It’s not just city slickers setting up in Bundaberg.
The December quarter Regional Movers Index has found we’re the top place in Australia where people from other regional centres are moving to, with rates up 5.8%.
We’ve also remained one of the most popular spots for those from metro areas.
Regional Australia Institute (RAI) CEO Liz Ritchie says the impact of capital city movers to the regions is now having a flow on effect to other regional places, many of which have historically seen limited population growth.
“The areas experiencing significant net migration increases would certainly be feeling the impact on house prices and rents, local services and infrastructure,” Ms Ritchie says.
“For that reason, policy makers, industry and regional leaders need to heed these results, to ensure adequate planning and resourcing is put in place to accommodate demand both now and in coming decades.
“In the early days of COVID, the high growth places were generally high amenity locations such as the Surf Coast, Byron Bay and Noosa. But the latest dataset shows us that regional people are leaving these areas for other inland centres or coastal towns – with a growing number opting to go even further away from Sydney and Melbourne.
“The regional housing squeeze is just one example of what can happen when we haven’t prepared for growth. The low growth ‘business as usual’ trends before 2020 has led to underinvestment in some regional areas.”
The top 5 most popular destinations for both metropolitan and regional movers in terms of share of total net internal migration were:
· Sunshine Coast (+12.5%)
· Gold Coast (+11.3%)
· Greater Geelong (+5.2%)
· Fraser Coast (+4.4%)
· Bundaberg (+3.3%)
The top 10 most popular destinations for regional-to-regional movers were:
· Bundaberg (+5.8%)
· Fraser Coast (+5.8%)
· Toowoomba (+5.6%)
· Sunshine Coast (+4.5%)
· Maitland (+4.3%)
· Townsville (+4.2%)
· Gympie (+3.4%)
· Cairns (+2.8%)
· Gladstone (+2.8%)
· Ballarat (+2.6%)
