As Byron Bay house prices soar, here’s where buyers are looking instead

It’s a sunny Tuesday afternoon in early December but it feels more like a long weekend in Brunswick Heads, a small coastal village that sits up against a turquoise estuary. A quaint timber bridge links the river to a surf beach that stretches 10 kilometres south to Byron Bay.

A mixture of families and twenty-somethings spread out picnic blankets in the park, watching kayakers ride the river’s high tide out to the ocean. Indistinct chatter and laughter drift from the local hotel’s beer garden, and people mill in and out of eateries and vintage stores.

It’s easy to see why Eli Wood, a 33-year-old carpenter renting in nearby Ocean Shores, wants to live in the Northern Rivers.

She looked to buy around South Golden Beach, north of Brunswick Heads, over a year ago but wasn’t quite ready. “Now that I am almost ready, the prices have really jumped in the past three to four months,” Ms Wood said.

It is the Byron Bay spillover effect. Not only is Byron’s property market wildly competitive and expensive, but its crowded surf breaks, traffic jams and busy streets have prompted sea-changers and holidaymakers to head to smaller coastal towns like Lennox Head, Pottsville and Brunswick Heads.