supply, a formula for steady, sustainable growth rather than speculation.
In Perth, listings have fallen roughly 40% year-on-year, and properties are turning over in just 12 days on average, the fastest market in the country.
For Brisbane, supply remains well below normal, particularly under $1 million, where investors and first-home buyers overlap.
And in Melbourne, affordability is now the best in the country, with tight supply in key inner corridors setting up for a cyclical recovery as rates stabilise.
Confidence is returning
After two years of turbulence, the rate environment has finally steadied. Most lenders now sit between 5.3% and 5.6%, roughly 1% lower than a year ago.
On an average $800,000 loan, that’s about $8,000 in annual savings, a meaningful improvement to serviceability and household cash flow.
While no one expects large cuts in the short term, the broader shift will breed confidence.
Borrowers who were cautious in 2023–24 are re-entering the market with renewed clarity around repayments and borrowing power.
This is an ideal time to re-engage clients who paused during the rate-rise cycle. With the right structuring, many can now step forward without over-stretching.
Demand, supply & location
In a market where many investors fixate on short-term yields, it’s critical to bring clients back to fundamentals.
The best opportunities over the next three years will be in locations with strong demand drivers, limited supply, and genuine affordability.
Strong demand drivers
Focus on markets backed by tangible fundamentals, infrastructure investment, job growth, and migration inflows. Areas with improving economies and active employment hubs consistently attract owner-occupiers, which supports long-term value.
Limited incoming supply + affordability
When affordability and low supply align, upward price pressure follows. Australia is currently building only around 160,000 new dwellings per year, well below the 240,000 needed to meet national targets. Markets with low construction pipelines and accessible entry prices are positioned for sustained growth.
Location and value-creation potential
Established, owner-occupied suburbs tend to outperform because they’re insulated from large-scale supply shocks.
Look for houses or properties with strong land content, ideally a 50 % or higher land-to-asset ratio and those that allow for renovations, granny-flat additions, or subdivisions over time.
While every market will move through its own cycle, the next three years should continue to deliver solid opportunities across Australia, particularly in locations where supply is tight, economies are strong, and demand is anchored by real fundamentals.
The market is resetting its risk profile
Macquarie Bank’s recent decision to halt lending to new property purchases in trust structures could also change parts of the investor market.
While it may slow activity in investment-heavy markets, it’s unlikely to affect demand in locations where most of the activity is driven by home buyers.
These areas are largely found within the major capital cities, and even in some of the smaller capitals with growing owner-occupier bases.
When assessing these markets, it’s important to look at the local economy, the industries that support employment, infrastructure investment, and migration.
Even indicators like Gross State Product (GSP) can provide valuable insight into the health of the local market and its resilience to policy changes.
This shift reinforces the importance of sticking to fundamentals such as strong economies, real demand, and sustainable affordability, not investor-driven locations.
Thinking long-term
The next three years won’t be about chasing quick gains.
They’ll be about steady, compounding growth driven by constrained supply, stable rates, and solid demand. Property wealth isn’t about speculation, it’s about structure, patience, and the discipline of buying the right asset and holding it through cycles.
If you’re considering entering the market, now is the time to act. Stable rates, limited supply, and improving affordability create a strong foundation for the next property cycle.
Abdullah Nouh is the Founder and Director of Mecca Property Group, one of Australia’s leading buyers’ agencies specialising in high-growth residential and commercial investments.
For Central Element, the start of work at Pearl represents another step in the company’s growing eastern suburbs pipeline.
All three vehicles will form part of a broader charitable initiative benefiting Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the American Red Cross and Starlight Children’s Foundation
Jack Freeman believes the most compelling interiors are not decorated, but collected. The FREEMAN & CO founder creates layered, personal spaces shaped by art, travel and craftsmanship.
4 min
For Jack Freeman, a compelling interior should not look as though it was completed in a single shopping trip.
The founder and designer behind FREEMAN & CO prefers rooms that develop through art, travel, commissioned furniture and objects collected over time. It is an approach that treats the home less as a decorative project and more as an evolving portrait of its owner.
“I am a true believer in collecting versus decorating,” Freeman says.
That distinction underpins the international practice he has built across private residences, hotels, property developments, yachts and private aviation. Its projects stretch from Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay and Toorak to Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean.
Although the locations and architecture vary considerably, the work is connected by a restrained design language. Natural stone, warm timbers and sculptural furniture establish the foundation, while art, bespoke lighting and individual objects give each interior its identity.
The objective is not to overwhelm a room with obvious symbols of expense. It is to create an environment that feels calm, layered and particular to the people living within it.
“The greatest luxury isn’t about excess,” Freeman says. “It’s about creating an oasis where you come home and feel immediately grounded — effortlessly chic and deeply personal.”
Collecting instead of decorating
Decorating can imply the completion of a room: selecting the required furniture, filling the available walls and producing a coherent finished image.
Collecting is less conclusive.
A collected interior has room to change as its owners travel, discover artists, inherit pieces or reassess how they use their home. Its character comes from the relationship between objects rather than adherence to a single brand or season.
That does not mean placing unrelated pieces together without discipline. The designer must understand scale, proportion, material and provenance well enough to create a dialogue between them.
A contemporary artwork might sit beside a historic piece of furniture. A precisely detailed new interior may be interrupted by an irregular object made by hand. Smooth stone can be balanced by timber, textiles or a patinated metal surface that becomes richer with age.
The tension between those elements is part of the appeal.
For Freeman, art is not an accessory to be added once the furniture plan is complete. It forms part of the architecture and atmosphere of the room from the beginning.
Lighting is considered in the same way. Beyond its practical purpose, a bespoke fitting can operate as a suspended sculpture, changing both the room’s composition and the way its materials are experienced after dark.
A design perspective shaped by travel
International travel plays a significant role in Freeman’s creative process.
Design fairs such as PAD Paris and Salone del Mobile in Milan provide opportunities to encounter emerging designers, established galleries, new materials and collectible furniture away from the filter of social media.
More spontaneous discoveries can prove equally important.
“Sometimes it’s the simple things,” Freeman says. “That piece found on a shopping trip with a client in Paris, stumbling across an artisan’s workshop, or a special memory that forms the narrative of the story.”
Objects selected during travel bring more than visual interest into a home. They carry an association with a place, maker or experience, giving the client a connection that cannot be reproduced by ordering an entire interior from a catalogue.
Freeman’s influences are international, but his projects are not conceived as replicas of Parisian, Milanese or Californian style. Each commission responds to its architecture, setting, natural light and the daily lives of its occupants.
A waterfront Sydney residence demands a different treatment from a Mayfair townhouse. A Caribbean estate shaped by brutalist architecture and reflecting pools calls for another response again.
The designer’s role is to absorb those references without allowing them to overwhelm the individual qualities of the property.
Designing the complete experience
FREEMAN & CO extends beyond conventional interior decoration.
The practice’s stated services include interior design and architecture, project management, property acquisition, development advice, concept design, documentation, furniture and lighting design, procurement and art curation.
That breadth allows the team to become involved before a room’s dimensions and finishes are fixed.
Early participation can be important at the top end of the residential market, where architecture, landscape, interiors, technology and art must operate as one environment. Decisions about ceiling heights, wall dimensions, sightlines and lighting can directly affect where art is installed or how custom furniture is proportioned.
The practice can then carry those decisions through to procurement and final installation, maintaining the design narrative as a project moves between architects, builders, specialist craftspeople, dealers and suppliers.
Its residential portfolio includes a South Coast retreat conceived as an escape from urban life, a Caribbean estate with reflecting pools, an East Coast-inspired Palm Beach residence and a Mayfair townhouse organised around an expressive drawing room.
The studio also says it has worked on highly tailored Sydney residences with values exceeding $100 million, although the private nature of such commissions means individual addresses and clients are not always disclosed.
A home that can keep changing
The risk in creating a perfectly resolved interior is that it can become too static — a composition that looks exceptional in photographs but leaves little room for life.
Freeman sees the home as something that should evolve with its owners.
“I love the evolution of design,” he says. “We are talking about people’s lives, and as they evolve, so too should their private sanctuaries.”
That evolution might involve adding art, reupholstering a significant piece, adapting rooms as a family changes or making space for objects gathered through future travels.
The original design needs to be strong enough to accommodate those layers.
This may be the clearest expression of Freeman’s approach to luxury. It is not simply access to rare stone, collectible furniture or commissioned craftsmanship. It is the creation of a personal environment whose meaning deepens rather than diminishes with time.
Fact box
- Designer: Jack Freeman
- Role: Founder and managing director
- Practice: FREEMAN & CO
- Base: Australia, with international projects
- Project locations named by the practice: Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay, Toorak, Palm Beach, the NSW South Coast, Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean
- Sectors: Private residences, hotels, residential developments, private aviation and superyachts
- Services: Interior design and architecture, property development, project management, property acquisition, documentation, furniture and lighting design, FF&E procurement, interior dressing and art curation
- Design philosophy: Collected, personal interiors shaped by art, craftsmanship, travel and enduring materials
- Website: free-man.co
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