This regional broker says both her and her clients rate this as the most difficult aspect
Homeschooling is the biggest challenge MoneyQuest Geelong broker Sarah Maslen (pictured) and her clients are facing at the moment as the Victorian regional centre navigates another lockdown. The single mother normally works more than 40 hours a week, but now that she is also responsible for guiding her young daughter’s schooling, she has the equivalent of three full-time jobs on her hands.
“That is my clients’ biggest challenge too,” she said. “The best I can say about it is that it often becomes a bonding experience for us. But that’s the challenge faced by clients - it’s the emotional challenge of worrying about their kids not being at school.
“What I am seeing is, it’s largely women who are taking on the burden of doing it, which I think is problematic for our society as a whole in terms of financial and emotional consequences.”
Aside from this challenge, Maslen said most of her clients have largely been unaffected.
“My business has really smashed it outside the park over the last 12 months – I’m incredibly busy,” she said. “I have found that the lockdowns impact different people differently. Some of my clients are in areas where they work in tourism and hospitality and they have been quite clearly affected.
“But a lot of my clients work in areas where they can work from home, and they are still looking to refinance or buy houses. It’s really disproportionate how it’s affected different people just depending on the industry they work in.
“Having said that, I’ve noticed a couple of my clients that it has affected have been incredibly resilient and they’ve gone out and got jobs in other areas.”
She said that like the rest of the country, the property market in Geelong “has gone nuts.” Demand has remained strong throughout Victoria’s lockdowns and, up until recently, buyers could still inspect properties in person due to fewer restrictions in regional areas.
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“As a general rule, people are still really keen to buy property or build and that hasn’t slowed down,” she said.
The movement of city dwellers to regional areas, as well as low interest rates and people having more time on their hands while being at home, are likely factors that have driven this demand throughout COVID, she said.
“I think there is also an element of, while COVID has impacted our daily lives it hasn’t impacted our goals and financial ambitions in the long term,” she said. “People are still saying, it’s been my goal to buy an investment property – I’m still going to go ahead with that goal.
“It hasn’t necessarily dampened people’s long-term objectives, and they are still working towards that.”
