Forget Returning to the Office — head to a Third Space instead.

Since the pandemic forced organizations around the world to finally embrace remote work, more and more people are having sea-change and tree-change moments.

In Victoria’s coastal Mornington Peninsula, traditionally a popular second-home destination for wealthy Melbournians, property prices have soared by as much as 30% in the past 12 months.

The peninsula’s mayor, Despi O’Connor, said that the trend in people relocating from Melbourne to the peninsular was an unanticipated outcome of the pandemic.

The thinking is ‘if I don’t need to regularly commute to the CBD, why do I need to live nearby?’

After all, cities as we know them are a natural evolution of the industrial revolution, with people flocking to where the work was. But for today’s knowledge workers, the work can increasingly be done from anywhere.

Not only that, but as property prices have cut many out of metropolitan markets, newly remote workers are jumping on the opportunity to buy their dream home in a dream area at a significant discount to what they’d pay for a comparable home closer to a CBD.

This is a trend playing out the world over, from New York to Tokyo.