Top 5 Muval COVID-19 Moving House Trends

Considering all the continuing changes due to COVID-19 restrictions across Australia we thought it would be interesting to share some of the top trends that have come from searches across the Muval platform since the start of the year.

Where people are moving house from and to provides great insight into the trends for real estate services, job markets and other societal trends (ie – Downsizing, Safety concerns and more). Although real estate websites might show more of where and what sort of house we’re “DREAMING” about – the actual move requests shows exactly what people are doing. Let’s face it, it would be rare to ask for a moving quote just for the sake of it.

With this in mind, Muval is constantly reviewing where the demand is required based on customer search, web page visits and direct enquiries through our national removalists booking platform. This is mainly done to ensure there is coverage of enough removalists for competitive quotes in the newly popular areas and to make sure customers are getting the best quality and price to move locally or across Australia.

Considering all the continuing changes due to COVID-19 restrictions across Australia we thought it would be interesting to share some of the top trends that have come from searches across the Muval platform since the start of the year.

1. PEOPLE STARTED SEARCHING “CAN I MOVE HOUSE DURING COVID-19”

With so many changes to border restrictions from Governments over the last 6 months, it’s no wonder that there has been 100,000’s of searches from people who have end of leases, or new houses or are taking on new jobs that require a move.

(Visitors to Muval’s COVID-19 Moving House Blog are now over 80,000 since the outbreak began)

Muval started a blog back in March 2020 to help it’s own team quickly understand what changes were affecting customers to ensure they could still move as smoothly as possible.

This blog required over 10 updates a week to keep up to date to with government changes and quickly grew to be one of the top resources for Australian’s search questions like:

• “Are removalists considered essential services”
• “Can I move interstate during Coronavirus”
• “COVID-19 Moving House Quarantine Restrictions”
• “Can I move VIC / NSW to QLD”
• “Moving House Melbourne Level 4 Lockdowns”

With over 80,000 page views since March, there has been a large spike in enquiries to this page since July & August coinciding with the Level 4 Lockdowns in Victoria (20,000 searches from Victorians in 7 days).

NSW residents were second in line for searching for this type of information following hotspot COVID breakouts since April.

2. EARLY NSW COVID OUTBREAKS COINCIDES WITH PEOPLE MOVING TO VICTORIA

Reported by popular Australian news site, “The New Daily” enquiries for leaving Melbourne and Sydney both grew compared to other cities, by 17 and three per cent respectively.

For those packing up and leaving Sydney, the most popular destination was Melbourne, up 14 per cent compared to before the lockdown.

Sydney had over double the amount of people looking to move out versus move in

3. PERTH’S RESTRICTIONS KEEPS PEOPLE STAYING PUT

In addition to remaining a popular destination for movers, people in Perth chose to stay put more following the March lockdown, with outbound inquiries dropping by 25 per cent compared to other cities.

4. COVID AFFECTED SUBURBS SHOW UP AS HOTSPOTS FOR MOVING OUT

Across Australia the Muval platform saw major differences in pre covid to post covid enquiries. news.com.au covered the national interest story with mastheads such as The West Australian, Courier Mail, The Daily Telegraph, Melbourne’s Herald Sun and more highlighting Muval data. There was nearly 150 per cent increase of people trying to get out of COVID hotspot Liverpool - a tripling since the suburb was named a high-risk COVID-19 hotspot and separately there has been a 207 per cent increase of residents wanting to become Homebush inhabitants.

There was also general interest in moving out of traditionally popular suburbs including Randwick, Alexandria, Chatswood, Waterloo, Dee Why, Mosman and the inner city and into Western Sydney.

For NSW, Data from April until June saw Parramatta become the highest searched suburb on the platform by 30 per cent, pushing Randwick - previously the highest searched suburb on the site - out of the top five most popular suburbs altogether.

5. VICTORIA LOCKDOWNS CREATE FLURRY OF OUTBOUND MOVING ENQUIRIES

Once Victorian stage four lockdowns were put into place, a high amount of enquiry from confusion on whether you could “move house during lockdown stage 4” hit the Muval website looking for answers.

This data created major interest with major news outlets such as ABC Radio, 4BC, Channel 9, Channel 7 and wide spread activity across digital news sites as Victorian’s demand for QLD took hold with a major increase.

TV / News Articles included:

Digital news websites included:



The main interest came from Victoria’s inbound moving trends for the first time reversed with more people looking to move out, than in.

This is a significant change where typically there is 55% of move requests to move in and now in July after lockdown, there was over 60% looking to move out with Brisbane / South East QLD being the number 1 destination of interest.

KEEPING UP WITH RESTRICTIONS, TRENDS & HELPING CUSTOMERS IN STRESSFUL TIMES:

Recently, border changes have meant that anyone travelling from COVID Hotspots to either QLD or NSW means that you can ONLY fly in as a new or returning resident to these states.

This is now driving a need for more car transport, pet transport and ability to allow for flexibility and storage whilst people are in quarantine as part of their move.

Muval’s end to end process to help find the best transporters for the best prices using our independent team to support customers hasn’t gone unnoticed with many customers recently commenting with 5 star reviews in Google and Product Review.

The Muval team pride themselves in being one step ahead of the customers needs and during the stressful times we currently live in, and with all the unprecedented trends since January 2020, we wanted to highlight our ongoing commitment to helping prospective movers move on to better things for 2020 and beyond.

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