The tourism hotspots fuelling SA’s regional pandemic recovery

Two SA wine regions have boomed in the wake of SA’s Covid recovery, including one which was going backwards prior to the pandemic.

According to Ray White Group’s 2025 Regional Outlook Report the Barossa Valley was reported as the region to have experienced the greatest increase in median price post-pandemic.

The region recorded a 5 per cent increase in median house price pre-pandemic – from 2015 to 2019.

Prices then soared by 41.3 per cent from 2020 to 2022 during the pandemic, and then another 45.8 per cent between 2023 and 2025 with the region now having a $668,000 median price.

Clare Valley was just 0.1 per cent behind in terms of post-pandemic growth and now has a median price of $531,000.

Barossa Valley is luring homebuyers in their droves. Picture: Supplied

The Barossa’s wine tourism pays a huge part in the region’s appeal.

Home prices increased by 30.6 per cent during the pandemic, but its phenomenal recovery is most evident when you look at how it was performing pre-Covid, when house prices dropped by 1 per cent between 2015 and 2019.

Ray White Clare Valley agent Mark O’Meagher said Clare had been the forgotten wine region of Australia but was now under the nation’s eye.

“Everyone went to the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and the Adelaide Hills – it was too far away, they thought,” he said.

“The values never did themselves justice, and everyone would say how good the value was up there, and then Covid happened, and every wine region in Australian within two hours of an airport suddenly became premium real estate because everyone wanted to get out of the city.

“And then it just hit the map – everyone was like: ‘wow, look how cheap it is here compared to what we’ve got in the city’, and that was from buyers on the east coast as well.

“And the prices just went up really quickly because the competition for it just exploded, and that’s just kept happening.”

And it’s something he expects to continue, especially due to council rulings around subdivision.

“So many properties sold through Covid that now what we’re finding is the market is so tightly held that the prices have been able to hold because the buyer level is still high but the option for properties is lower,” Mr O’Meagher said.

Clare Valley property prices have surged since Covid. Take Two Photo – SATC

Clare Valley property prices have surged since Covid. Take Two Photo – SATC

“We used to have a lot of land on the market and all of that has sold because people didn’t want to build.

“Clare has got stuck a little bit because the council and planning have locked the town in because there are so many blocks that could be subdivided down and would create good allotments that people would be interested in, so the majority of people are buying established.

“I think the only way it would slow down was if a large amount of property were to hit the market.”

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Victor Harbor, the report states, is also a strong performer.

In the five years prior to the pandemic home prices grew by 7 per cent.

Sellers then answered the call of the coast in droves during the pandemic, with home prices up 50 per cent between 2020 and 2022, and then a further 31.1 per cent from 2023 to 2025 to a $759,000 median.

Kangaroo Island has also kicked major goals.

Home values here climbed by 5 per cent in the five years before the pandemic, then from 2020 to 2022 they grew by 45.2 per cent.

They experienced a further 27.9 per cent increase between 2023 to 2025 and now sits at a $488,000 median.

Victor Harbor’s favourite tramway to Granite Island. Picture: Tim Joy

Limestone Cove, Kangaroo Island, SA. Supplied

OC agent and Fleurieu Peninsula specialist Kathleen Fry, said Covid had put places like Victor Harbor, Port Elliot, Middleton and Goolwa on the map.

“People who were in lockdown in other states were on the internet looking at houses all the time so we sold so many properties back then to people from interstate, particular Victorians,” she said.

“Because of Covid people wanted a lifestyle change, and because a lot of companies made it so people could work from home and it’s never gone back, and that’s made people see they can live on the couth coast and work from home and easily commute.

“Covid changed everything – not only did the market go up by 50 per cent, but since then the people who wouldn’t normally buy a property on the south coast because it was too far from work, now they are.”

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Ms Fry said the huge demand for properties as a result of the pandemic have triggered widespread releases of land, a surge in development and an increase in the amount of supportive infrastructure.

“Before Covid we had an abundance of land for sale and it was really hard to sell land, and it would sit on the market for some time, and since then blocks of land are scarce and prices have gone through the roof and they’ve more than doubled in price.

“It’s so much harder to get a block of land.

Ms Fry said were it not for Covid, the amount of growth and the level of urban sprawl it had experienced over the past two years – the region may have only experienced that over the next decade or so.

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