Buyer's Guide to Byron Bay
Graham Dunn has been living in Byron Bay for 28 years and has been serving the area for 25 years.
Recent demographic change
The demographic of Byron Bay has changed massively in the last 2 years, especially in the last 12 months, a lot of of high network people or even just normal families are moving here out of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne.
Even overseas expats who have always wanted to live here are coming, the baby boomers are starting to come and also a lot of young families are moving here to live permanently - so it’s a huge change.
We’ve just sold a house in the middle of Byron Bay to a young Melbourne family, a couple in their 30’s with two kids under three.
The father runs a business based in Melbourne and Brisbane and so he’s living in Byron Bay in the middle of it, we’re getting a lot of people here now who are working that are internet based, so they can work from home, it's a huge change to everyone's lifestyle.
Pacific Highway upgrades
My son lives in Singapore but now he can get a direct flight every night from Singapore to the Gold Coat and he can be in Byron Bay in another 45 minutes.
In fact I know of a guy who lives here in Byron Bay with his family yet he works in Singapore and flies up and down.
It’s crazy but that's just the way the world's going.
Very limited supply
If you look at Byron Bay with an aerial map, it's totally surrounded by either wetlands or national parks.
The township itself is totally developed, there’s infill subdivisions happening now where you’ve got the old ¼ acre blocks, 1000 square meters, and someone’s built a house at the front of the block and you're cutting the block in half and selling the other block off, that's about the only development that's happening, or someone’s trying to amalgamate 2 or 3 sites together and put something on them, which is pretty expensive because Byron Bay is not cheap.
There’s a few development things happening currently here, our office is involved in a development in Sunrise Beach called the Habitat, which is comprising of about 2000 metres of commercial space and 2000 metres of office space.
We’re just going to market with that now, and it all pretty well spoken for or under offer, and then the first stage is releasing 22 apartments, townhouse apartments, and 6 houses and that's all relatively spoken for off the plan.
They’re not making anymore Byron Bay and everyone wants to be here, it’s as simple as that.
Reduced traffic in town
The council has just changed the traffic flow around one roundabout into Byron, the one near the Police Station and it’s made such a dramatic change to the traffic jams going into Byron Bay, they don’t exist anymore except maybe on a Thursday when they have the farmers markets.
Issues with unemployed younger locals
There is a misconception about the backpackers here, and it’s a sad one.
That's not a real problem, the problem's not the backpackers, because the backpackers are great for Byron Bay, they’re all usually young Americans or Europeans kids, they’re healthy and they have a good time.
The biggest problem that we’ve got sadly, is that some of the Australian kids just don’t want to work and have a lazy lifestyle, the Aussies are the problem it’s not the backpackers.
Put it this way, if you're 18 yrs old or 21 or 25, and you’ve got an attitude that you don’t want to work and take it easy in life, where are you gonna live, are you going live in Lismore or Casino or come to Byron Bay?
It’s pretty simple.