Muval launches Australian-first real-time migration ranking for cities and regions

Muval, a national online removalist booking platform, has collaborated with University of Queensland geographer Dr Elin Charles-Edwards to create MuveRank, an Australian-first real-time migration model that provides an instant ranking for Australian areas based on the number of people moving in and out.

The interactive graph, which can be broken down into capital cities or Australian statistical areas (SA4), shows the rank of local areas in relation to net migration, inbound migration, and outbound migration over the past five years. MuveRank data will be released every quarter, offering the most up-to-date statistical estimates on internal migration in Australia and the potential for short-term forecasts.

According to the 2023 MuveRank, the top 10 local areas for net migration include Melbourne – Inner VIC, Richmond – Tweed NSW, Sunshine Coast QLD, and Perth – Inner WA.

Muval CEO James Morrell said, “MuveRank is a simple snapshot of internal movement that has profound implications for so many people from policy makers to property investors. It has been incredible to work with a University of Queensland researcher on something of this scale and to put our moving data to use for the benefit of communities right around Australia.”

Muval has also launched an interactive map of Australia, shaded to reflect the percentage of overall net migration an area is experiencing each year. The 2023 map shows popular sea change areas, such as the Sunshine Coast and Richmond-Tweed, capturing a significant share of the movement.

Dr Elin Charles-Edwards, who led the project, collated information from Muval’s national removalist aggregation site and cross-checked the numbers with official statistics provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Census. The result is a data machine that provides a real-time early indicator estimate of migration, months in advance of the ABS.

“Migration data is critical, but we have been stuck in a data deficit. This kind of timely data, presented in such a simple, accessible format, is what we have been missing,” Dr Charles-Edwards said. “Based on the first release of data, MuveRank shows that our cities are returning to normal after years of pandemic volatility, as well as some signals suggesting a peri-urban population shift to regional centres near a city such as the Tweed, Central Coast and Sunshine Coast.”

MuveRank charts and moving images are available for download on the Muval website.