Blair Athol vs Port Adelaide

The median house price is $880K in Blair Athol and $870K in Port Adelaide, so Port Adelaide is the cheaper entry point, with Blair Athol houses about 1% dearer.

For units, Blair Athol sits at a median of $685K against $700K in Port Adelaide, which makes Blair Athol the more affordable unit market and Port Adelaide the pricier one.

On cash flow, Port Adelaide leads: houses there return a gross rental yield of 3.90%, compared with 3.30% in Blair Athol, a gap of 0.60 percentage points.

Over the past year house prices moved +12.4% in Blair Athol and +15.3% in Port Adelaide (an estimate), so recent momentum favours Port Adelaide, although both suburbs recorded growth.

Rental vacancy is 0.6% in Port Adelaide and 0.7% in Blair Athol, so landlords in Port Adelaide face less competition for tenants. Anything under 2% is generally read as a tight market where tenants compete for homes.

Blair Athol is the bigger suburb, with a population of 5,274 against 1,338, roughly 3.9 times the size of Port Adelaide; a larger suburb usually means a deeper pool of buyers and tenants.

In short: Port Adelaide for rental income, Port Adelaide for a lower purchase price, Port Adelaide for recent price momentum, Port Adelaide for the tighter rental market. Which matters more depends on whether the investor is buying for cash flow, capital growth or affordability.