Today we tell you about a web site that will tell you everything you need to know about a property – anywhere in Australia. The site is called Microburbs and is the brainchild of Luke Metcalf who built it to help him find a property. Now you can use it - and its FREE.

Foreign ownership of Australian property has become an emotionally charged issue. But do so called ‘greedy foreign investors’ really push up property values? Michael Yardney shares his thoughts on that question.

Mark McCrindle tells us about the Urban Living Index and what it tells us about the property market of the future. We will tell you how you can get it it as well.

We check in with Margaret Lomas from Destiny Financial Solutions to hear what she thinks the property landscape will be like. She identifies one of the last capital city markets that will be the big improver this year.

Paul Nugent from Wakelin Property Advisory says we are in for some pleasant surprises with the market this year.

We are joined by Shaynna Blaze from Selling Houses Australia and The Block as we look at some of the design trends and how you can tap into those to get the best value for money.

We answer some questions and also find out that some of the lifestyle markets around Australia are in for a good time price wise and also that young people are making some big sacrifices to get into property.

 
Transcripts:
Luke Metcalf
Kevin:  So often we’re asked the question about research, “How do I go about finding the best property in the best marketplace? Is there one site that does it all?” Up until now there have been a number of sites you had to go through to get all the detailed information you need. I’ve been contacted about a site called Microburbs. Now, I’ll give you that detail again in just a moment, but the man behind the site is Luke Metcalf, and Luke joins me.

Hi, Luke.

Luke:  Hi, Kevin. How are you?

Kevin:  Well thanks, mate. Congratulations on what you’re doing here. Now, Microburbs: tell me how it came about and what can we expect to see?

Luke:  Sure. This came about because my wife and I were looking for a property and we spent countless Saturdays going from property to property, often only to find that if we’d just done more research online we would have been able to save on inspections and really get to know what’s out there. There’s enormous amount of government data that’s out there, but it’s in a lot of different places. There’s business data, as well.

So my vision was to create a site that puts all that data into a single place, into a single report. You put in any address in Australia and it gives you a free scorecard looking at all these different ways of looking at a property.

Kevin:  Of course, we’ve heard of sites like Walk Score and places like that. What you’ve actually done is combine a lot to look at things like lifestyle, tranquility, the family score, investor data, what’s happening in the community – in fact, the whole profile on the area that you’re looking at. Where did you get all this information from, Luke?

Luke:  On the Walk Score point, I would consider us Walk Score on steroids. Walk Score, they’re all about walkable places – particularly good for the inner city, but for general Australians, we generally drive a lot of places. We don’t mind if it’s ten minutes’ drive to the shops. I wanted to consider that along with family and other things.

To answer your question about where we get the data from, the biggest source is the OBS with their census data. They provide very fine-grained data that we use on the site. Also, a lot of it comes from Google. When people submit their properties to Google Places, we use that data, as well, and various other sources, as well.

Kevin:  It’s even as detailed as looking at what the Internet is like in different places, as well, and what applications have gone through local government for development in the area. It’s actually quite