r/AusPropertyMasteryPK

I’m sharing this as a genuine, paying client of PK’s property investment course and because I reckon the constant hate aimed at property professionals right now is misplaced while prices are tumbling in many markets.

I joined the course in late April and as I was going through the course, working on my strategy and finance approval, the federal budget had dropped. Instantly I was confused, unsure how I am going to move forward. PK was calm when everyone else was rattled and got onto it fast.. running a full budget breakdown and update on one of the mentoring calls in May, showing exactly how it changed the way we invest. It was good to know that the core strategy didn't really change and the existing content was still very relevant. That put me back on the right path and I was able to then move forward some tweaks to my strategy and ownership structure.

Since then the first module has been fully updated to bake in those budget changes. The strategy has been refined, the ownership structure guidance is now much clearer and there’s a new ownership structure strategy tool that made a genuinely complex part of the process simple. If anything the course works better now than when I joined and getting your structure right early has probably become even more important.

Then I went onto applying the data to pick suburbs. At first it felt like there is a lot of data but the suburb workbook breaks it into steps so you’re always moving forward instead of going back and forth. I was excited to see that even despite my low budget under $500k in 2026, there were still at least a dozen good suburbs to buy in, mostly regional NSW, VIC and Tasmania. Looking back all these areas have been performing quite well so no regrets of opportunity cost.

I ended up buying a property in June 2026 in regional NSW for $491k (after some negotiation), old home but fullyrenovated and it’s rented for $520/week now. The yield is quite strong, compared to where I was looking in regional VIC as well, mainly because of very tight vacancy and strong rental demand. Interestingly this was an off-market property that a previous investor was selling due to retirement and even till now I'm getting agents messaging me off-market properties. I am happy to see that the value is continually rising. In fact in July, the suburb rose $7k so I capitalised on that instantly. I'm expecting double digit growth in the next 6-12 months!

There are so many good opportunities out there under $500k. Right now I don't have the capacity to buy another one right away. Maybe later in the year or very early next year, by using some of the equity from this purchase.

I noticed that when people shared their deals on the mentoring call, some bought in places like Melbourne and despite what I hear in the media and the broader downturn of the Melbourne market.. like several examples where members bought townhouses in Melbourne and they're doing quite well, despite freestanding houses around Melbourne not doing too well. I'm thinking of doing something similar and buying another sub $500k property as soon as I can in a capital city to diversify because honestly I don't think I'll be able to afford to buy and sustain holding a $1m house in a capital city.

My $6k investment in the course has certainly been justified but not only because the property has grown by well over that much already.. but becasue of the 1:1 mentoring from PK. I ran a couple of properties past PK.. whilst the property lined good on paper he honestly told me not to proceed with it and showed me why. He pointed out things I overlooked and once he did it was obvious why it should’ve been ruled out. That kind of personalised vetting, plus lifetime access to the content, the calls and support is worth more than $6k fee on its own. I think if it wasn't for the 1:1 support then the success rate from the course could be lower or it requiring more time to implement confidently.

Previously I tried to use AI to help me pick the best suburbs and it was useless. It kept pushing locations that already had a significant amount of past growth. Even once I ran through it, giving it several suburbs, it talked in generalities without really having any understanding of identifying markets where there is an imbalance between demand and supply. Once you apply thresholds, look at specific trends and try to correlate certain data points, AI just can't do that because it doesn't know what contributes to short term/long term capital growth. On top of that it can’t vet a specific property the way PK does. For anyone learning and DIYing, that gap is the whole ballgame.

There's a lot of hate right now towards buyers agents, mortgage brokers, property professionals.. basically anyone involved in helping people buy investment properties. I get it.. there's a segment that just doesn't want housing to be an investment at all. But PK's one of the genuine, nuanced ones. He'll talk you out of a bad deal, which I've seen firsthand. He's earned good faith with the people he works with, and with an audience his size he was always going to cop flak regardless. That's why I bothered writing this.

I pulled every residential sale out of the NSW Valuer-General's settlement register and split it by price percentile instead of looking at a single median.

Q1 2025 vs Q1 2026. Same 253 suburbs, non-strata houses, minimum 20 sales per suburb per quarter. About 10,000 sales per side.

Percentile	Q1 2025	Q1 2026	Change
10th	$435,000	$485,000	+11.5%
25th	$640,000	$700,000	+9.4%
50th	$920,000	$1,000,000	+8.7%
75th	$1,330,000	$1,410,000	+6.0%
90th	$2,065,000	$2,075,000	+0.5%

The bottom of the NSW market rose more than twenty times faster than the top. A median on its own would have told you +8.7%.

The trend holds across every quarter, not just the two endpoints

Quarter	Sales	10th pct	Median	90th pct
2025 Q1	10,160	$435,000	$920,000	$2,065,000
2025 Q2	17,461	$450,000	$950,000	$2,113,500
2025 Q3	13,581	$464,000	$980,000	$2,169,000
2025 Q4	12,679	$475,000	$977,000	$2,155,000
2026 Q1	9,883	$485,000	$1,000,000	$2,075,000

The 10th percentile rises every single quarter. The 90th ends roughly where it started.

The data are up to the end of March 2026, so before the 12 May budget changes. So whatever is driving the cheap end was already running before the budget changes.

Is this just cheaper suburbs selling more often?

No. I also measured every suburb against its own 2025 median, then grouped by how expensive that locality was. This removes composition entirely, because each suburb is only ever compared to itself.

Suburbs grouped by 2025 median	Suburbs	Median change
Cheapest fifth ($215k to $640k)	51	+15.5%
($640k to $850k)	51	+11.4%
($850k to $1.06m)	51	+12.1%
($1.06m to $1.40m)	50	+9.3%
Most expensive fifth ($1.40m to $6.42m)	50	+5.2%

So, the typical suburb in the cheapest band saw its median price rise 15.5% over the year

Is this just the regional boom?

Partly, but no. Regional NSW did outgrow Sydney, 11.8% against 8.5%. But the same pattern holds inside each region on its own:

Region	Cheapest third	Middle third	Most expensive third
Greater Sydney	+12.1%	+9.0%	+5.0%
Rest of NSW	+15.5%	+11.5%	+10.4%

Cheap Sydney suburbs grew more than twice as fast as expensive Sydney suburbs. Being regional lifts growth across the board, but it doesn't explain why cheap suburbs beat expensive ones everywhere. Greater Sydney here is the ABS statistical boundary.

Source: NSW Valuer-General weekly sales files.

Contract date basis, not settlement date.

Non-strata sales only, as a proxy for houses.

Suburbs need 20 or more qualifying sales in both quarters, which leaves 253 of them.

A sale only appears in this data once it settles, which can take months.

So the most recent quarter is always missing some sales that haven't come through yet.

That would be fine if the missing ones were random. But they are not.

In Q1 2025, sales that took more than 150 days to settle had a median of $1.51m, against $1.05m for the quick ones.

Slow settlements are expensive settlements. So any recent quarter is missing a chunk of its most expensive sales, which makes its top end look weaker than it really is.

Left uncorrected, this looks like expensive homes falling in price. They were not falling pre budget. The sales just haven't been recorded yet.

To avoid it, I counted only sales that settled within 90 days of contract, in both quarters, so each one is equally complete. Here is what happens if you don't:

Settlement window	10th pct	90th pct
90 days	+11.5%	+0.5%
120 days	+11.1%	-0.8%
150 days	+9.9%	-2.6%

The bottom end figure barely moves across all three.

Happy to run any specific locality if you want to see it.

I’ve been seeing a lot of people say “once you hit 10 doors you can retire.” Some treat it like a hard rule, others say it’s way more complicated and depends on a bunch of factors.

From what I’ve gathered, it seems to come down to things like whether the properties still have mortgages or are mostly paid off, how strong the actual cash flow is after all the real-world expenses, the market you’re in, and how much income you personally need to live on. Self-managing versus hiring a property manager also seems to change the picture a lot for people.

I’m still trying to figure out what “enough” actually looks like in practice.

• How do you personally think about the number of doors needed for retirement or financial freedom?

• What’s been more important for you — nr of door count, cash flow quality, or getting properties paid off?

• Anyone already at a point where their rentals cover (or almost cover) their living expenses? What does that look like day-to-day, and how many doors got you there?

• Any big surprises or lessons that changed how you view the “10 doors” idea?