Will house prices in Canberra’s surrounding NSW region continue to climb?

The sounds of the ocean in the NSW region have been a beckoning call in the past year for many Canberrans, who’ve swapped their cubicles for home offices across the border.

The explosive popularity of the NSW coastline has meant that the median house price in the Bega Valley region increased by 29.8 per cent year-on-year to $720,500 and, in Eurobodalla, by  27.7 per cent year-on-year to $715,000, according to the latest Domain House Price Report.

Similarly, in the NSW regions surrounding the capital, the median house prices increased by double digits in the last year, indicating that the allure of working from home and escaping the hustle and bustle of the city has not yet faded.

“I don’t think that trend will ever go away now,” said Bronwyn Geppert, of Raine & Horne Batemans Bay in the Eurobodalla region.

“It’s been an adjustment for people who escaped the city in search of a quieter life, and many don’t want to leave that now. There’s comfort in just taking a stroll down the road for a coffee, people aren’t battling traffic and there are small communities here.”

Rob Flynn of Bega Valley Realty said he was not surprised by the almost 30 per cent yearly increase in Bega Valley’s median house price, noting that the region was “still more affordable than the Byron Bays of Australia, yet offered almost the same lifestyle”.

According to the data, in Sydney, the median house price is $1,499,126 and in Byron Bay, it’s $1.55 million.

“It’s a beautiful region with rolling hills of greenery and some of the most beautiful beaches to match,” Mr Flynn said. “I’m originally from Sydney and moved to Bega many years ago and have seen it go from strength to strength.

“I always knew Bega Valley was always going to go through this kind of growth. It was more of a matter of when, rather than, will it happen. I have always been confident of its potential.”

However, with house prices rising in these surrounding NSW regions, locals are being pushed further from their local town centres, Ms Geppert added.

“First-home buyers, especially, have to broaden their search in order to buy something under a certain threshold to be eligible for certain first-home buyer incentives,” she said.

Despite this, new data revealed that there were more first-home buyers in January than at any other time since the global financial crisis, a result of recession-era stimulus measures that brought home-ownership plans for this demographic forward.

According to Ms Geppert, about 30 to 35 per cent of homes in Batemans Bay belonged to Canberrans, and that percentage increased in the last 12 months as more Victorians relocated.

“This is a seaside town for Canberra and for some Victorians and, rather than selling up, home owners have either used these homes as their investment properties or holiday homes if they moved back to their own states,” she said.

“With international borders opening up, I think we’ll see that growth in NSW regions start to slow but I don’t think we’ll see any dramatic declines.”