Researching locations
Build your location brief
Turn your commute, school and service requirements into a document you can use to discover and shortlist suburbs.
Key points
- A location brief covers destinations, travel thresholds, schools, services, open space and environmental risk tolerance.
- Test any commute at peak weekday travel times, not just an off-peak or map estimate.
- Written requirements are easier to compare against real suburbs than a mental checklist.
What a location brief should cover
A location brief documents the geographic side of your search: important destinations and how long you're prepared to travel to them, the transport modes you'd actually use, school requirements, essential services, open-space needs, your tolerance for environmental risk, and the neighbourhood characteristics that matter to you — separate from the property-type brief you may have already built.
Building on what you've already decided
If you've already worked through your safe budget or your property-type buying brief, keep those figures and decisions handy — this brief adds the geographic side on top, rather than replacing what you've already worked out.
Test commutes at the time you'd actually travel
A commute estimated off-peak or from a map can be substantially shorter than the real trip at the time you'd actually make it. Test the route yourself at peak weekday travel times before settling on a maximum acceptable commute, rather than relying on an off-peak estimate.
Common mistake: defining location requirements only as a commute time and a school name. Services, open space, environmental risk tolerance and neighbourhood character all shape whether a location actually works for your household, and are easy to skip if you don't write them down deliberately.
Want this as a checklist for your own purchase? Start free in the Delora app
Practical checklist
Building your location brief
- List your two or three most important regular destinations
- Decide your maximum acceptable commute and preferred transport mode
- Note any school, service or environmental-risk requirements
Questions for a professional
Important limitations: This is general education. The brief you create is your own reference, not a guarantee any suburb will match it.
Evidence record
Keep reading
- Understanding median prices Next in Research locations
- How to set a realistic location search area On Overview
- How to shortlist suburbs On Overview
- How to choose a suburb On Overview
- Suburb finder Tool
- Inspect properties Next step