Ballarat vs Bendigo - With Junge Ma

Ballarat versus Bendigo. You've got 650k to invest and have your eyes set on regional Victoria. Similar size towns, similar market sentiment, but one of them, in my opinion, is a superior choice right now. In this episode, I'm going to help you understand not only which city 650 would be better invested, but also why. I'm unpacking inventory levels, days on market, vacancy rates, and loads more indicators that you need to understand as a growth-focused investor.

I'm Junge Ma, lead research analyst at InvestorKit. Let's get into it. Both Ballarat and Bendigo's median house prices are now below 600,000. Ballarat, it's 525,000, while Bendigo is 565,000. So for a 650,000 budget, these cities are not a problem.

But if you have to choose one between them, there is a better choice. Now we're going to compare them in four aspects, local economy, sales market, rental market, and growth potential. Now local economy. Ballarat's unemployment now is 4. 1%.

It's not only healthy, but it's way lower than where it was 10 years ago. And then Bendigo's unemployment rate now is 4%, similar to Ballarat. It has been going down over the past decade. So overall, both local economies are actually very healthy. So in this sense, I would say they're similar.

So now we have score one for Ballarat and score one for Bendigo. Now let's move on to the sales market. Market pressure in Bendigo is actually higher than in Ballarat. How do we tell that? First, inventory.

In Ballarat, the current inventory is 4. 8 months of stock. It's been decreasing. Last year, the number was 6. 7 months of stock.

Very high. So Ballarat's market pressure is indeed increasing. But Bendigo's market pressure is recovering faster. Now its inventory level is 4. 4 months of stock, down from 5 last year.

Then the higher market pressure can be seen in days on market as well. In both of these cities, days on market has been quite steady over the past year. Bendigo's days on market is now 41 days, while in Ballarat, it is still 58 days. As a result of the higher market pressure, Bendigo's growth in the past one year has been better than Ballarat's. If we only look at the 12-month rolling median trend, Bendigo's house price increased by 1.

3%. If we look at the 12-month rolling median price trend of Ballarat, it actually declined by 4. 5% over the past year. There has been signs of recovery, because if we look at the 3-month rolling median, which is more sensitive to time, in the past 6 months, or half a year, Ballarat actually achieved a 3. 8% growth.

Now Bendigo, 12-month rolling median increased by 1. 3% over the past year, and the recent recovery has been stronger than Ballarat. The 3-month rolling median trend increased by 6. 1% over the past half a year. So in terms of sales market pressure and performance, Ballarat gets 0 here, while Bendigo gets 1.

So far, we've got 1 to 2. And now let's move on to the rental market performance. First, rental market pressure. Ballarat's vacancy rate is now 1%. It was increasing last year, but now it has just started to decline.

At the same time, Bendigo's vacancy rate sits at 0. 9%, and it has been declining over the past year, now 14% lower than the same time last year. So we can definitely tell Bendigo's market pressure is higher than Ballarat's. As a result, Ballarat's rental growth over the past year was 1. 2%, much lower than Bendigo's 9% growth.

Then how about rental return? Yield in Ballarat is now 4. 3%, improving from 4% from last year. So it's been doing well. Then how about Bendigo?

Yield here is 4. 7%, improving from 4. 4% from last year. So in terms of rental return, Bendigo also wins. So Ballarat's market pressure is lower than Bendigo's, rental growth and rental return are both lower than Bendigo's.

As a result, for rental market performance, we would score Ballarat a 0 and Bendigo a 1 again. Now we've got 1 to 3. Last, growth potential. In this category, let's look at incoming supply, which can both affect a city's medium-term growth. So incoming supply.

Ballarat's new house building approval rate now is 2%, actually much lower than its last 10-year average. We all know that in the past 10 years, Ballarat has seen a lot of new house development, and that was actually one of the reasons why inventory in the past few years surged so high. And at the same time, Bendigo's building approval rate is now 1. 8%, slightly lower than Ballarat's. But to be honest, they're both quite balanced.

And now, last 10-year growth. Ballarat's annualized growth over the past 10 years was 6% per year, very much in line with the long-term average of 5 to 7%, quite healthy. But Bendigo is slightly lower, 5. 5% per year, which means given right market pressure, Bendigo's medium-term growth could be slightly better than Ballarat's. Therefore, in terms of growth potential, we would give Ballarat a 0 again and Bendigo a 1, although this one is just slight.

Now the final score for Ballarat is a 1, while the final score for Bendigo is 4. So data is showing that Bendigo is winning now as of 2025. So am I saying that Ballarat is a bad place to buy? Not at all. What I'm saying is right now the data for Bendigo is superior to Ballarat.

The thing you need to remember about property investing, this isn't my opinion, this isn't what I think. This is what the data is clearly telling us right now. And as growth-focused investors, we want to follow the source of truth, which for us is the data. Love to hear your thoughts on this one. I'm Junge Ma, the lead research analyst at InvestorKit, and I'll see you next time.