Forget ritzy city suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne – a property forecaster has picked 20 unlikely areas on the cusp of a real estate boom.

A resurgence in some capital city property markets over recent months shows no signs of slowing down, but the real hot spots to watch aren’t in Sydney and Melbourne.

Analysis by property researcher Selection Residential Property’s forecasting service suburbgrowth.com.au has identified the regional locations it expects to surge in price by more than 20 per cent in the next few years.

And most of them have buy-in prices that are a small fraction of big city suburbs, SRP Director of Research Jeremy Sheppard said.

The list is made up of spots that have a solid holiday market, such as Ballina on the northern New South Wales coast and the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

But they’re locations that also possess growth fundamentals outside of the tourism sector, Mr Sheppard said.

“While some of these locations might be better known as holiday destinations, they also have significant local populations – in some cases, hundreds of thousands of people who live there all year round,” Mr Sheppard said.

“What this means is that these markets have solid fundamentals primed for growth, including the economic principals of demand and supply that apply upward housing price pressure.”