Quentin Tod: Clive Palmer shops around the Gold Coast for more real estate

Clive Palmer, awash with Chinese cash, seems well and truly to have been bitten by the beach bug as he shops around the city’s exclusive real estate hubs.

CLIVE Palmer, awash with Chinese cash, seems well and truly to have been bitten by the beach bug.

It’s emerged that at around the same time the revitalised would-be pollie was spending $12 million on a beachfront house at Mermaid Beach, he was shopping on the Southport Spit.

The upshot — Clive and family today own five condos in the elite, and equally discreet, Pacific Mirage condominium building adjoining the Sheraton Grande Hotel.

CLIVE PALMER BUYS AGAIN ON THE GOLD COAST

Clive Palmer. PICTURE: STEWART MCLEAN

Clive’s fellow condo owners are believed to include the $13 billion Pratt family, multi-Melbourne Cup winning owner Lloyd Williams’ family, and furniture retailer Nick Scali.

It seems Clive’s timing was judicious, in that it was one of the rare times when several condos were on the market at once.

This wide choice might, in part, have resulted from some owners having bucked at spending $250,000 or more each on refurbishments so their condos could remain in the Sheraton letting pool.

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The condominiums, which are in a separate three-level building immediately on the northern side of the Sheraton Mirage. Picture: Jerad Williams

Clive’s no stranger to luxury on the Spit — two years ago he sold a Palazzo Versace penthouse to management-rights veteran Frank Picone, who’s just sold another Versace penthouse for $5 million.

The Palmer purse has been opened in a property, and political, sense since Clive returned to the billionaire ranks thanks to a big court win over a Chinese company.

Citic last year was ordered to pay him $US350 million in a dispute over iron-ore royalties and he’s also expected to get an annual Citic cheque for $250 million or more.

The Pacific Mirage condos were built in the late 80s for the late Christopher Skase’s Qintex group and were designed by the then Desmond Brooks headed DBI group.

Pacific Mirage condominiums, where Clive Palmer has bought into. Picture: Jerad Williams

If Clive happens to be wandering around a corridor he might bump into Desmond, who bought a condo last year.

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Pacific Mirage, like the Palazzo Versace condos, is on State Government perpetual lease land and ownership is via shares in a company and a sublease of the condo from that company.

Titles, and prices paid, cannot be found by property searches, affording owners a ‘discreet’ presence.

The annual cost of owning one of the condos is not cheap, something that probably is of little worry to most of the owners, given their financial calibre.

Pacific Mirage condominiums. Picture: Jerad Williams

Body corporate fees start at $26,000 a year and reportedly can top $40,000, figures that include rates, water and land rental on the leasehold site.

The best price paid for a Pacific Mirage condo is believed to be in excess of $3 million, received several years ago by Bob Jane for his ex-Skase two-level, six-bedroom beachfront pad.

That’s since been split into two apartments.

Aspiring condo owners will need to spend more than $600,000, and probably more than $700,000 to buy a two-bedder.

Meanwhile, owner Clive has a smorgasbord of options if he wants to wander to a restaurant, many of them across the street in Marina Mirage.

The options include, of course, the non-weight reducing buffets at the Sheraton and Palazzo Versace.

OTHER BUSINESS NEWS

* THE no-nonsense boss of the listed GDI group, Steve Gillard, should be smiling in the wake of the Fifty Cavill Avenue tower in Surfers Paradise being independently valued at $100 million.

The lift, up from $88 million a year earlier, comes on the back of the city’s biggest office building, bought for $48.75 million in late 2015, nudging 100 per cent occupancy.

GDI has spent more than $17 million improving the tower, which is on the market.

* FORISE, the Chinese group which has taken a $50 million-plus bath on its abandoned Spirit tower project in Surfers Paradise, has taken another step in its withdrawal.

The group has vacated offices in the Cavill Park office building, removing all furniture and leaving an empty 200 sqm.

It’s unclear whether Forise, which in November was locked out of its beachfront Spirit display suite over unpaid rent, was up to date with the rent and its lease obligations when it left.

* A RETIRED couple whose multimillion-dollar riverfront Surfers Paradise property was to be auctioned by a mortgagee three days ago (subs: Friday the 15th) is still in control of it.

Richard and Jane Corbould, who live on a large Cannes Ave site that’s ripe for redevelopment, apparently refinanced their property before the auction and the mortgagee stepped aside.

Brisbane’s Marquee group, which is building a mid-rise unit project on Chevron Island, is believed to be a frontrunner to buy the property.