Wild trend sending Australians back to big cities

A 27-year-old has revealed the reason she’s moving back to the city and it has exposed a wider trend happening across the country.

Plenty of Aussies are exiting major cities hoping to find a more affordable lifestyle, but an unexpected trend has occurred, sending people back to the cities they fled.

Alice Raspin, 27, and her partner, who share a young son, left Brisbane due to spiralling rental costs and moved to the regional Queensland town of Cairns.

According to a report by PropTrack, in March, Brisbane had the second lowest vacancy rate in the country, at 1.02 per cent.

Ms Raspin and her partner had wanted to create a better life for themselves and were prepared to move to do it.

The young couple were keen to get ahead. Picture: Instagram/AliceRaspin

Alice moved to a regional area for a better life. Picture: Instagram/AliceRaspin

They aren’t alone in that decision. New data included in the Regional Movers Index showed that, for the March 2024 quarter, the number of city-dwellers choosing a life in the regions has hit a 12-month high.

The report by Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and the Regional Australia Institute (RAI) analyses the trends in people moving to and from Australia’s regional areas from data collected from the bank’s 16 million customers.

The data showed that 24.2 per cent more people are moving from cities to regions than are going back the other direction.

Ms Raspin works in insurance and, including her partner’s salary, they bring home $180,000 a year, but even that wasn’t enough to keep them in the city.

Instead the couple uprooted their lives and moved regional but it hasn’t worked out.

On social media, she posted that after 12 months of living in Cairns to “get ahead financially”, she and her partner are moving back to Brisbane.

“We need our village more than we need money,” she wrote.

Alice said she values family more than money. Picture: Instagram/AliceRaspin

After a year they've decided to move home. Picture: Instagram/AliceRaspin

Ms Raspin added that no “bank balance” can make up for watching her son grow up without being surrounded by family.

Her admission exposed a wider trend, with other Aussies sharing they’d done the exact same thing.

“We did the same in 2020. Our son was a similar age and we made so many beautiful memories. We lasted 10 months. Returning was hard, but no regrets,” one wrote.

“We have been contemplating moving due to cost of living. But all my family is in Brisbane so I can’t do it,” another admitted.

“We literary just did the same thing. Family is more important,” someone else wrote.

One woman shared that she and her partner left Queensland for Victoria, but after two years she’s pregnant again and she’s not prepared to have a baby “away” from her family.

Ms Raspin told news.com.au that they wanted to move to Cairns for all the classic reasons and with the hopes of getting financially ahead.

“We moved to Cairns originally for a more relaxed, cheaper lifestyle. When we found a rental here in 2023, it was more than $100 cheaper than the rental we had been renting in Brisbane,” she said.

In Brisbane, they paid $640 per week; in Cairns, they originally paid $540 per week, but their rent has now increased to $590.

The couple did manage to pay off some bills while they were there. Picture: Instagram/AliceRaspin

She said the move has paid off for the young couple, giving them a financial break to pay their bills.

“We’ve been able to pay off all our consumer debt and save $10,000 for a house deposit in one year. Petrol and daycare are also a lot cheaper here,” she explained.

Although they’ve found the lifestyle cheaper, they’ve also found it more isolating.

“We have a two-year-old son and want to be closer to our family so that he can grow up with his cousins and grandparents. Ultimately, we have decided that family is more important to us than money,” she said.

Ms Raspin said that she’s well aware that staying in Cairns would make the most financial sense, but it isn’t worth it.

“Yes, while we agree completely that living regionally is cheaper, it does come at the expense of your village. Raising children alone can be extremely difficult and isolating,” she explained.

They’ve also planned to return to Brisbane and live with family to help shoulder the costs of living in a major city.

“When we move back to Brisbane, we intend to find a rental with our in-laws as they are being priced out of the market. So rent should be quite similar in the end,” she said.

Originally published as Wild trend sending Australians back to big cities