PEOPLE who aren’t prepared to work harder to buy homes in their preferred suburb should consider moving to fringe areas such as Tarneit, says a key property player.

Mark Wizel, city sales director for real estate firm CBRE, said that Australians should stop whingeing about Asian buyers and learn from their industriousness.

“As Australians have we just been too indulgent in the lifestyle we’ve effectively led all these years and has that driven us to a point of complacency,” he said.

“Where, instead of actually focusing on controlling an outcome, that is, working harder and making sacrifices, that the easy way now is just to voice our concerns through the media or to blame someone else.”

Mr Wizel, whose firm has handled $6.5 billion in transactions involving Asian developers since 2009, said that most Asians buying homes in suburbs like Balwyn and Kew were permanent residents, not foreign investors.

“If a Chinese family is willing to pay $200,000 more to get into a school zone ... we don’t read that the father and mother have made a commitment that the mother’s going to get a night time job in order to pay extra for the house,” he said.

“Unfortunately at the moment we are just being outmuscled on ‘We’ll have a go.’”

Mr Wizel said that people had to be prepared to work harder and take on more responsibility if they wanted the “type of lifestyle to live in a suburb like Canterbury”.

“Or, you have to be willing to say, ‘This isn’t viable, we’re moving to Tarneit,’” he said.

“The idea can’t be I don’t want to move to Tarneit because I don’t want to go over the Westgate versus it’s just not fair because I can’t compete at an auction over here.”

Earlier this year, Liberal MHR for the outer eastern seat of Deakin, Michael Sukkar, said his office was often inundated with complaints on Monday mornings relating to prices at Saturday auctions.

“The question always is with foreign investment into residential real estate ... is it in Australia’s national interest for this investment to occur?” he said.