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We have acted for a number of doctors buying in Australia. The criteria that matter are different from the ones the market talks about, and the time available to apply them is close to none. So we have set this out separately.
Why us
My wife, my father and my brother are all doctors. I have spent years watching, from close range, how a clinician’s day actually runs.
What the day after a night shift feels like. How a rostered weekend erases every personal plan at once. How often training moves you between hospitals. And what it is to earn well while having no time to look at any of it. None of that needs explaining to us.
This matters in a property conversation because most agencies open with “let’s go and see it together on Saturday.” If you do not understand that there are professions where that sentence simply does not work, everything you propose afterwards is built on the wrong assumption.
The service is designed around the assumption that you have no time to give it.
Why this is separate
Property is usually sold on transport, schools and finish. For clinicians the ranking comes out differently.
What matters is not the morning commute but how long the drive takes at two in the morning. Thirty minutes at 8am and twelve minutes at 2am describe entirely different properties, and some clients need the second number.
Australian campaigns are decided at weekend open inspections. A rostered weekend removes a property from your list altogether. No client group gains more from having someone attend on their behalf.
A strong public catchment displaces private school fees. That is arithmetic rather than preference, and our reports put a figure on it.
Training rotations and fellowships relocate people. So “does this resell or let easily?” belongs in the brief from the first conversation, not the last.
School zoning
Our reports don't simply list the zoned schools. They calculate what being in that zone saves you.
From a report we prepared: Australian private school fees run to roughly $25,000–$35,000 per child per year. Educating a child through the public system in a strong catchment, from reception to year twelve, comes to around $325,000 per child on a conservative estimate — $650,000 for two.
Houses in well-zoned suburbs cost more than the suburb next door. But if the premium is smaller than $650,000, paying it wins on the arithmetic — and most of that premium is recovered at resale, because the next buyer is doing the same sum.
Family plans, views on public versus private schooling and length of stay all change the answer. We supply the figure; the decision stays yours.
A real report
April 2026. A couple — both doctors, expecting their first child — were considering a two-storey house in Adelaide's inner south. The renovation had just been completed and the photographs were faultless.
What the inspection established:
Ten minutes to the hospital by car. The commute was excellent, with a railway station 300 metres away.
Top-tier zoning. Strong public primary and secondary catchments, and we costed the private school saving into the report.
But there was no yard. The garden in the photographs turned out to be a narrow front lawn; the side strip was a passage with hedging. For a household about to have a baby that is not a detail. The flagstone paving was uneven too — a genuine obstacle with a pram.
And the wall was cracked. A continuous horizontal crack, 1.5 to 2 metres. In the worst case, underpinning past $100,000.
“Conditional proceed — walk away above $1,000,000.”
We put fair value at $980,000 to $1,025,000 and listed three alternatives that did more for the same budget. However good the commute and the schools, raising a child in a house with no yard is a decision that gets revisited in five years.
Timing
For doctors the timing of a purchase is itself a variable, because what you may buy and what you will pay both turn on residency status.
Living in Australia does not exempt you. On a temporary visa you are a foreign person: established dwellings are closed to you, and the foreign purchaser surcharge applies.
Permanent residency takes you outside the rules entirely. Established dwellings become available and the surcharge falls away — on a million-dollar property, a difference above $70,000.
Purchasing jointly with an Australian citizen or permanent resident changes the eligibility test altogether. Whose name the property goes in is decided here.
If you expect to move interstate in two or three years, the property has to be selected on that basis — with resale costs and lettability assessed at the outset.
If permanent residency is six months away, waiting those six months can save tens of thousands of dollars. When a consultation reaches that conclusion, that is what we tell you. We are aware that advising you to buy now is what pays us — it is simply not how a durable client relationship is built.
Income & structure
Medical incomes generally sit in the upper brackets, which means whose name receives the rent, and to whom the capital gain is attributed, produces a materially different result.
Sole name, joint with a spouse, a company, a trust — each behaves differently, and none of them is easy to unwind. Most of it is fixed the moment contracts are exchanged.
We are not accountants and we do not recommend a structure. What we do is convene the conversation with a registered practitioner, hand over the property and timing detail, and make sure the contract is written to match whatever is decided. There is more on our tax page.
Contact
We attend the inspections. You get the reports on your phone and a call only when a decision is needed. The process is built to spend your time only where it has to be spent.