It has been quite the off and on trend for some time: City slickers are moving to regional areas. We’ve seen this in all sorts of countries around the world.
A lot of people may associate the idea of going from urban to suburban with 1950s America when the Second World War ended. People found that they wanted to escape the rat race of cities like New York and Chicago to move to the typical “white-picket” fence neighborhood. This was because housing started to become a lot more affordable to society due to the shift in the economy.
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Nowadays, it is not entirely unusual to hear about folks escaping the city and moving to a more regional area, especially recently in Australia.
There is a chunk of statistics and data to back this up too: The “Regional Movers Index” created in 2021, tracks the movement between Australia’s regions and capital cities by using bank data from 10 million customers. The most recent data shows that there has been an increase in people living in capital cities moving to regional locations.
The CEO of Regional Australia Institute said that the regional net migration spiked by 14 percent, and people who already are living in a rural/regional area are deciding to not move.
In the state of New South Wales, the Murray River zone saw a 48 percent increase in net migration, and Victoria’s Alpine region saw a chunky 47 per cent increase.
The small peaceful town of Toongabbie in New South Wales in particular has seen a flow of people moving in. Elders Real Estate Toongabbie, one of the most popular real estate agents in the area has seen great growth for their company because of the interest.
So why the big move? Well, there are quite a few reasons and a lot of them are fairly common sense and are quite obvious.
The first was due to the Coronavirus pandemic. People living in major cities were completely caged up, often in small apartments. For everyone, life during quarantine was tough, but it was especially difficult for those living in a densely populated zone which often saw tougher quarantine rules and more stressful financial issues.
Another thing that opened everyone’s eyes was the whole “remote working” model. Because everything had to shut down, workers had to resort to working from home. Joining a zoom call from your computer was an everyday occurrence and getting work done from your own house became the new norm.
Although there were a handful of people who could not stand working from home, there was a significant number who found that remote working was “the future”. It cut down travel time, unnecessary expenses and made more people productive, which in turn got a lot of folks questioning their role in the traditional office.
The work from home model is here to stay, with a huge amount of companies and jobs allowing their employees to work from home still do this day even though we are not in quarantine. One of the reasons people lived in cities was to allow them more opportunities for work. So, with the whole world opening its doors to normal remote work, people were able to live wherever they wanted.
Expensive living has got to be one of the most common reasons why people also decide to leave the city for regional life. In Australia, living in Melbourne as opposed to the suburb of Kyneton. The real estate agents of Broadhurst Property have noticed a big appeal for their homes in Kyneton – which have been selling like hotcakes.
The average cost of living in cities is just going to be generally higher than anywhere else, and people have known this for a long time. It just seems that with the whole pandemic affecting things, a lot started to really consider if this was the way they wanted to continue.
The housing market saw a big change as part of the pandemic, with a lot of houses costing much less than usual. This saw a large number of people buying houses almost impulsively.
There has statistically been a shift in people moving from the city to regional areas, particularly in Australia. This is mainly because of the pandemic, which affected how we work, but also the Australian housing market. Aussies saw that it was better to escape the hustle and bustle, and focus on the things that they really wanted – a quieter life.