Real estate is continuing to perform well in rural areas of East Gippsland as COVID-19 prompts city dwellers to think about an alternative lifestyle far away from Melbourne’s fringes.
In the High Country, Omeo is proving a popular pick for those wishing to bunker down and escape the city.
Elders real estate agent, David Hill, told the Advertiser that inquiries have been phenomenal in the past three or four months.
“COVID has had more influence than anything on people wanting to get out of Melbourne and into country towns,” Mr Hill said.
“There’s not a lot of property currently for sale in the district.
“A lot of listings that have been there for some time have sold in recent months.”
Elders earlier this month sold a 320-acre property on the Omeo Valley Road for $360,000 after it was listed for just four days.
The buyer paid the asking price to snap up the rural holding, of which half was under covenant.
“There was only about 150 acres of land that could be used for grazing,” Mr Hill said, explaining the rest was heavily treed.
“There’s not a lot being offered for sale at the moment, I think that’s generally pretty much the case everywhere.
“There’s plenty of enquiries for rural land, but not a lot coming onto the open market.”
Mr Hill, who has been a livestock and real estate agent in Omeo for about 20 years, said following the bushfires and drought, farmers were now achieving record prices for sheep and cattle and were therefore more inclined to hold onto their properties.
“It has a lot to do with the rural economy. Many are just getting back on their feet, so stock (property) is tightly held, traditionally it always has been up here,” Mr Hill said.
Kelly Quirke from LJ Hooker supported Mr Hill’s comments saying the agency had seen a strong increase in demand for properties in Omeo in the past 12 months.
“Properties that had been for sale for some time have been sold, new properties are being snapped up with buyers prepared to pay close to the asking price and land sales are extremely strong,” Ms Quirke said.
She said competition between buyers for choice land had pushed prices up.
“Some land owners have almost doubled their money in an 18-month period,” Ms Quirke said. Blocks that sold in early 2019 for around
$40,000 are now being resold for $80,000. Ms Quirke said the competition for land was largely between locals. “There is excitement locally about the upcoming bike track and the potential growth to the region,” she said.
Ms Quirke, who has family links to Omeo, said she wasn’t surprised the town was attracting attention from further afield.
“People are seeking investment or holiday homes and we have a lot of buyers waiting for properties to come onto the market,” she said.
Omeo was included among a list of towns that attracted the highest increase in traffic searches for property from July 2019 to July 2020, according to Domain data.
It made the top five in regional Victoria with a
99.5 per cent increase of traffic searches compared to Paradise Beach, near Sale, which recorded a 149.8 per cent increase in searches.
Outgoing East Gippsland Shire Councillor, Natalie O’Connell, who resides in Omeo, said the interest was good news for the town.
“Anecdotally, I know of one property investor from Melbourne who has bought three or four commercial properties in town as well as two blocks of land, because of the bike track,” Cr O’Connell said.
Cr O’Connell was an early supporter of the bike track and pushed to get it off the ground.
“I’ve got no doubt that the recent surge in property sales have been from the development of the bike track,” she said.
Cr O’Connell said the East Gippsland Shire needs to rezone land to give people the opportunity to build.
She said much of land was not appropriately zoned, explaining it was either categorised as farming or rural living when it needed to be zoned into low residential.
“The beauty of Omeo is that we’ve got the infrastructure, but we’ve just got to be zoned properly,” Cr O’Connell said.
“It is high on the shire’s strategic planning list, but it needs to be fast tracked from my point of view.”

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Omeo has recorded an increase in real estate sales and inquiries as people are drawn to the High Country township. K406-9896