I buy where the data points. Not where I live.
Paid by you. Never by a seller, a developer or a broker.
The goal is an asset that compounds for twenty years, not a property that feels right this weekend. The Alpha Screen is how I tell them apart: six metrics, fixed thresholds, every market in the country, every quarter.
I find investment properties for people who do not have time to do it themselves. I look at data for the whole country rather than the suburb you happen to live near, I charge one fixed fee, and I take nothing from the seller. New to this? Start with Am I ready? — four questions, ten seconds, no email.
Where are you starting from?
You don't have a property problem. You have a filtering problem.
There are roughly fifteen thousand suburbs in this country and perhaps forty are worth your money this year. The hard part was never finding a property. It's ruling out the other fourteen thousand nine hundred and sixty.
No time to screen
Proper market screening is weeks of work before you look at a single listing. Most people start at the listing instead, and work backwards to justify it.
Everyone is selling you something
Off-the-plan stock, house-and-land packages, hotspot reports written by people paid by the developer. The advice is free because you are the product.
One wrong buy costs years
A property that moves sideways for a decade doesn't just underperform. It locks up the equity you needed for the next one, and the one after that.
The difference between a market that clears the screen and one that doesn't isn't a bad year — it's a decade of compounding you don't get back. This is the entire argument for filtering before buying.
Illustrative only, not a forecast. Assumes $700,000 at purchase held ten years, growing at 7.0% and 1.5% a year — roughly the spread between Australia's strongest and weakest capital city market over a single decade. Capital growth only: rent, costs and leverage are excluded.
Three filters, in order. Nothing skips a step.
Named, written down and published, so you can check my work rather than take my word for it. It runs the same way every quarter whether or not I like the answer.
Ninety-eight per cent of the country is gone before a single property is looked at. Filter 03 · Price is not in this funnel because it applies to the one property you are about to buy, not to the suburbs. Shortlist figure from the August mid-band brief; the two intermediate counts are illustrative.
Rule out ninety-five per cent before looking at a single property.
How the market filter worksHide how it works
Supply and demand across every region in the country, run quarterly on six metrics with fixed thresholds. Almost no market clears all six at once — there is always a compromise. The screen is how I know precisely which compromise I'd be asking you to buy, and when it isn't one worth making.
Established stock only. Nothing a developer is trying to move.
How the asset filter worksHide how it works
Screened on land content, scarcity, rental demand and the structural things that make a property hard to replace. If somebody is paying a referral fee to put a buyer in front of it, it isn't an investment.
A walk-away number, set before the negotiation starts.
How the price filter worksHide how it works
Built from rather than the asking price, and written down before anyone gets attached. The discipline isn't in the negotiating. It's in having decided beforehand.
Twelve markets produced candidates. One produced a third of them.
All three August briefs, rolled up to the market level. Tap a marker for the medians. Market level only — the named suburbs go to clients.
Biggest producer by volume, but the widest vacancy spread of any market here.
Every number on this site comes from one dated source and is stated once. Three of the ten largest agencies in the country publish figures that contradict their own other pages — worth not joining them.
Five stages. Almost everyone is stuck in one of the first two.
Investing isn't one job, it's five, and each one asks something different of you. Knowing which stage you're actually in changes what you should buy next — and whether you should be buying at all.
Base. From nothing to something.
The hardest property you will ever buy is the first one. Borrowing capacity confirmed in writing, ownership structure set before you sign anything, and one asset in a market that actually clears the screen. Everything after this stage is easier — and everything after this stage depends on getting this one right.
Leverage. Each asset buys the next.
Equity from the first purchase becomes the deposit for the second, and the second funds the third. This is the fastest-moving stage and the one where most portfolios go wrong, because the temptation is to buy something rather than the right thing. The screen matters more here than anywhere else in the climb.
Hold. Stop buying. Let it compound.
Rents rise, debt stays flat, and time does the compounding you cannot manufacture. There is almost nothing to do in this stage except hold your nerve and keep the properties tenanted — which is precisely why so many investors underperform in it. The ones who do best are the ones who can sit still.
Consolidate. Sell the dead weight. Cut the debt.
Not every purchase earns its place, and pretending otherwise is expensive. This is where you prune what didn't perform, put the proceeds against debt on what did, and turn a leveraged portfolio into a lower-risk one. Done properly, your net worth barely moves and your risk halves.
Convert. The portfolio starts paying you.
Net rent exceeds what the portfolio costs to hold, and the income stops being theoretical. The job becomes optional. This is the entire point of the four stages before it, and almost nobody in this industry talks about it — because it takes twenty years to reach and there is nothing to sell you along the way.
Most people who book a call are in stage one or two. Establishing which, in the first two minutes, changes the entire conversation.
Not sure you are ready yet?
Four questions, ten seconds, no email required. Most enquiries are not ready, and finding that out on a call wastes both our afternoons. This tells you where you stand — and what to do about it if the answer is not yet.
Three ways to buy. They are not equivalent.
There is a perfectly good case for doing this yourself. There is no good case for letting the seller's agent do it for you, and it happens constantly.
| Alpha SquaredBuyer's agent | Doing it yourselfPortals and weekends | The selling agentSeller's representative | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who pays them | You do. A fixed fee, agreed before any work starts. | Nobody — but the hours are yours. | The seller. Their commission rises with the price you pay. |
| Whose side of the table | Yours, and only yours. No commissions, kickbacks or referral fees from developers, brokers or agents. | Yours, with none of the leverage. | The seller's. That is the job they are contracted to do. |
| How wide the search goes | Every suburb in the country, screened on the same metrics. No patch to protect. | Whatever you have time to research — usually somewhere you already know. | The listings on their own book. |
| How the shortlist is chosen | A published data screen run quarterly. Thresholds fixed before the answer is known. | Portal filters, hotspot lists and forum threads. | What they have available this week. |
| Developer and off-the-plan stock | Never. If somebody pays a referral fee to put a buyer in front of it, it is not an investment. | Hard to identify without knowing who is paid what. | Often the highest-margin thing on the shelf. |
| Price discipline | A walk-away number set from settled comparables and written down before the negotiation starts. | Decided in the moment, usually while emotionally committed. | They set the guide. You find out later what it meant. |
| What gets published | The method, the thresholds, the markets, and the deals walked away from. | Nothing to publish. | A sold price, after the fact. |
No guarantee of a return appears in this table, and none will. Nobody can promise a property outcome, and a firm that does is telling you something about itself.
Who this isn't for
I take a small number of clients a year. It's worth being direct about who I turn away.
- ✕Anyone who hasn't spoken to a broker. Get your borrowing capacity confirmed first — then we'll talk.
- ✕Buyers who want a particular suburb because they know it. That's the bias the whole method exists to remove.
- ✕Anyone after off-the-plan or house-and-land. I don't buy it and I won't help you buy it.
- ✕Anyone who needs the cheapest fee. I'm not it, and cheapest rarely is.
A fixed fee, agreed before any work begins.
$11,000, fixed, whatever the property costs. It does not move with the purchase price, which means I have no reason to push you higher. Confirmed on the call once I know the brief, and it has not changed for anyone.
No commissions. No kickbacks. No referral fees from developers, brokers or agents. I'm paid by you and only by you — which is the whole reason I'm able to tell you not to buy something.
Deliberately low. Most agencies set a minimum high enough to protect their own fee economics, and quietly turn away anyone the screen would otherwise serve well. The August entry-band brief returned seven suburbs at a median gross yield of 4.74% — the best of the three bands run that day. Fewer doors, better numbers. Below $300,000 a fixed fee starts to eat too much of the return to be worth either of our time. Above it, let's talk.