Or real estate. It's one and the same thing in Australia. And while Batemans Bay is not Sydney, the religious fervour here is just as strong. After all, while we don't have eight butchers or eight barbers, we have eight real estate agents in the Bay!
Not that the fervour always pays off: at the height of the "marina boom", when our somewhat modest and very utilitarian Batemans Bay Marina was going to become another Whitsundays, investors piled into foreshore properties. One monied investor picked up a humble cottage - albeit with a swimming pool - at 31 Beach Road (to the right of the yellow arrow in the above picture) in May 2008 for $1,300,000. He was lucky to divest himself of it just last month for a mere $930,000.
Not that the new owners necessarily got themselves a bargain as the adjoining property at 33 Beach Road (the yellow arrow points to it), picked up by developers in February 2016 for $500,000, is now slated to become an apartment block with $800,000-units in it, which will totally overshadow their new home.
Unless they, too, get caught up in the religious fervour and slap up another apartment building to block out even more of the coastline.
