Melbourne residents fleeing COVID hotspots for safer suburbs and states
Despite being in lockdown, Victorians are on the move. They are searching for where they can pack up and take their loved ones during stage 4 restrictions.
VIC News
Don't miss out on the headlines from VIC News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Despite being in lockdown, Victorians still have itchy feet and are searching whether they can move house during stage 4 lockdowns as well as a spike in people looking to move out of Melbourne.
New data obtained by News Corp from national start-up Muval, a comparative website that connects people with removalists, has seen a surge of people searching since the COVID-19 initial Australia-wide lock downs in March.
Victorians make up over 50 per cent of all visits across Australia to the Muval COVID-19 ‘moving house’ blog page.
Since July most of the visits are for Melburnians looking to move locally but when it comes to interstate moves 65 per cent are outbound looking to move out of Melbourne.
Despite the lockdowns Australians are also still considering moving into Melbourne with 35 percent of enquiries inbound from other states.
This is in contrast to the same time last year when the situation was reversed with 55 per cent looking to move to Melbourne from other states and only 45 percent of Melburnians looking to leave.
The data puts Melbourne on par with Sydney while Brisbane and South East Queensland continues to buck the trend with more people looking to move in than out; 61 per cent versus 39 per cent.
Their data also shows there was a 20,000 search spike on muval.com.au in the just the last seven days alone from people in Victoria in relation to stage 4 lockdowns.
“Despite the necessary stage 4 lockdowns in Victoria being implemented to curb the spread of COVID-19, many of the residents we are talking to are anxious about how long it might last, and what life might look like on the other side. In that context, places like Queensland that have always been high on the list are gaining even more demand,” Muval CEO James Morrell said.
The new data comes after News Corp first revealed how the COVID-19 pandemic is prompting families to move interstate for work while others are fleeing coronavirus hotspots.
Job restrictions, family dynamics or lifestyle changes are behind some of the reasons people are moving.
Muval’s data shows Australians are looking to leave COVID hotspots and are also interested in doing the ‘sea’ or ‘tree’ change with a rise in people seeking out regional changes and lower-price areas.
Regionally Dubbo in NSW along with the Northlakes and Maroochydore areas of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland have seen significant interest, while there has also been a dramatic spike in inquiries for coastal areas like Byron Bay and the Gold Coast.
When it came to capital cities people were trying to escape from, Sydney still took out the top spot with the amount of migrators seeking to leave more than double other cities (30 per cent).
Melbourne was next with 27 per cent, with most looking to go to Queensland, and Brisbane showed a net gain with only 16 per cent looking to leave, in comparison to 19 per cent inbound.
Richmond topped the list of the suburbs people were fleeing from in Victoria with a 91 per cent increase in the number of people looking to move out from the latest data covering April to July, in comparison to pre-COVID times, while Clayton was the suburb they wanted to move into (94 per cent increase).
In South Australia, Mawson Lakes had a 63 per cent increase in moving out requests and Mount Barker was the suburb everyone was trying to move into (529 per cent increase).
Over on the east coast in NSW, there has been a nearly 150 per cent increase of people trying to get out of COVID hotspot Liverpool – a tripling since the suburb was named a high-risk COVID-19 hotspot and separately there has been a 207 per cent increase of residents wanting to become Homebush inhabitants.
There was also general interest in moving out of traditionally popular suburbs including Randwick, Alexandria, Chatswood, Waterloo, Dee Why, Mosman and the inner city and into Western Sydney.
Data from April until June saw Parramatta become the highest searched suburb on the platform by 30 per cent, pushing Randwick – previously the highest searched suburb on the site – out of the top five most popular suburbs altogether.
Red Hill in Queensland has seen a whopping 1290 per cent increase and Marsden is the biggest mover with a 293 per cent increase of people wanting to move in.
Muval CEO James Morrell said the financial fallout from the pandemic is now a tipping point for people who are deciding where to move to.
“In the first quarter of 2020 we saw more proactive moves being made with new jobs and house purchases driving the activity,” Mr Morrell said.
“Post-COVID there is a higher number of calls coming in where moves are now being forced upon people due to job losses and business downsizing and seemingly other circumstances brought about by the virus. In many cases we hear of plans for lifestyle changes that were ‘in the works’ being sped up by COVID-19 especially with people making a more drastic change to move interstate rather than just moving down the road.
“Even when people are moving due to their lease being up we are finding COVID is influencing their decisions on where to move next,” said Mr Morrell.
Domestic violence is also playing an increasing role, Muval report, with The Australian Institute of Criminology recently releasing new data showing more than half of women who had previously experienced physical or sexual violence said the violence had become more frequent or severe since the start of the pandemic.
MORE NEWS:
Masks mandatory as Vic hits 723 cases, Qld and NSW numbers rise
New change to $200 tap and go limit
Supermarket bargains: 79c soup, $1 cookies, $3 oats
James Cook University sociologist Nick Osbaldiston is a lifestyle migration researcher and said the shift in working patterns with more people working from home may see some people looking to more distant areas but more broadly regions will be facing challenging times.
“In some regional areas their unemployment rates will get quite significant and that will lead to a bleed of people out,” he said.
“Sydney was already in net migration loss in terms of internal migration as one of the only capital cities that was losing international population – but previously that had been bolstered by overseas migration, which will no longer be happening.”
He said recessions do typically restrict people’s choices: “at the end of the day you need to go to where the employment is.”
That was the case for Farnaz Cassimjee who moved out of Southbank in Victoria to New South Wales a few months ago to take up a short-term contract job that was a demotion from her usual role as a data analyst.
“I left my job prior to everything going bad and then couldn’t find anything. I got a basic data entry job in Sydney on a short-term contract and thought it was better than nothing,” she said from her new home in St Leonards on Sydney’s north shore, closer to family and friends.
Fortunately, Ms Cassimjee’s new company quickly realised her potential and offered her a longer contract as a data analyst.
“I am really happy to be in Sydney, I was feeling a bit cooped up in Melbourne. It’s nice and leafy here and you can hear the birds singing in the morning,” she said.