How far would you move to break into the housing market?

When Sam Hart and his partner Alina Rasmussen decided to buy a house, the tiny town of Blackall in central-west Queensland beckoned.

Mr Hart had worked in the region years before, but moved to Forbes in central-west New South Wales to be closer to his partner.

"We had 18 months down there but after looking around in New South Wales a bit at the real estate market we decided that if wanted to buy a house, we would prefer to buy a house we can pay off easily and a place that we enjoy living in — so we decided to move back to Blackall in 2017," he said.

In pursuit of an affordable option for their first home, the couple packed up and moved the 1,000 kilometres to Blackall where they bought a four-bedroom house for $185,000.

The median house price for Blackall is $130,000, according to realestate.com.au.

The couple were able to get jobs in the area as Mr Hart had worked in the region before.

"I think for what you can buy compared to the state of New South Wales you can really buy something that you really like, instead of just buying what you can afford," Mr Hart said.

But he said it was not all about the property.

"The community that's the big drawcard — you can find nice houses in any town. However, we just found that people really look out for each other here," he said.

"At the moment everyone's doing it fairly tough — it's not only a drought for farmers but it's a drought for the town's businesses as well because the money is fairly tight at the moment.

"Even still, I think that draws people fairly well together."

Cheapest housing rentals in Australia

A recent report by property information group CoreLogic found Barney Point in Gladstone, Blackall, and Zeehan on the west coast of Tasmania, had the lowest median rents for houses in the country — $150 per week.

Source: Core Logic Best of the Best 2017 report

Senior research analyst Cameron Kusher said the low rents showed weaknesses in the market over the last couple of years.

"What we're seeing in a lot of these areas, in central Queensland particularly, areas linked with the mining and resources sector, is that prices have come down, rents have come down and sales volumes have dropped significantly," Mr Kusher said.

"It is pretty evident that there is not necessarily a lot of demand for housing whether that be to purchase housing or whether that be to rent housing as well."

Blackall market booming

A Blackall real estate agent, Helen Aspinall, said the affordable rents and mortgages in the town were attracting people to the region.

The latest census puts the population of Blackall and nearby Tambo at just under 2,000. ( Supplied: Sam Hart )

Ms Aspinall said she had sold about 10 houses during the last two months of 2017.

"I've been doing real estate here now for eight years and I haven't had interest at this time of year since maybe the first or second year in real estate," she said.

"It usually tends to quieten off at this period and come good just before financial year.

"There's a lot of young couples buying and getting interested, deciding this is where their future is going to be for now.

"I've got families moving back who can't afford to live in the city anymore where the rentals are quite high.

"We've got retirees that've done their trips around Australia and finding it very expensive to get back into the metropolitan areas, so they're all coming back out here where it's a little bit cheaper to live and low crime rates."