Gold Coast lawyer and developer Tony Hickey claims city deal-makers are doing it tough

A HIGH-profile developer and lawyer who represents high-end local and foreign investors has rejected claims by the Property Council of Australia that the Gold Coast is booming.

Lawyer Tony Hickey.

A DEVELOPER and lawyer who represents high-end local and foreign investors has attacked claims by the Property Council of Australia that the Gold Coast is booming.

More than 140 members of the city’s property and development industry gathered for the council’s Collaborating for the Gold Coast event yesterday at which Federal MP Bert van Manen joined State MP John-Paul Langbroek and councillor Cameron Caldwell on stage to discuss the prospects for the city before and after the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Queensland deputy executive director Jen Williams said while the Queensland economy was “patchy”, “the Gold Coast is booming”.

“There’s a lot happening,” she said.

“I look at the RLB Crane Index and there are 34 active cranes on the Coast, an increase of 5.1 per cent in the last quarter.”

Property Council of Australia ConferenceJen Wililams, Cr Cameron Caldwell, John-Paul Landbroek and Brett Van Manen. Photo: Steve Holland

Lawyer Tony Hickey, who is the Australian spokesman for the Iluka project and has himself proposed a $50 million development at Chevron Island, said the statement was “just plain wrong”.

“It’s not booming – there’s damn hard work out there involved in any project to make it work,” he said.

“There are lots of reasons for that but fundamentally, we see no uplift in the selling price for off-the-plan apartments and houses or things like that.

“There’s some cranes going up but there’s not the cranes going up to match the approvals.

“There’s problems with funding – major banks do not fund development.

“At a state level and a federal level, for goodness sake’s, don’t think that the property industry is riding this wave of incredible profit and therefore there’s the opportunity to tax, tax, tax.

“We’ve got the opportunity but we’ve got to realise that it’s very sensitive to make stuff work at the moment.”

Mr Langbroek disagreed.

“If you’re in the market already there’s no doubt that property agents have been bringing their lunch to work in a lunch box for years and now they’re down Tedder Avenue,” he said.

“They’re doing pretty well.

“Resales are doing OK and compared to Cairns and Townsville, Rockhampton and other parts of Queensland, the Gold Coast has certainly had an uplift over the past couple of years.”