Australia property: Who is tree-changing and which towns are they moving to?

Australia property: Who is tree-changing and which towns are they moving to?


Who is tree-changing – and the towns they’re moving to


ByElizabeth Redman
March 6, 2025 — 5.00am

More city dwellers moved to regional areas than went the other way almost every year between 2007 and 2020, new research shows, discounting the popular belief that the tree-change trend began in earnest when the pandemic hit.

Tree-changers were more likely to be high-income and older, and able to buy a home, according to two reports from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute released on Thursday.


Tree-changers were leaving cities earlier than conventional wisdom holds to move to centres such as Bendigo.CREDIT:JOE ARMAO

One of the main reasons people moved out of capital cities was housing, found two research papers – Understanding contemporary demographic and economic drivers of household mobility and their policy implications, and Inquiry into projecting Australia’s urban and regional futures: population dynamics, regional mobility and planning responses.

Moving regionally enabled households to achieve homeownership but put upward pressure on housing prices in the towns they moved to, including surrounding areas.

Patterns of migration changed over the past two Census periods, the study found.

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In NSW, the Tamworth-Gunnedah area was a focus for people leaving Sydney between 2011 and 2016, but in the five years to 2021, Newcastle emerged as a focus.

In Victoria, a new regional cluster of population movement formed between the areas of Glenelg-Southern Grampians and Warrnambool, Colac-Corangamite, and another between Bendigo, Heathcote-Castlemaine and Kyneton.

In Queensland, population movements between Maryborough and Hervey Bay and Brisbane became more pronounced over the study period. In Western Australia, although there has been a concentration of population movement from the regions to Perth, Bunbury remains a focus for regional migration.

In general, new intermediate-sized urban areas are forming around centres such as Newcastle and Bendigo as migration patterns shift.

More tree-changers left cities each year since 2007, except in 2013, than the number of regional residents who moved to cities, until the research period ends in 2020, the report found.


The research also examined why tree-changers choose to move, based on data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey run by the Melbourne Institute at The University of Melbourne.

The most common reason for leaving the city was housing in NSW, Victoria and Queensland, although other popular reasons included lifestyle and employment.
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Tree-changers were older on average than people who moved to cities.

The share of high-income earners among tree-changers has increased since 2014, and the share of tree-changers who become home owners has increased over time.


If workers could not find affordable housing, they may not be able to move to a regional area. CREDIT:JOE ARMAO

Lead author, University of Sydney Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Nicole Gurran, said tree-changing had begun in earnest pre-pandemic.

“We assumed it was a COVID phenomenon, but when you look back at the data, it picked up during COVID, but it had begun in the previous decade,” she said.
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She said tree-changers were often able to achieve homeownership as they could find work in their new location, run a business or maintain a connection to the city by working from home and visiting the CBD office part of the time.

“In regional areas you’ve got very shallow rental markets, very homogenous housing stock. It takes a very long time to ramp up new supply in response to population growth,” she said.


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She said if workers could not find affordable housing, they may not be able to move to a regional area, which becomes an economic issue.

Ray White chief economist Nerida Conisbee, who was not involved in the research, has been tracking the tree-change effect on property prices and says the trend was evident before 2020, even though it was then amplified.
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“It’s definitely resulted in a shift upwards [in price], particularly for highly desirable tree-change areas that offer something special,” she said.

For example, she highlighted the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. Noosa had a median house price of $1.33 million in the December quarter, on Domain data, up from $728,750 five years earlier. She also noted strong jumps in Newcastle (up 50.9 per cent in five years to a median $905,500) and Wollongong (up 44.6 per cent to $1,015,000).

“It’s absolutely challenging if you aren’t in the market and want to get in,” she said, calling for key worker housing or higher density options.

CORRECTION
A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed the source of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. It is run by the Melbourne Institute at The University of Melbourne.


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