Gold Coast to see $10b worth of new luxury apartments
COVID-19 refugees fleeing Sydney and Melbourne are fuelling a $10 billion apartment boom on the Gold Coast, with 30 cranes on the skyline.
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The Gold Coast is riding a $10 billion wave of new luxury apartment projects, with overseas and interstate buyers snapping up units sight unseen as the Glitter Strip emerges as a COVID-19 safe haven.
More than 30 cranes have sprung on the Gold Coast skyline, and prime projects are almost selling out in a weekend in a real estate frenzy driven by Sydneysiders and Melburnians fleeing Australia’s COVID capitals and heading north.
Developments from Hope Island in the north to Rainbow Bay in the south are attracting ‘phenomenal’ interest, property industry movers and shakers say.
Several billion dollar-plus projects are underway or on the drawing board, including the Star Entertainment Group’s $2 billion transformation of its Gold Coast casino site and Australian high-rise king Harry Triguboff’s $1 billion Ocean supertower in Surfers
The southern Gold Coast is proving a major hotspot, with developers accelerating projects to cater for strong demand from buyers in suburbs including Burleigh Heads, Palm Beach, Kirra and Rainbow Bay.
Major projects on the Coast’s southern end include the Kirra Beach Hotel redevelopment and the luxury twin-tower Mondrian Gold Coast – both valued at $380 million.
Brisbane developer Paul Gedoun has embarked on plans for a second up-market apartment building at Rainbow Bay after his $74 million Flow Residences project sold out off the plan to buyers including surfing world champs Joel Parkinson and Mark Richards.
One Flow apartment sold sight unseen to a Californian buyer while an Australian expat marooned by COVID-19 in Florida snapped up a $2.5 million unit in the $50 million Siarn project at Palm Beach using FaceTime.
Veteran Gold Coast real estate agent Andrew Bell said he had not seen anything like it in 40 years in the industry.
“None of us will ever forget 2020, but COVID-19 has for many reasons driven an insatiable appetite for traditional lifestyle markets like the Gold Coast,” the Ray White Surfers Paradise boss said.
“The sales achieved on the Gold Coast during COVID were incredible and we had a large number of properties sell sight unseen to interstate buyers who couldn’t travel to the Gold Coast.
“There is no doubt that the presence of COVID-19 in southern states has driven buyers to relocate north.”
The $200 million first stage of the Kirra Beach Hotel redevelopment, being undertaken by a company linked to Brisbane rich lister Brian Flannery’s wife Peggy, attracted more than 1000 expressions of interest for the 118 apartments when launched last weekend.
“The interest has been phenomenal … we certainly believe we will be oversubscribed by the middle of January based on the level of interest we are seeing,’ marketing agent Tim Keenan said.
Originally published as Gold Coast to see $10b worth of new luxury apartments
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