The Property Observer guide to ABS census data research for smart property investors

Census data contains a wealth of information for property investors but it can be difficult to burrow down through the Australian Bureau of Statistics website to find useful information.

It can provide in-depth data on the demographic makeup of a suburb but it can also show trends over time which can help identify possible hotspots.

First off, investors have to know that geographical boundaries changed in the 2011 census data, so they need to be careful when comparing previous census results to 2011 census results to make sure they’re the same.

The easiest way to start navigating census data is to go to the ABS QuickStats page. Most of our following tips start from there.

Who lives there?

If you’re looking at investing in a particular suburb it’s important to know who lives there, and ABS data makes it really simple to find if you know where to look.

If we want to see who’s living in the Melbourne suburb of Burnley just type Burnley into the QuickStats search and make sure you select the state suburb entry. The view here shows the basic results from the 2011 census and gives a good snapshot of the demographic make-up if you look under the People section.

The age section gives a good snapshot of whether you’re looking at a retiree village, a young family neighbourhood or a young professional zone. Compare the suburb ages to the state you’ll see if there’s more kids or more older people.

In Burnley you can see it’s heavily weighted towards young professionals with far fewer children and old people than the rest of Victoria and more than double the state average for 18 to 34 year olds.

If you look at the marriage tab you can see they’re mostly single and scrolling down to the education tab you can see they are far more likely to be university educated than the rest of the state which confirms their young professional status.

If you keep looking here you can check ancestry, income, occupation types and a host of other demographics.

All these help to decide whether you want to buy here and what sort of people you want to be targeting when buying property.

Identifying gentrification

Although census gives a great snapshot of income levels, it can also give a historical change so you can see if an area is undergoing an increase in earning power.

Waterloo was identified by Bernard Salt as being one of Australia’s top suburbs with increasing income, and using ABS stats we can confirm that for ourselves.

Go to the Waterloo QuickStats page and under the people tab we can see the various income measurements. In this case there is a median weekly household income of $905.

Compare that to the 2006 census results for Waterloo, accessed by selecting 2006 in the dropdown menu next to the QuickStats search box. The format is slightly different but we can see median weekly household income in 2006 was $557 –a 60% increase. It’s not quite as sophisticated as a full scientific survey but it gives a good indication of whether a suburb is earning more.

How good is public transport?

Looking at tram maps, bus networks and train stations can be quite deceptive in working out how good public transport in an area actually is. One easy way is to see how many people in a suburb actually use public transport to get to work.

Looking at Boronia this time, you want to find the basic community profile spreadsheet. It’s under the community profile button next to the search box. After extracting the zip file, open it up in excel and find the method of travel by sex section. Boronia looks to be reasonably well connected to public transport but you can see that around 70% of respondents drive to work with only around 5% taking the train.

How popular is renting

Looking at 2006 stats versus 2011 stats you can find which suburbs are more popular for renters. If we’re looking at Leederville in Perth you can see from the 2006 QuickStats page 36.3% of residents were renting, if you look under Tenure Type. Compare that to the 2011 page and you can see 43.1% of residents were renting, just look under the dwellings tab and then tenure. It’s not a quantum leap but it does help identify suburbs becomingly increasingly popular with renters.

There are a great deal more ways to harness ABS data to find investment hotspots, these are just some. The next step involves using the table builder function to compare hundreds of suburbs at once but it is a bit trickier.

The tips here can give a good insight into a suburb you may not know much about.