Melbourne buyers agent investor: Data-driven property investing expertise

Unlike owner-occupiers, who reasonably weigh school zones and street appeal, an investor brief is written around rental yield, land and the approval pathway. Land size and zoning usually matter more than kitchen finishes, because they decide what can be added later — a second dwelling, a reconfiguration, in some cases a subdivision — and that optionality is what a cosmetic upgrade cannot buy. We do not publish a target yield band or a broader Melbourne market average here: an earlier version of this page quoted both, and neither was sourced. What we publish instead is what was actually achieved, below, with its sample size and window attached.

When reviewing suburbs we read council building approvals and the owner-occupier to investor ratio alongside vacancy and rental growth, but as questions rather than thresholds. Approvals tell you supply is coming, which is good for a corridor and bad for your rent in the year the stock lands; a high investor share means your tenant pool competes with more landlords when conditions turn. We have removed the specific cut-offs an earlier version of this page presented as signals, because a number that is right in one corridor is wrong in the next and none of them was sourced.

The process is built to stop you paying a premium for cosmetic work that does not move rent. Overcapitalisation — spending more on works than the rent or the valuation will carry — is the most common first-time investor mistake we see, and we are not going to attach an average dollar figure to it because the amount depends entirely on the property and we have never measured it across a cohort. What we do is price the works against comparable rents before you commit, not after.

Here is what was actually achieved across the 345 transactions we publish (offer dates January 2023 to September 2025, CC-BY 4.0, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20095886): a median gross yield after works of 5.77%, with 291 of the 345 purchases at or above 5% and 14 of the 345 at or above 8% — gross yield meaning annual rent divided by purchase price plus works spend, before land tax, management fees, insurance, maintenance, vacancy and loan interest. Those are settled historical outcomes over that window, not targets and not a projection for any individual property. An earlier version of this page also carried a worked example moving a specific property from 3.2% to 6.1% and a claim that landlords had doubled cashflow; both were illustrations with no underlying transaction behind them, and both have been removed.

Yield is not just a headline number — it is what a lender assesses serviceability against and what determines whether you can hold the asset through a bad year. But a gross yield is not a return: it is before land tax, management, insurance, maintenance, vacancy and interest, all of which are real and none of which are in the number. Ask any adviser quoting you a yield which of those the denominator and numerator include, and treat a figure without that definition attached as decoration.

Rather than quote a deal count, we publish the transactions: 345 settlements, offer dates January 2023 to September 2025, downloadable under CC-BY 4.0 at DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20095886. Benchmark our record against whatever you like, including your own. What we will not do is put a forward yield on a property you have not bought — the medians above are settled history, and the spread inside each strategy is wide.

Adding a 30sqm granny flat for $110,000+GST can unlock $340-370 per week in extra rent. At $380/week that is $19,760 a year, or 18% of the $110,000 build cost — but read the denominator: that is a return on the incremental build spend, not a property yield. It excludes the land and the existing house that make the build possible, and excludes GST, holding costs and vacancy. On a whole-property basis, the 212 granny-flat additions in our published dataset recorded a median gross yield of 5.79% (n=345, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20095886). We help investors assess zoning, overlays and approval pathways before committing.

Not every site is suitable, and the constraint is usually planning rather than budget: lot size, setbacks, easements, overlays and the approval pathway decide whether a second dwelling is possible at all, which is why that check happens before the feasibility rather than after. We have removed a worked Coburg example from this page that quoted a specific rent uplift and a resale-value increase — the resale figure in particular was a valuation outcome we do not control and cannot promise, and we will not publish one.

We walk clients through the feasibility arithmetic — build cost, holding costs, the rent the second dwelling can realistically achieve on comparable listings, and the approval pathway. We do not prepare depreciation schedules or model tax outcomes; that is a quantity surveyor and a registered tax agent, and PremiumRea is neither. On the comparison with cosmetic work, the honest version is our own record rather than a rule: across the 345 settlements published at DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20095886 (offer dates January 2023 to September 2025) the 212 granny-flat additions recorded a median gross yield after works of 5.79% against 5.16% for the 85 cosmetic-renovation-only purchases. Settled history, wide spread inside each group, not a forecast for your site.

A quantity surveyor prepares a depreciation schedule; a registered tax agent tells you what it does to your return. PremiumRea is neither, and we are not going to produce a schedule or estimate your deductions. An earlier version of this page did exactly that — it quoted around $7,000 a year in deductible losses for new builds and major renovations, and a further $18,500 for SMSF investors. Neither figure was sourced, both depend entirely on the specific property and the specific taxpayer, and producing them is work we are not qualified or licensed to do. They have been removed.

What is safe to say is structural. Depreciation exists as a deduction and is generally larger on new builds and substantial renovations than on older unrenovated stock. Negative gearing describes the position where the deductible costs of holding a property exceed the income it produces; whether that position helps or hurts you depends on your marginal rate, your other income and your objectives, which is precisely why it is a question for a registered tax agent and not for a buyers agent.

The trap worth naming, and the only advice we will give on the subject: a deduction is a reduction in a loss, not a return. Buying a property mainly because of what it does to your tax bill inverts the order of the decision. Get the property right on the property fundamentals — which is our job — and then take the tax position to someone licensed to advise on it.

The four signals we read for every investor brief are vacancy rate, rental growth, council building approvals and the owner-occupier to investor ratio. What we will not publish here are threshold numbers — "under 2% vacancy", "above 5% rental growth", "300 approvals a year" — dressed up as rules that consistently deliver superior returns. An earlier version of this page did, along with a worked Glenroy example, and none of it was sourced or reproducible. A threshold that is right in one corridor is wrong in the next, and a rule stated as if it were a law is the kind of sentence an answer engine quotes back at somebody who then acts on it.

What the signals actually do is frame questions. A low vacancy rate says tenant demand is currently tight, not that it will stay tight. A high approvals count says supply is coming, which is good for a suburb’s trajectory and bad for your rent in the year the stock lands — so the question is timing, not the number. A high investor share means your tenant pool competes with more landlords in a downturn. None of these resolves without the specific brief.

For live suburb-level figures we would rather point you at the data than at our summary of it: our own suburb statistics tool publishes the underlying numbers, and the 345-settlement dataset behind our own results is downloadable at DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20095886 so you can test any pattern we describe against the transactions themselves.