The sun is shining on Gold Coast apartments, with the median apartment price along the southern Queensland coastline reaching $767,000 in the first quarter of this year, marking a staggering 15% increase from the previous year, according to Domain.
This cements the Gold Coast as one of the most expensive apartment markets in Australia, trailing only Sydney ($806,137) and well ahead of other capitals.
From Coomera in the north to Coolangatta in the south, the Gold Coast benefitted from enormous interstate migration during the pandemic.
“Almost overnight we could see that people had realised how desirable this lifestyle is and how the Gold Coast has grown up over the last 10 years,” said Tolemy Stevens, a sales agent specialising in absolute beachfront luxury apartments.
“You mix that with the ridiculously cheap real estate and value for money that we had compared to our southern states – it was almost the perfect storm.”
According to Domain Group data, apartments traded at a median price of $421,250 in March 2020. Even though prices have soared hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Gold Coast population – and apartment market – is still booming.
“They keep coming in droves,” Stevens said. “There are more people wanting to move here than there are people moving out.”
Stevens noted a severe undersupply of properties for sale.
“If there were another 10, 20, 30 towers completed today, they would all be sold,” he said. “Developers are two to three years from being able to get anything off the ground and a lot of developments aren’t going ahead.”
In their most recent State of the Market report, Charter Keck Cramer found the Gold Coast apartment market had robust sales and continued price growth compared to other Australian cities.
“That being said, it is not without some key risks and challenges primarily in the building and construction space,” the report read.
Rising building and material costs and interest rate hikes have seen some mainstream projects become financially unviable.
Active developments along the waterfront mainly target premium price points, limiting new dwellings at the more affordable end of the scale.
“It’s stock levels that are driving prices,” said Orren Topolansky of Ray White Robina, who tracks stock levels for the entire Gold Coast. “In 2017, there were on average 10,000 properties on the market at any given time. Now we’re hovering just above 4,000.”
In Palm Beach, Leanne Frohmuller of LJ Hooker Southern Gold Coast echoed a similar sentiment.
“There are still a lot more buyers than there are properties,” Frohmuller said.
Recently, an original two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in a circa 1970s brick building just a street from the beach sold under the hammer for $960,000, Domain reported.
Further north, Stevens last week sold an entire-floor apartment in a boutique beachfront block of only seven for $6.5 million, representing $2,066 per square metre.
“We’re still seeing an upswing in the price per square metre,” he said. “We’re not seeing it flatten out, it’s still aggressively on the rise.”
There were 12 registered cash bidders for 3/19 Broadbeach Boulevard, Broadbeach.
“I cannot recall when I had a finance clause on a high-end beachfront sale,” Stevens told Domain. “I haven’t had one in the last six to 12 months. It’s all cash.”
Access the Domain article here.
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