Revealed: Brisbane’s school property moguls

Queensland private schools are among the biggest property moguls in Brisbane, snapping up millions worth of real estate as neighbouring homes and buildings hit the market.

Queensland private schools are among the biggest property moguls in Brisbane, snapping up millions worth of real estate as neighbouring homes and buildings hit the market.

Analysis of property records shows parent bodies of top schools have made some of the most expensive purchases in their history to secure land for expansion – including one Brisbane school paying out over $31m within a six-month time frame for two titles.

The parent body of Catholic boys school St Joseph’s Gregory Terrace – in the hot inner city suburb of Spring Hill – signed its second biggest real estate deal ever when it agreed to pay the Salvation Army $14m this month for the six-storey Pindari homeless services building. The deal came just six months after the Trustees of Edmund Rice Education Australia signed off on its biggest purchase of $17.49m for a former Queensland Health building – controversially once earmarked for a neighbouring state school.

St Margaret’s parent body owns 17 properties according to property records.

The parent body – which also owns St Joseph’s Nudgee College in Boondall, St Laurence’s College in South Brisbane and Nudgee Junior College in Indooroopilly – is one of our biggest school property moguls, holding 93 properties, 46 of which are in NSW, 11 in Western Australia and 36 in Queensland.

Its Nudgee College operation tops real estate holdings with 132.84 hectares, most of which was used for a private nine-hole school golf club which has since shut, with one hole already used for expansion. The Trustees’ focus has turned to boosting the Gregory Terrace footprint, seeking “an alternative planning approval pathway” via Ministerial Infrastructure Designation.

“The revised MID covers existing buildings located on the Main Campus, Westcourt and Waterford Place 1, and a new building – Waterford Place 2 located at 184 St Pauls Tce,” a Gregory Terrace statement said.

Stage 1 of Somerville House's master plan was refurbishment of its 1920 heritage heart. Picture: Somerville House

Private education counterparts such as the Society of the Sacred Advent Schools – which runs St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School, the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools Association – which owns Somerville House, Brisbane Boys College and Clayfield College, and the Corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane – which has Anglican Church Grammar School, are also on the march with the potential for bidding wars with cashed-up schools a very real possibility.

In South Brisbane, Somerville House – run by the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools Association – and St Laurence’s College – run by Trustees of Edmund Rice Education Australia – sit back to back on some of Qld’s most expensive real estate where every residential block costs upwards of a million dollars. The Somerville House master plan to 2040 includes construction of a new senior school by demolishing two blocks as well as building new age offsite playing fields on land purchased in Rocklea.

Churchie's master plan included a Year 3 and Prep School specialist building - adjacent to School House - for additional Year 3 classrooms and new specialist rooms for visual art and a maker space. Picture: Churchie

Records show PMSA owns 39 properties in Brisbane – 19 of which are around Clayfield College, 10 around the Toowong-based Brisbane Boys College, and eight around South Brisbane where Somerville House is. Among its Toowong purchases was the entire even side of one street – Dovercourt Road which backs onto BBC.

The Corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane has a massive 440 properties in its arsenal, stretching from Chinchilla to Palm Beach, including over 15 hectares where its most prominent school Anglican Church Grammar School (Churchie) sits in East Brisbane. The CSDB owns all except one little house block on Oaklands Parade, East Brisbane and in recent years has taken to buying properties on neighbouring streets Heath and Barker.

Brisbane Grammar School’s tennis centre was completed in 2016 on land bought across the inner city bypass from the school. Picture: Red Door Architecture

Some schools have been burnt letting go of land around them, including St Margaret’s – whose parent body paid $1m extra to buy back a home they’d previously owned. The house which sits beside the school tennis courts at 23 Butler Street, Ascot, had been bought for $530,000 in 2004, before being sold for $690,000 six years later. That had to be rectified with a $1.51m buyback of the 577sq m site last year – three times what they’d originally paid 17 years earlier.

More than $20 million worth of works have been done at Brisbane Boys' College, most recently the design and construction of a $14m middle school building. Picture: Hutchinson Builders

St Margaret’s parent body owns 17 properties according to property records, including an entire street – Petrie in Ascot – and has been quietly buying up others in the adjoining Towers street and Butler Street. Its plan for the future is to make Petrie Street the main formal set-down, with one section of the street for school leadership and reception and the other side for living/boarding zones. Some of the homes it’s purchased are currently up for rent – including the buyback one at $850 a week as well as their most expensive purchase ever of $4.1m for 2 Towers Street, Ascot – the home of Jasmine Stefanovic’s parents – which is now up for rent at $2,500 a week.

Clayfield College's parent body owns every unit in this building.

The Board of Trustees of Brisbane Grammar School owns 26 properties spread across Spring Hill and Northgate – where the school has over 30 hectares for offsite playing fields, much like fellow inner city school St Joseph’s Gregory Terrace has offsite sports grounds in Tennyson.

Its expansion plans have focused on buying up homes and buildings along with its sister school Brisbane Girls Grammar in the Spring Hill area, though the boys school has also gone all out to secure playing fields in Northgate, bought in the 1990s. The school has continued to accumulate Northgate homes around the field that hit the market, with eight now under its belt there. The school also has over 150 hectares in Moogerah for its offsite Outdoor Education Centre, purchased for just over half a million dollars.