Alaya Property is an Australia-wide buyers agency that has been actively buying in Melbourne through this recovery - not talking about it after it happened. We called the turn on camera before the mainstream commentary caught up, then transacted for clients through the corridors we'd flagged. The process, the data, the results and the fees are all published below.
Melbourne spent 2023 and most of 2024 as the market everyone in property media wanted to write off. The headlines were uniformly bearish - falling prices, weakening rents, an oversupply thesis that had already been wrong for three years. Underneath, the data was moving. Vacancy tightened materially through the second half of 2024. Total listings ran down against the prior year and didn't rebound. Population growth flipped positive again as interstate migration reversed and international arrivals resumed. The apartment supply pipeline collapsed - developer feasibility broken by construction costs and interest rates, with new completions running at a fraction of the 2016-2019 peak. The corridors most exposed to owner-occupier affordability - the north and west, and the established inner-ring apartment stock - were the first to show the shift in the numbers.
We recorded the call publicly - on the Alaya podcast - while the sentiment was still catching up. The episodes are still online, dated, and unedited:
The upload dates on these episodes do the talking - we said it before the market moved, and the timestamps are public.
Recorded when Melbourne's headlines were uniformly bearish. We walked through the data that had shifted underneath the sentiment - vacancy tightening, listings running down, migration back to positive - and explained why the corridors in the north and west were the ones we were buying into for clients, at prices the market wouldn't offer six months later.
The upload dates on these episodes do the talking - we said it before the market moved, and the timestamps are public.
The supply collapse, the vacancy squeeze, and where the opportunity sits specifically - established, well-located, low-rise stock rather than off-the-plan towers - screened against Alaya's 6-point apartment scorecard.
Since October 2025, Alaya has secured 101 investment properties across 53 suburbs in 4 states. Melbourne has been a meaningful share of that total this cycle - specific case studies with the dated numbers, prices, yields and first-year growth figures are published on the results page. Across the full book, 76 per cent of houses were bought below market value and average first-year growth on settled houses is about 16 per cent. Melbourne-specific breakdowns and named suburbs sit on the results page rather than being restated here - the reason is simple: every case study there has real, dated numbers rather than a marketing-friendly average, and duplicating them would only degrade the source of truth.
The engagement runs in 4 steps. First: a free 15-minute discovery call to understand your budget, timeframe and goals - if there's a fit, we book a longer 40 to 45 minute consultation; if there isn't, we say so. Second: a written strategy and market shortlist that narrows the Melbourne landscape down to the specific corridors that fit your brief this quarter. Third: the search and negotiation - both listed and off-market stock, contract and due-diligence coordination with your solicitor, and negotiation or auction bidding on the specific asset. Fourth: settlement support through to keys.
Average time from engagement to secured property is 3 to 4 weeks; some deals settle in under 2. The industry average is 6+ months. That speed difference matters in a Melbourne market that's turning - the trough moves higher every month once a recovery is confirmed, and losing three months to a slow process can mean paying a materially higher price on the same property. The full process, with the pyramid framework and the pyramid diagram, is on the how we work page.
Alaya charges a fixed engagement fee, quoted in writing before you sign, that doesn't move when the purchase price moves. The full breakdown - what it includes, why we don't charge a percentage, the CGT cost-base treatment for investors - is on the fees page. Book a discovery call before you commit either way; if we're not the right fit for your Melbourne brief, we'll say so on the first call rather than the fifth.
Alaya's public reviews sit on Google - 5-star average across the full listing. Rather than curate them here, read them directly on the Google listing where you can see who wrote them, when, and the full unedited text. Reviews on a company's own website are worth less than reviews on a platform they can't edit.
Where does Melbourne sit in the cycle this quarter? Read the Melbourne market cycle write-up - updated quarterly, with the phase, the momentum, and the FAQ answered phase-dependently rather than as a canned yes.