Instagram vs the Reality of moving to Glitter Strip

Queensland is seen as a Utopia, where the sun always shines and Covid is left at the border. But the warmth and the lack of the virus come at a hefty cost.

OPINION: You tell anyone in the southern states you’re moving to Queensland and their eyes will well up with vicarious joy.

“I wish I could move up there,” they say, and make loose plans to come up for a holiday.

But the Instagram versus the Reality of moving to the Sunshine State is a rude shock.

Online you see everyone at the Pav drinking cocktails, or sunbaking at the beach – but what you don’t see is their pokey flat and their sky-high rental price, forking out hundreds of dollars more than their Sydney or Melbourne rent, just for the lifestyle.

Photos of Navarone Farrell's dodgy rental in Mermaid Waters.

Covid tax has definitely hit the rental market, and no more than the Gold Coast.

As a Queenslander who’s lived all around the country, I can safely say I got bill shock upon returning home.

I was even flabbergasted by the application process. Agents flip-flopped on rental prices, almost like auction bids, with trying out punters just to see how much they’d pay.

One unit was up for $500 one day, and $650 the next due to “an error in the listing”.

Places that used to have bargain basement rents, undesirable suburbs you wouldn’t even live in as a broke uni student are now million-dollar suburbs.

My place in Mermaid Waters is one of those places.

The not-so-glamorous side of renting on the Gold Coast.

It’s fine, I’m not exposed to the elements, but it is dated, and for the rent, I could be paying off a mortgage on a nice place in Varsity Lakes. Any hopes I had of saving for a home here have been dashed, with any extra cash I have sucked up by my rent.

I’m paying hundreds of dollars more than my trendy inner-city flat in Adelaide, or the two-bedroom cottage I lived in Hobart’s ritziest postcode.

While you might say, ew, who wants to live in Adelaide or Hobart, but both southern capitals were hot spots for Sydney-siders and Melburnians fleeing Covid-19 lockdowns and neither were smashed with mega-high spikes in rental costs.

At the end of the day, I know we like to think we can’t put a price on our freedom, the sun, sea and surf – but we definitely can, and if agents don’t stop groping in the dark seeing who will pay these ridiculous prices, people will just stop looking.

A broken blind in Navarone Farrell’s dodgy rental.

Originally published as Instagram vs the Reality of moving to Glitter Strip