Regional Victoria was one of the first areas in Australia to really exhibit clearly the pattern that has become the major property trend of the 21st Century – what I like to call the Exodus to Affordable Lifestyle.

This trend of people moving from the big cities to regions has been under way for many years, driven by the ability, through technology, to work remotely and the desire by many Australians for a more relaxed and more affordable lifestyle.

The trend picked up pace during the pandemic, but we saw it starting to build long before then as people moved out of the expensive Melbourne market to regional Victoria, but still within a couple of hours driving distance of the city.

People were looking for more affordable property prices in locations with plenty of amenity and they found it, particularly in areas such as Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo where the trend really started – and which have remained strong markets for the past four or five years.

The Covid pandemic really pushed that Exodus to Affordable Lifestyle further, because people were forced to work from home and more of them realised it was a viable option.

And there are still plenty of opportunities in regional parts of Regional Victoria for people to access that lifestyle.

The boom has spread to many other regional Victoria locations, more distant from Melbourne, including places such Warrnambool, Mildura, the East Gippsland region and the Albury-Wodonga twin cities at the border with NSW.

I expect this trend to continue for some time to come – it won’t stop once the pandemic is dealt with – because this is fundamentally about technology, affordability and lifestyle.

Regional Victoria as a whole is still a very strong market, which has produced outstanding price growth in the past 12 months, with many locations rising 20% and some above 30%.

The latest CoreLogic figures show that, in the March Quarter, Regional Victoria overall recorded close to 4% in house price growth – and many individual locations did much better than that.

Regional Victoria is still a market which has a lot further to go, particularly as I don’t see the Exodus trend easing any time soon.

Our new edition of the Top 5 Victoria Regional Hotspots report features 5 locations that have benefitted from this Exodus trend and are likely to continue to do so into the future.

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