New figures from REA Group show enquiry growth of up to 245 per cent in regional and fringe suburbs, a number too large to file under the usual seasonal noise.
The scale of the shift matters more than any single suburb result. When enquiry growth of that size shows up in regional and fringe markets simultaneously, it points to something structural rather than a handful of good campaigns. Affordability pressure in the capitals, remote work arrangements that never fully reversed, and lifestyle preferences that shifted during the pandemic and never fully shifted back are all still doing quiet work on where buyers actually want to live.
For agents working regional and fringe patches, this is the kind of data that should be sitting in every listing presentation this spring, not as a vague regional is hot line, but as a specific number vendors can be shown. For metro agents, it is worth asking a harder question: how many of the buyers currently sitting in your database have quietly started looking further out, and does your follow-up process even notice when they do.
Enquiry data does not lie about where attention is going. The only question is who is paying attention to it first.
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