A little bird told us.
Methodology
How nestfinder scores postcodes and what feeds those scores.
01 What we score
For every Australian postcode in our index, we compute a per-feature score: commute time, school fees fit, bedroom/bathroom/carpark fit, crime rates, amenity density, school performance, and the rest. Each of those features is percent-ranked across all postcodes: a cycle-commute score of 0.85 means "closer to your target than 85% of postcodes within its own city". Percent-ranking keeps the numbers comparable within a city: a school-performance score of 0.7 means the same thing regardless of which postcode it's attached to.
The heatmap can also paint the map along a single dimension at a time (transport, schools, crime, affluence, or amenities) as a way to explore one measure visually. That view is for exploring; your personalised rank uses every feature at once, weighted the way you've set your preferences.
The match score (0–100) on your ranked list is how closely a suburb matches everything you asked for. Higher is a closer match.
Bars show each group's share of the 21 scored features, not the weight each feature carries. Weights are yours to set, and we don't publish the defaults.
02 How your preferences shape the ranking
Every feature score above is combined into one ranking per postcode, and your preferences profile controls how much each feature counts. Turn a preference up and postcodes that are strong on that feature move up your list; turn it down and it matters less.
In the wizard, features are grouped the way most buyers reason about a postcode. Every feature inside a group has its own slider (nothing is locked to a group-level weight), and you can leave the defaults or tune any of it yourself in your preferences profile.
03 What goes in
Every score traces back to a named source, not a black box: the ABS Census, state and territory crime statistics, myschool.edu.au (ACARA) school data, the community-maintained NBN upgrade map, and aggregated market data for sale prices. The cards below name each source and what it is.
Affluence signals (income, unemployment, qualifications), bedroom counts, and the weekly-rent reference figure.
Per-capita rates for break-ins, violent crime, and motor-vehicle theft, aggregated from state police open-data releases. We never show individual incidents.
School performance bands, class size, and capital investment.
The community-maintained map of NBN technologies and upgrade status. Internet readiness for postcodes.
Median sold prices (trailing 12 months) per postcode, computed from public listings. We never display individual listings or photos in nestfinder.
04 Intent-aware affordability
The affordability signal depends on what you're trying to do: buying, renting, or investing.
Median sold price across sold listings in the postcode, trailing 12 months, scored against your budget.
Median weekly rent paid by renters (ABS 2021 Census reference figure, not current advertised rents), matched against your rent budget.
A derived estimate, not a directly-observed figure. It combines the ABS Census median weekly rent (adjusted for inflation to the current quarter) with the median sold price across sold listings in the postcode, trailing 12 months. Gross means before rates, strata, management fees, vacancy or tax.
The sale-price input comes from aggregated market data. The weekly-rent figure draws on ABS Census data (2021 reference figure); the gross-yield estimate additionally inflation-adjusts it using ABS CPI Rents.