Lismore real estate prices rising, to rival Byron hinterland

An agent who remembers struggling to sell blocks of land at Byron for $19,500 says Lismore is on a similar trajectory to the town now known as a playground of the rich and famous.

The heart of the Northern Rivers is set to become a boom town and a leading real estate agent says the change will arrive sooner than people think.

Andrew Gordon has decades of experience in the industry and is well qualified to make the comparison between the two.

The fifth generation real estate agent is now based in Lismore but remembers the 90s when blocks at Byron’s Sunrise Beach Estate were a hard sell.

R Gordon and Son team Andrew Gordon and Nathan Gordon. The business has seen five generations of the Gordon family work and operate out of the same office building in Lismore.

Today the average price for a two-bedroom home in Byron Bay is $2.85m compared to the average price in Lismore of just $450,000, according to realestate.com.

It takes less than an hour to drive from one town to the other and Mr Gordon says people are starting to catch on.

He said he had seen what happened in places like Bangalow, and said Lismore was on track to rival the idyllic hinterland locations where prices had soared.

“People said ‘why go there?’ - then you saw places like Clunes and Bangalow become prohibitively expensive,” he said.

“Now people are seeing Lismore as the next step and they are coming this way and bringing that level of wealth they’ve generated with them.”

Leading demographer Mark McCrindle said a “glamour aspect” was seeping in to Northern Rivers towns like Lismore.

Demographer Mark McCrindle says Lismore has a lot features people are looking for as they emerge from the pandemic.

He said the city ticked all the boxes of what Australians were looking for since Covid, including affordability and lifestyle.

“But there are a few more factors in Lismore’s favour,” Mr McCrindle said.

“When you think about moves from capital cities it’s often the sea change that people make, but now increasingly it’s a tree change.

“So inland cities that offer lifestyle are in demand and you can still get to the coast when you need to, but it doesn’t come with the coastal price point.”

He said centres like Lismore were also benefiting from a flow-on effect of Queensland’s growth.

“Queensland is the fastest growing state in Australia and that’s spilling over into NSW and Lismore is in that sweet spot, so that’s why it’s getting more education facilities and other amenities,” he said.

“While cities like Sydney and Melbourne are almost a victim of their own growth because they grow faster than infrastructure can cope with, areas like Lismore are not in that category and can welcome that growth.”

Mr Gordon said Lismore would “never be a Byron or Ballina” but said it would soon rival hinterland towns like Clunes and Bangalow and the shift could be coming sooner than people realised.

“Every day I see a house listed (in Lismore) and go ‘holy crap I would never have guessed that’,” he said.

“Now the asking price is just the starting point for negotiation and a mini auction kicks in.”