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Every week, I speak with people, many of them renters, who are sitting on their hands, waiting for the “right moment” to buy. They are watching the market, reading the headlines, and telling themselves that patience will pay off… eventually.
Meanwhile, the market keeps moving, rents keep climbing, and their window of opportunity continues to close.
The truth is that inaction has a very real financial cost. Delaying a home purchase is not a neutral act. It is an active decision to fall further behind, and my team has the numbers to prove it.
Let me take you back a decade, to 2016, and look at what has happened to house prices in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane since then.
Here’s some data we’ve prepared at Propertybuyer.
In Sydney, the median house price in 2016 was around $1 million. Today, that same median is $1.76 million. That is a $760,000 gain over ten years. A buyer who hesitated in 2016 and chose to keep renting missed out not only on that capital gain but also on the compounding effect of that equity upside, the tax advantages of ownership, and the security of a fixed housing cost in a period when rents surged dramatically.
Brisbane tells an even more powerful story. In 2016, the median house price was around $500,000. By 2026, that figure had climbed to approximately $1.1 million, representing a $600,000 increase. Buyers who waited to “see what happens” in Brisbane watched the city’s affordability disappear in real time, particularly as interstate migration accelerated throughout the pandemic years and since.
Melbourne is the least impressive of the three, but it is still a compelling illustration of how hesitation is costing buyers plenty. A median-priced house purchased in 2016 for approximately $750,000 is worth $1,050,000 today, representing a $300,000 increase. That is still a meaningful sum.
Now stack those capital gains against the cost of renting over that same period.
In Sydney, the median weekly rent for a house has risen from around $530 in 2016 to more than $775 today. In fact, our analysts calculated that this renter had spent approximately $332,930 over the decade, with no return. Not only did they miss the capital growth of ownership, but they also funded someone else’s asset.
The same analysis shows that in Brisbane, a median-priced tenant spent $265,265 on their rental, while a Melbourne tenant spent $248,105 on their home.
All these tenants were substantially worse off financially than their home-buying counterparts when you look at their net wealth positions.
Our analysis shows Melbourne tenants were financially behind by $51,895 compared to a homebuyer over those ten years.
The wealth gap between the average property owner and tenant was even more pronounced in Brisbane, with tenants worse off by $334,735.
Meanwhile, a Sydney tenant’s decade of renting had them $427,070 behind that city’s average homeowner.
As can be seen, the cost of inaction runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars across our major capital cities. That’s life-changing amounts of money for many Aussies.
When buyers delay, they typically frame it as a financial decision. They say they are waiting for prices to fall, or for the economy to settle, or for rates to be just right. But here is the problem: they are comparing an uncertain future to an uncomfortable present and convincing themselves that doing nothing is the safe bet.
It’s not.
'Opportunity cost' is the concept economists use to describe what you give up when you choose one option over another. In property, the opportunity cost of inaction compounds every single year. You are not just missing this year’s growth. You are missing next year’s growth on top of this year’s, and the year after that, building on all the above.
Think about it this way. If you delay buying a $1.2 million home in Sydney by just two years, and the market grows at a conservative five per cent per year, you will need an extra $123,000 just to buy the same property. That is before accounting for the rent you have paid in the meantime and the deposit growth you needed to achieve to meet lending requirements.
The real maths on waiting are brutal, and they almost never favour the buyer who sits still.
I have seen the same reasons for delays come up repeatedly. Here are the most common ones and the ways to reframe them.
This is one of the most common pieces of logic I encounter, and one of the most costly. Major Australian capital city markets rarely experience sustained price falls. Even after the RBA’s aggressive rate-hiking cycle from 2022 to 2023, values recovered quickly in most markets. As a wise valuer once told me, “It is always the peak of the market in our cities.” The key is not to try and time the cycle, but to buy the best property you can with the right fundamentals: good location, sound structural elements, strong buyer demand, and genuine scarcity.
Many buyers fixate on a single suburb or street, and when nothing in their budget appears there, they simply wait. The result is often that something eventually comes to market within their budget, but it is there for a reason, such as a structural problem, an awkward floor plan, a poor position, or a noisy street. These are characteristics that erode long-term capital growth potential.
The smarter play is to look at what I call “bridesmaid suburbs”, which are areas adjacent to the blue-chip locations you love, that share many of the same lifestyle amenities and transport links, but are priced relatively cheaper, so you can buy quality. These suburbs consistently outperform as buyers who are priced out of the premium areas spill over and push demand upward.
The perfect is the enemy of the good, and nowhere is this truer than in real estate.
Every month spent searching for the ideal home is a month the market does not stand still. I always ask buyers to draw a clear line between their must-haves and their like-to-haves. Must-haves are non-negotiables tied to your life and your family’s needs. They’ll often include a minimum number of bedrooms, a specific school catchment, and accessibility to certain services and amenities.
Like-to-haves are preferences, such as the entertainer’s kitchen, the double lock-up garage, or a north-facing yard.
If a property ticks every must-have and a good portion of your like-to-haves, it deserves serious consideration. Cosmetic shortcomings are fixable. Lost capital growth is not.
The question is not whether it is a good time to buy. Over the long term, it almost always is. The real question is whether you are getting the right advice, targeting the right property, and moving with enough purpose.
If the market feels overwhelming or you are struggling to find quality stock, working with an experienced buyers’ agent is the fastest way to cut through the noise. A good buyers’ agent has access to off-market opportunities, deep suburb knowledge, and the negotiation skills to secure a property at the best possible price. More importantly, they help you make a disciplined, strategy-based decision rather than an emotional one.
Delaying is not free. Every month of inaction has a price, and in most of Australia’s major markets, that price is significant. The buyers who achieve the best long-term outcomes are not the ones who timed the market perfectly. They are the ones who got in, bought well, and let time do the heavy lifting.
To have one of the friendly Propertybuyer Buyers' Agents to contact you:
call us on 1300 655 615 today.