If you’re someone who has never lived outside of their home state, you may be surprised at the number of Australians who continue to relocate for a better life.
More than 28,000 residents of NSW left for pastures new last year – the most of any state. Ironically, it was also the state with the largest number of new residents at over 106,000, according to new figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
So, which states benefited from this internal migration?
Perhaps it would not surprise you to learn that it was two of the states with the fastest growing property prices – Western Australia and Queensland; proof again of the impact on values of supply and demand dynamics.
Queensland achieved “net interstate migration” of almost 26,000, while WA’s figure reached more than 12,000.
So, if you could choose your ideal city to live in, where would you go?
A report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) may offer you some guidance.
Its latest Global Livability Index nominated Melbourne as Australia’s most livable city and the fourth best in the world.
Sydney ranked sixth and Adelaide 9th.
Switzerland was the only other country to have two or more cities in the top 10 – Geneva and Zurich, which ranked 3rd.
The top two cities were Copenhagen and Vienna.
The EIU liveability index ranks 173 countries against 30 measures segmented into five categories: political and social stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.
It’s interesting to note Adelaide’s rise has been meteoric – a little like the speeding nature of its property values. Just three years ago, it was placed 30th in the EIU rankings and shot up to 11th last year.
Coincidentally, Adelaide has become the latest capital city to reach a median house price of $1 million, according to data released from the property portal Domain in April. The other cities to break this barrier are Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra.
Only Perth, Darwin and Hobart have an average house price of less than $1 million, although the West Australian capital is likely to join the $1 million club in the next 12 months.
It’s worth noting that if you add apartment values into the Domain data, only Sydney and Brisbane now have property values above $1 million.