The slowchange trend, May 2003

The slowchangers: a real estate trend, May 2003

Until last year, 33-year-old Michael Wigg lived in a two-bedroom terrace with two dogs in East Redfern and battled traffic for two hours a day to work on the northern beaches.
He now lives on 280 acres just outside Mudgee, on a property that he bought for $207,000 at Botobolar “where there is nothing, truly nothing, around”.
Wigg has started his own landscaping business in Mudgee and his partner Sarah Coleman has moved to the country to join him and set up a naturopath practice.
“It only takes me 40 minutes to drive to work now – although I do have more of a flat tyre problem now that I’m driving on country roads,” he says.
Blame spiralling property prices in the city and on the coast. Blame the awful Sydney traffic. Or just blame the allure of country New South Wales where the air is clean and the living is easy.
Whatever it is, there is a new breed of city-slickers leaving the opportunities of Sydney behind in the quest for a better life in a country area.
Young, educated professional people aged between 20 and 39 – the lifeblood of any city economy - are moving to regional towns to find a better balance between work, rest and play.
While the classic clichéd “seachanger” is aged over 45 and sells a pricey Sydney home to downsize to a beachside retreat or rural acreage, this new breed is more like a slowchanger.
The slowchangers are focussed on creating a more balanced life without stress, but they are not retiring or giving away work. They are busy opening new businesses and boosting regional economies while creating the fulfilling lifestyle they have always wanted.
Rarely do slowchangers own a highly valuable Sydney property that gives them the financial flexibility to “downsize”. Instead they are fleeing high city property prices by moving to small towns that can offer the lifestyle they aspire to. That also means many of them are heading inland, away from the high property prices near the coast.

SLOWCHANGE FOR TIME

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence confirming the slowchange trend. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows small numbers of Sydneysiders aged between 20 and 39 are leaving the city, mainly for the Illawarra, Hunter and Mid-North Coast regions.
“There are still more people moving to Sydney than leaving, but the figures do show a small number of Sydney people moving to the regional areas,” a spokeswoman for the bureau says.
Macquarie Bank’s Rod Cornish says population figures show there are more people in the 45 to 55 year age bracket moving out of Sydney – but there is definitely a stream of young families abandoning high-priced Sydney.
“A lot of Dad, Mum and the kids are going to the areas around the Central Coast and Wollongong and to a lesser degree the Mid-North Coast,” he says.
Cornish says the recent property boom, which has seen Sydney median house prices grow by 13 per cent to $500,000 in the year to December 2003, has sped up the seachange and slowchange phenomenon.
“The seachange phenomenon was never around in a big way until five years ago when people saw others start to do it and they decided they wanted that lifestyle,” he says.
“A lot of people in that 45 to 55 age group want to spend less time in Sydney and escape the pressure. The more people see people living a nice lifestyle, the more they want it.”
DOWNSHIFTING
The Australia Institute has researched the trend of downshifting, which is defined as someone taking a pay cut for better quality of life.
Institute Senior Research Fellow Richard Denniss says a 2003 survey found 21 per cent of people aged between 30 and 39 had downshifted in the last 10 years.
Denniss says the institute conducted the surveys believing that the bulk of people who had downshifted would be aged over 45 – but found that it was more prevalent in younger people.
“The number of downshifters was higher than we expected so we did another survey with focus groups and interviews and that confirmed that people were doing it to create more balance and time in their lives.”
He says younger people are more open to the idea that money can’t buy happiness and it is hardly surprising that they are fleeing to small regional areas.
“Moving to the country is a lot cheaper so people’s standards of living are higher and we know that what does make people happy is being valued for what they contribute,” he says.
“It’s a lot easier to form social links and become a valued human being in smaller communities.”
But perhaps the rush and bustle of inner city life just isn’t as appealing now that young people understand the stress and time imbalance that comes with it.
Masters of Business Administration student Sarah Quigley is just 23 and has bought her first house in Niagara Park, near Gosford, in an area surrounded by bushland.
She spends around three hours a day commuting to a job in Erskineville and has no desire to live close to the bustle of the city.
“I think tradition is coming back, people want to marry younger and we are reverting back to more old-fashioned ideas,” she says.
“I like shopping in a place where the butcher knows my name. I like being part of a community.”

NOT JUST TAKING A PAY CUT

The truth is that slowchangers aren’t always downshifting. When Michael Wigg planned his move to Mudgee, he was anticipating a huge drop in his income – but he is now making more money than he imagined.
“I applied for a landscaping job on a station that I thought would pay around $40,000 a year and that would have been a drop in pay – but my jaw dropped when I found out the salary was $28,000 a year,” he says.
“That forced me into looking at starting my own business and now I’m doing better than I was Sydney.”
Freuden and Newhouse have also successfully started their business, Bellingen Canoe Adventures.
When the pair first moved to the north coast, Newhouse took a teaching job and Freuden gave music lessons to earn some money while the business became established. They now both work full time in the business, which runs canoe trips on the Bellinger River.
“I am busy. I am canoeing four nights a week, playing in the band one night and rehearsing with the band on another,” says Freuden. “But it doesn’t feel like work.”

EFFECT OF PROPERTY BOOM

Denniss says the Australia-wide property boom has created two distinct groups of people – the older, wealthier people who can cash in on the boom to buy a lifestyle property and another group of younger people cannot afford to buy high-priced city property.
“Those people who could spend their lives being depressed that they can never afford a house in Sydney then go elsewhere looking for cheaper property,” he says.
Nicole Masri says Braidwood is relatively cheap, but it is a growing town with booming real estate prices thanks to the affordability and position close to Canberra and Batemans Bay.
“My house would be worth millions of dollars if it was in Sydney because there’s room for a pony, a vegetable garden and a shed which is bigger than most Sydney units,” she says.
“We’ve done well out of the property here even in the short time we’ve had it because prices have risen so much.”
Cornish points out that lifestyle locations are set to out-perform the general real estate market in the medium to long term.
“The seachange trend won’t go away,” he says.
“As a long term alternative, people are not looking to live in remote areas with nothing around, they want urban benefits like restaurants and cafes in a rural location.”
And Denniss predicts that as our incomes increase, more and more people will follow the downshifting trend.
“Now that people earn $50,000 a year, it is easy to drop back to $40,000 a year and still survive – not long ago we were earning just $30,000 a year so it was harder to downshift because you couldn’t afford it,” he says.

BREAKOUTS
MICHAEL WIGG AND SARAH COLEMAN
Moved to Mudgee in September 2003
When Michael Wigg and Sarah Coleman moved to Mudgee last year, they were following Wigg’s dream to set up his own property.
“There was nothing I didn’t like about the city, I just like it more here – I like having cows, I like having two marauding kelpies and I like the life,” he says.
“The only thing I really miss is yum cha.”
Coleman, a naturopath who grew up in Sydney, says she anticipated that moving to the country would be more difficult and take a long time to get a business established.
“Everyone’s so friendly and Mudgee women are really pro-active about business and have invited me to dinners,” she says.
“I was not a babe in the woods about country life. I knew living on tank water would be a hassle and I knew it would be hard living so far out of town.
“I just don’t think I expected it to be as good as it has been.”

JODY NEWHOUSE AND DANIEL FREUDEN
Moved to Bellingen in 1998
When Daniel Freuden and Jody Newhouse chose to leave Bondi for Bellingen in 1998, they had a one-year-old son Zac and dreamt of raising him in an artistic and nurturing community.
“What we were missing in Sydney was time and that’s one of the biggest assets in your life,” Freuden says.
“We would try to catch up with people for coffee and they only had 45 minutes and then you would have to try to find a park and it was all very hard. Now our friends come up and stay for a week and we get quality time with them.”
It was always Daniel Freuden’s dream to live in a church by the water – so when he ended up giving a piano lesson in just such a property, he offered to buy the place.
“We asked the lady to keep the price cheap and she even threw in the ride-on mower,” he says.
The pair, who worked as teachers in Sydney, now run Bellingen Canoe Adventures from home.
“There are jobs here, but less than in Sydney. We created a niche business – something to serve the community and put smiles on people’s dials,” Freuden says.
The big bonus for Newhouse is that her husband works from home so they spend more time together as a family.
“We actually raise our child together, which is fabulous,” she says.

NICOLE MASRI
Moved to Braidwood in 2000

When Nicole Masri and her ex-partner returned to Sydney after a year overseas, they decided to move to Braidwood in 2000 and follow their dream of opening a restaurant.
“We were living in Bondi and freakishly ended up here,” says 29-year-old Masri, who has since had two children, Maya and Luca.
Masri loves the open space and community atmosphere of the small heritage town 45-minutes out of Canberra.
Masri and her partner have just sold their restaurant, La Luna, but she is hoping to stay in Braidwood to raise her children in the tight-knit community.
“I like the fact that people know my kids’ names and ring me up if they see one of my children with someone they don’t know,” she says.
“The hardest thing about life in a small town is that there isn’t much child care and there isn’t really much part-time work.”
Masri says she has a love-hate relationship with Braidwood, especially in the winter.
“I love this place, but it is freezing in the winter - when it frosts in the morning and you have to chop wood for the fire, it can lose its appeal,” she says.
Masri warns that country life isn’t for everyone, especially those who love the convenience of takeaway restaurants and 24-hour chemists.
“In the city there is an ease of living in terms of getting commodities and convenience but then the city can be a real hassle to get to the beach where you battle traffic and then have to find a park,” she says.


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The slowchangers: a real estate trend, May 2003 Until last year, 33-year-old Michael Wigg lived in a two-bedroom terrace with two dogs in East Redfern and battled traffic for two hours a day to work on the northern beaches. He now lives on 280 acres just outside Mudgee, on a property that he bought for $207,000 at Botobolar “where there is nothing, truly nothing, around”. Wigg has started his own landscaping business in Mudgee and his partner Sarah Coleman has moved to the country to join him and set up a naturopath practice. “It only takes me 40 minutes to drive to work now – although I do have more of a flat tyre problem now that I’m driving on country roads,” he says. Blame spiralling property prices in the city and on the coast. Blame the awful Sydney traffic. Or just blame the allure of country New South Wales where the air is clean and the living is easy. Whatever it is, there is a new breed of city-slickers leaving the opportunities of Sydney behind in the quest for a better life in a country area. Young, educated professional people aged between 20 and 39 – the lifeblood of any city economy - are moving to regional towns to find a better balance between work, rest and play. While the classic clichéd “seachanger” is aged over 45 and sells a pricey Sydney home to downsize to a beachside retreat or rural acreage, this new breed is more like a slowchanger. The slowchangers are focussed on creating a more balanced life without stress, but they are not retiring or giving away work. They are busy opening new businesses and boosting regional economies while creating the fulfilling lifestyle they have always wanted. Rarely do slowchangers own a highly valuable Sydney property that gives them the financial flexibility to “downsize”. Instead they are fleeing high city property prices by moving to small towns that can offer the lifestyle they aspire to. That also means many of them are heading inland, away from the high property prices near the coast. SLOWCHANGE FOR TIME There is plenty of anecdotal evidence confirming the slowchange trend. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows small numbers of Sydneysiders aged between 20 and 39 are leaving the city, mainly for the Illawarra, Hunter and Mid-North Coast regions. “There are still more people moving to Sydney than leaving, but the figures do show a small number of Sydney people moving to the regional areas,” a spokeswoman for the bureau says. Macquarie Bank’s Rod Cornish says population figures show there are more people in the 45 to 55 year age bracket moving out of Sydney – but there is definitely a stream of young families abandoning high-priced Sydney. “A lot of Dad, Mum and the kids are going to the areas around the Central Coast and Wollongong and to a lesser degree the Mid-North Coast,” he says. Cornish says the recent property boom, which has seen Sydney median house prices grow by 13 per cent to $500,000 in the year to December 2003, has sped up the seachange and slowchange phenomenon. “The seachange phenomenon was never around in a big way until five years ago when people saw others start to do it and they decided they wanted that lifestyle,” he says. “A lot of people in that 45 to 55 age group want to spend less time in Sydney and escape the pressure. The more people see people living a nice lifestyle, the more they want it.” DOWNSHIFTING The Australia Institute has researched the trend of downshifting, which is defined as someone taking a pay cut for better quality of life. Institute Senior Research Fellow Richard Denniss says a 2003 survey found 21 per cent of people aged between 30 and 39 had downshifted in the last 10 years. Denniss says the institute conducted the surveys believing that the bulk of people who had downshifted would be aged over 45 – but found that it was more prevalent in younger people. “The number of downshifters was higher than we expected so we did another survey with focus groups and interviews and that confirmed that people were doing it to create more balance and time in their lives.” He says younger people are more open to the idea that money can’t buy happiness and it is hardly surprising that they are fleeing to small regional areas. “Moving to the country is a lot cheaper so people’s standards of living are higher and we know that what does make people happy is being valued for what they contribute,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to form social links and become a valued human being in smaller communities.” But perhaps the rush and bustle of inner city life just isn’t as appealing now that young people understand the stress and time imbalance that comes with it. Masters of Business Administration student Sarah Quigley is just 23 and has bought her first house in Niagara Park, near Gosford, in an area surrounded by bushland. She spends around three hours a day commuting to a job in Erskineville and has no desire to live close to the bustle of the city. “I think tradition is coming back, people want to marry younger and we are reverting back to more old-fashioned ideas,” she says. “I like shopping in a place where the butcher knows my name. I like being part of a community.” NOT JUST TAKING A PAY CUT The truth is that slowchangers aren’t always downshifting. When Michael Wigg planned his move to Mudgee, he was anticipating a huge drop in his income – but he is now making more money than he imagined. “I applied for a landscaping job on a station that I thought would pay around $40,000 a year and that would have been a drop in pay – but my jaw dropped when I found out the salary was $28,000 a year,” he says. “That forced me into looking at starting my own business and now I’m doing better than I was Sydney.” Freuden and Newhouse have also successfully started their business, Bellingen Canoe Adventures. When the pair first moved to the north coast, Newhouse took a teaching job and Freuden gave music lessons to earn some money while the business became established. They now both work full time in the business, which runs canoe trips on the Bellinger River. “I am busy. I am canoeing four nights a week, playing in the band one night and rehearsing with the band on another,” says Freuden. “But it doesn’t feel like work.” EFFECT OF PROPERTY BOOM Denniss says the Australia-wide property boom has created two distinct groups of people – the older, wealthier people who can cash in on the boom to buy a lifestyle property and another group of younger people cannot afford to buy high-priced city property. “Those people who could spend their lives being depressed that they can never afford a house in Sydney then go elsewhere looking for cheaper property,” he says. Nicole Masri says Braidwood is relatively cheap, but it is a growing town with booming real estate prices thanks to the affordability and position close to Canberra and Batemans Bay. “My house would be worth millions of dollars if it was in Sydney because there’s room for a pony, a vegetable garden and a shed which is bigger than most Sydney units,” she says. “We’ve done well out of the property here even in the short time we’ve had it because prices have risen so much.” Cornish points out that lifestyle locations are set to out-perform the general real estate market in the medium to long term. “The seachange trend won’t go away,” he says. “As a long term alternative, people are not looking to live in remote areas with nothing around, they want urban benefits like restaurants and cafes in a rural location.” And Denniss predicts that as our incomes increase, more and more people will follow the downshifting trend. “Now that people earn $50,000 a year, it is easy to drop back to $40,000 a year and still survive – not long ago we were earning just $30,000 a year so it was harder to downshift because you couldn’t afford it,” he says. BREAKOUTS MICHAEL WIGG AND SARAH COLEMAN Moved to Mudgee in September 2003 When Michael Wigg and Sarah Coleman moved to Mudgee last year, they were following Wigg’s dream to set up his own property. “There was nothing I didn’t like about the city, I just like it more here – I like having cows, I like having two marauding kelpies and I like the life,” he says. “The only thing I really miss is yum cha.” Coleman, a naturopath who grew up in Sydney, says she anticipated that moving to the country would be more difficult and take a long time to get a business established. “Everyone’s so friendly and Mudgee women are really pro-active about business and have invited me to dinners,” she says. “I was not a babe in the woods about country life. I knew living on tank water would be a hassle and I knew it would be hard living so far out of town. “I just don’t think I expected it to be as good as it has been.” JODY NEWHOUSE AND DANIEL FREUDEN Moved to Bellingen in 1998 When Daniel Freuden and Jody Newhouse chose to leave Bondi for Bellingen in 1998, they had a one-year-old son Zac and dreamt of raising him in an artistic and nurturing community. “What we were missing in Sydney was time and that’s one of the biggest assets in your life,” Freuden says. “We would try to catch up with people for coffee and they only had 45 minutes and then you would have to try to find a park and it was all very hard. Now our friends come up and stay for a week and we get quality time with them.” It was always Daniel Freuden’s dream to live in a church by the water – so when he ended up giving a piano lesson in just such a property, he offered to buy the place. “We asked the lady to keep the price cheap and she even threw in the ride-on mower,” he says. The pair, who worked as teachers in Sydney, now run Bellingen Canoe Adventures from home. “There are jobs here, but less than in Sydney. We created a niche business – something to serve the community and put smiles on people’s dials,” Freuden says. The big bonus for Newhouse is that her husband works from home so they spend more time together as a family. “We actually raise our child together, which is fabulous,” she says. NICOLE MASRI Moved to Braidwood in 2000 When Nicole Masri and her ex-partner returned to Sydney after a year overseas, they decided to move to Braidwood in 2000 and follow their dream of opening a restaurant. “We were living in Bondi and freakishly ended up here,” says 29-year-old Masri, who has since had two children, Maya and Luca. Masri loves the open space and community atmosphere of the small heritage town 45-minutes out of Canberra. Masri and her partner have just sold their restaurant, La Luna, but she is hoping to stay in Braidwood to raise her children in the tight-knit community. “I like the fact that people know my kids’ names and ring me up if they see one of my children with someone they don’t know,” she says. “The hardest thing about life in a small town is that there isn’t much child care and there isn’t really much part-time work.” Masri says she has a love-hate relationship with Braidwood, especially in the winter. “I love this place, but it is freezing in the winter - when it frosts in the morning and you have to chop wood for the fire, it can lose its appeal,” she says. Masri warns that country life isn’t for everyone, especially those who love the convenience of takeaway restaurants and 24-hour chemists. “In the city there is an ease of living in terms of getting commodities and convenience but then the city can be a real hassle to get to the beach where you battle traffic and then have to find a park,” she says.