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Quaint weatherboard cottages, cosy log fires, rugged wilderness – the Blue Mountains really is a gentrified country dream come true, and all just over an hour from Sydney.
The days may be getting shorter, the air chillier and the leaves turning autumnal shades of red and brown, but for real estate agents things are starting to hot up.
“I used to take my holidays at this time of year,” Theo Poulos real estate sales manager Bryan Hardy observes. “But now autumn and winter are our main selling periods.”
Not surprising, as the area has something for everyone – traditionalists eager to own a piece of Edwardian splendour, practical souls seeking solid brick at a good price, tree-changers chasing their own slice of acreage and first-home buyers shopping on a tight budget.
“We’ve got attractive homes on the market for $253,000 with nothing to spend. That’s cheap,” Mr Hardy says.
With Leura (the “Double Bay” of the Mountains), Wentworth Falls and Blackheath turning on a spectacular autumn show right now, visitors are also turning to local real estate agents with queries about buying holiday homes.
“We have a lot of people checking out the holiday homes right now,” Mr Hardy says. “They want charm, character, all those things, and there are quite a few of those properties around.”
Century 21 Blackheath’s Stephen Williams has lived in the Blue Mountains for 16 years. He threw in a five-hour-a-day work commute to Sydney in 2000 to work permanently closer to home and hasn’t looked back.
“I’m a country boy at heart. The city’s too claustrophobic for me,” Mr Williams says. “There’s a romantic feeling about Blackheath. I couldn’t live anywhere else. I’ve built three houses and three gardens here.”
Blackheath, or “Bleak-heath” as some wags have christened it due to its propensity for chilly winters and gloomy fogs, has blossomed from a small village settlement at the far end of the Great Western Highway into a charming country town.
“The town’s really lovely, and you can come to Blackheath and spend $180,000 or you can spend $1 million, we cover a really broad spectrum of properties. We pretty much have it all,” he says.
“The majority of people are looking for the lifestyle and the peace and quiet with reasonable proximity to the village centre.”
Sydneysiders aren’t the only ones drawn to the town; Blue Mountains residents also seem to be pulling up stumps and relocating further up the highway to escape what they see as the gentrification of the Mountains.
“There’s a feeling that the mid-Mountains has become a little too suburban and areas like Blackheath are seen as the last true refuge of the Blue Mountains,” Mr Williams says. ”There’s even people moving from Wentworth Falls and Leura because they feel those areas are now too popular; they are buying bigger properties in Blackheath, spending about $500-600,000.
“Houses from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s are quite popular, as long as they have the character people are looking for…we’re also seeing a growth in the number of baby boomers who are looking for something to retire to.
“We have people buying homes now for a move in five years’ time, in the meantime they’ll use it as a holiday house.”
Richardson & Wrench Wentworth Falls agent Kerrith Offner, a life-long resident of the Blue Mountains, says people often harbour an idyllic view of properties in her neck of the woods.
“Sydney people want the old style mountain charmer with polished timber floors and open fire places and pretty gardens,” she says. “Anything with a bit of character sells well, but if you live up here already you want all the modern conveniences.
“We sell modern homes but it’s the older style that’s more popular. And people love the gardens up here.”
With Sydney starting to encroach upon the rural fringe – towns such as Springwood and Glenbrook now feature in the Sydney map directory – and recent road work to widen the Great Western Highway, commuting is no longer the arduous slog it used to be.
“You get a lot of new families who don’t want to bring their families up in the city…and retired couples who want to go somewhere where it’s quieter but still close to families,” she says.