Rise of the Zoom Town
2 August 2021
Why property markets of all shapes and sizes across regional Australia are booming
Whilst some of the changes the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to our lives are obvious and impacts us all daily, through lockdowns, social distancing, mask wearing and travel restrictions, there is a quiet side effect of which is not as obvious. The growth the “Zoom” Town.
There is a reason why property markets of all shapes and sizes across regional Australia are booming, and its not a flash in the pan mine expansion or localised infrastructure project, it is the fundamental shift of people relocating from larger urban centres to more affordable housing and lifestyle options.
The phenomena of the FIFO worker in the mining sector has been common place for years, and was adopted by a select few office based workers who returned to the regions on the weekends, but still did their Monday to Friday face to face in the city office.
With the onset of Covid restrictions and shift to remote working and learning, a permanent move into Regional Australia has become a very real reality
for the thousands of city-based workers and their families who have relocated to the country and still been able to retain their city-based jobs and pay cheques.
What this has created is unprecedented demand for housing and lifestyle blocks all over regional Australia, with the strongest demand being on those communities who are a return day trip or have direct flights to the major capital cities, particularly on the east coast.
The result has been market price increases between 30-40% and up to $150- $200/week on rental values
in some centres in the past 18 months – 2 years.
Despite this, regional markets are still much more affordable across the board then the capital city counterparts.
Increasing demand for regional property was still strong coming off the Sydney and Melbourne housing booms in the late 2010’s, which intensified with the onset of COVID particularly in 2020.
The key piece of infrastructure that enabled this to happen was the role out of the NBN, which has really been the unsung hero in facilitating this online working and education boom, providing internet reliability and speed to nearly anyone who wants has enabled it all to happen.
Moving forward provision of fast reliable internet speed will be critical in enhancing the remote work experience, more effort needs to be done to increase bandwidth and download speeds across the networks and those towns and cities that can provide this will be the more sustainable winners in this remote work scenario.
So, when researching investment based on government infrastructure spending, internet speed and local infrastructure should be given much more consideration going forward.
If you need help with direction, motivation, or general advice about finding, choosing, and acquiring the property please contact us here at Aspect Buyers Agency.
