Rural land and house demand: The country lifestyle attracting Canberrans to ACT fringe and surrounding NSW

Buying closer to or across Canberra borders has been more popular now than ever with buyers chasing the country lifestyle, expansive blocks of land and view of the rural landscape amid the pandemic.

Colliers International director of residential land Josh Reid said land sales, in particular, had proven a popular choice for buyers because of the opportunity of making it their own.

“[Land sales] enable people to build their dream home with their builder of choice, and for some buyers they like being a part of new communities,” Mr Reid said.

“Buying land and building their dream home allows them to do this.”

George Southwell of Ray White Rural Canberra and Yass added that buyers were able to “add their own touch to it”.

“A lot of good blocks might have 30 or 40-year-old houses and that’s not cutting it for a lot of people. They want modern homes with modern inclusions including in-floor heating, north orientation, large windows and more,” he said.

Mr Reid recently sold a 2023-square-metre block in Tharwa, which had almost 300 expressions of interest.

“A ballot for a single rural residential block attracted 283 expressions of interest, [and this] illustrates the rocketing demand for lifestyle sites on the outskirts of the national capital,” Mr Reid said.

“Rural blocks have always been fairly popular in the ACT region due to the fact that Canberra’s city and town centres are easily accessible. Some rural land is just minutes from urban amenity and really none of the surrounding areas are more than about an hour from the CBD.”

Mr Southwell said the federal government’s HomeBuilder grant had also driven land sales and inquiries.

“It’s a scarce resource and as the old saying goes: ‘We’re not seeing any more of it being made’ and that’s very true with land sales,” he said.

While land on the capital’s fringe has been hot property, buyer demand for houses outside of the capital has also recorded solid growth since March, according to Domain’s Buyer Demand Indicator.

The data showed buyer demand for houses in the Goulburn Mulwaree region was up 77.5 per cent since the start of the pandemic. 

This was followed by the Young/Yass region, up 76.4 per cent; Shoalhaven, up by 68.9 per cent; Southern Highlands, up 61 per cent; and the South Coast, where demand was up 42 per cent since March.

More Canberrans were making the move across the border, partly because more people were able to work from home, Mr Southwell added.

“They have the flexibility of living further from the workplace and people want that space,” he said. 

“They want to be able to do anything they want on a land of their own, build their own modern home and it’s a hell of a lot more affordable doing it outside of the capital border than buying a block of the same size in Canberra.”

Mr Southwell recently sold a 5.9-hectare block of land in Binalong for $216,000 at auction. Mr Southwell said he’d received a number of pre-auction offers and at auction three registered bidders fought for the hotly contested acreage.

Mr Southwell said he’d seen a shift of where buyers were coming from who were interested in buying land.

“Previously, 60 per cent of our inquiries would be from people in Sydney and the Southern Highlands but, recently, Canberrans are making the move,” he said.

“Anything close to Canberra such as Murrumbateman, Yass, Binalong and Bookham are attractive.”