Sydneysiders flee to the Blue Mountains, the region with a median price of $680,250

But she couldn’t be happier. “I absolutely love living here,” said school administration worker Maria, 62, who moved to Wentworth Falls two years ago. “I fell in love with this house, I’ve got a great view and a wonderful climate and lots of little villages around.

“I’ve also got lots of space. I have three grown-up children who’ve started having babies and my little semi in Croydon wasn’t big enough to have all the family around. This one does, and you can’t compare the prices!”

Of course that’s precisely what more Sydneysiders are doing. A house in Croydon now has a median price of $1,552,500 and one in Wentworth Falls $715,000. For the Blue Mountains, overall, the house median sits at $680,250‚ just over half Sydney’s median of $1,178,859, on Domain Group figures.

That price differential is driving increasing numbers every week to swap city living for a country idyll. “Affordability is a key issue,” LJ Hooker head of research Mathew Tiller says. “Then people are looking for houses with more room and also a more relaxed lifestyle.

“The market in the mountains is also performing well with prices in Katoomba, for instance, going up 22 per cent in the past year, and 87 per cent in the last five, but still with a median of just $610,000.”

The lower reaches of the mountains, where most commuters might find the commuting easier, is also showing strong price growth.

Blaxland, with a median of $750,000, has risen 72 per cent in the past five years, and Springwood, 60 per cent during the same period to $680,000.

Catriona Swan, with Belle Property Leura, where the median is $765,000, has been selling in the Blue Mountains for 20 years and says she’s noticed “dramatic” change.

“It used to be retirees coming here but now it’s also families and young professional couples all looking for a better quality of life and to get more for their money,” she says.

“Western Sydney now has so much more employment, the transport infrastructure is so much better and technology means people are much more flexible in the way they work, and might work from home a couple of days a week now.

‘‘We’re seeing people coming from semis in the inner west and apartments in the eastern suburbs and lower north shore and getting a three to four-bedroom house on a large block for the same money,’’ Swan says.

The roads are so much better, Century 21 Combined Springwood principal Gary Bardwell said, with improvements to the Great Western Highway, the prospects of a faster run into the city with the WestConnex and continuing rail upgrades.

A Transport for NSW spokesperson says there have been express rail services added between the CBD and Blue Mountains, and a new fleet of state-of-the-art trains – albeit hotly debated in the local community – are due start on the tracks next year.