To assess where a greenfield land market is in the cycle, we examine drivers across three main themes:

• Supply and demand fundamentals
• Market sentiment
• Pricing dynamics

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For each market the methodology assigns multiple scores of each of the above theme’s sub-indicators, based on the latest reading relative to the longer-term trend level.

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Weightings are then applied to sub-indicators and main themes to produce an index reading for the current status of each vacant land market.

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This approach normalises results for comparison across markets, allowing us to systematically assess performance and rank markets across the country.

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To produce a forecast of future conditions in each market (the Market Outlook), the model combines:

• the assessment of the current status of each market as per the current Index reading
• projections and forecasts of key drivers that are historically highly correlated to land markets (such as established market pricing, population growth, interest rates, land supply, etc.)
• historical analysis of vacant land cycles in terms of length, depth, frequency and land market correlations.

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The model then produces an outlook, both for where we see the index for each market in the future as well as the specific implications for price and volume changes.

The strength of the current cycle has been driven by strong Net Interstate Migration and strong investor activity due to strong relative affordability and rental yields.

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Like most capitals, supply has also been an issue, with new land releases not keeping up with underlying demand.

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Investor activity is likely to ease when capital and rental growth slows, shift focus back towards Eastern markets, especially Melbourne.

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As recent strong price growth has eroded some of Perth’s affordability advantage, we expect some easing of sales volumes in what has been the strongest market in the country for the last few years, followed by some easing of price growth later in 2026.