Anthony Landahl

As you touched on, the regional markets have outperformed capital cities.

Regional dwelling values up about 3.2% to January 26th.

The capital's 2.1%.

And as I said, mainly affordability, internal migration, people moving out from the capital cities, creating more competition in the regionals, which is driving up prices.

A couple of the stronger performing areas, for example, in New South Wales, Wagga's grown 8.1% in the three months to January.

Western Australia region, 6.1%.

So some really, really strong growth in those regional markets.

A lot.

First home buyer activity is at its highest level since March 2022.

It's increased close to 7% in the September to December quarter of 2025.

We saw the first home loan deposit scheme, the eligibility criteria change in October 2025 with the removal of the income caps and the increased property price caps and the help to buy scheme came out in late 25.

So there's an absolute correlation with those programs and the increase in first home buyer activity.

The other thing we're seeing is demand in those areas underneath those property price caps is absolutely surging.

We've seen growth in the lower quartile suburbs, if you like, of 11% compared to in the upper quartile suburbs of 6.7%.

And that directly relates to where first home buyers are trying to get into the market, creating increased demand, creating increase in housing values.

Yeah, the Labor government's been circling around this for a number of years.

In fact, it could be argued they lost the 2019 election based on some of their proposed changes to capital gains tax and at that time negative gearing.

They're now just talking about capital gains tax.

You

might look at it one way and think that it's all about a revenue grab as much as actually solving housing.