In our last post I described the outline of why and how Kate and I managed to escape to the country. This post I’ll be talking about how to find the perfect area to move to. We’ll talk about the things that you need to consider when picking a town or region to move to.

Identify Success Factors

When Kate and I started looking for a region or town where we would buy our property, we had a few requirements that needed to be met for us to succeed.

The first was it must be within an hour of appropriate employment opportunities. There was no point in buying a property somewhere where we couldn’t get work to pay it. Unfortunately, we did not have the money to make the move without a mortgage. We had to ensure there were opportunities in employment for Kate in Admin and Events and myself in Marketing.

The second requirement was that it had to be somewhere we could afford and not have an unreasonable mortgage.

In an ideal world we would have bought a beautiful property with country views and lifestyle that still allowed us to leisurely commute into Sydney for our jobs. HA! Well that is not going to happen where basic houses on postage stamp sized blocks go for nearly a million dollars!

The third was that it had to be within a day’s drive so family and friends would still want to visit us or we could easily come back for a weekend to visit them.

These were our main factors; employment, price and proximity to friends and family. We were looking for lifestyle so land type was another factor, we wanted some livestock, a good veggie garden and access to be able to forage and hunt for our own food.

This basically lead us to looking all over the state, up the coast, down the coast, further inland and even into another state before honing in on a region that checked all the boxes.

The region we ultimately chose was the Southern Tablelands of NSW as it checked all of the boxes for us!

What suits us may not suit you

Everyone’s situation is different so your factors may be completely different to ours. However, I feel the main things you need to consider to make it work are the above.

So ask yourself these questions when looking for an area to move to:

Can I/we get a job easily there?

Can we afford the property we want there?

Is being a reasonable distance to friends and family important to us?

Other things you need to consider are:

Land type: does the land in this area suit the things I want to do?

Climate: can you handle the weather in this area?

Have a good look at what the local climate is, does it get enough rainfall? Is it too hot or too cold for you? Etc.

If you hate the cold and buy in a place that is cold as where we are, it might get unbearable for you and you could find yourself miserable so it is definitely a factor

Research this stuff well, don’t rush it, this is where you’ll hopefully spend most of the rest of your life so do it justice.

Resources that make this easier

www.seek.com.au for searching employment opportunities.

www.realestate.com.au for property prices.

www.bom.gov.au for the local climate and weather.

Australian Bureau of Statistics Quickstats is a great place to see a town’s demographics which can help as well.

Finally,

The biggest thing you can do to ensure success is to visit the areas you pinpoint as promising. There’s no substitute for on the ground experience. So take the time to tour around and really check out the places you want to live before getting too excited.

Good luck and we hope you find the perfect area to move to!