This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
NEW data from Urbis shows there was 470 apartment sales along the glitter strip in the September quarter, well above the 200 registered in the three months prior.
Urbis director Paul Riga told a property conference that 77% sales were centred around the traditional apartment precincts of Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach and Main Beach – while the remainder of sales along the Gold Coast were limited due to a lack of new projects.
There were 1,770 apartments remaining for sale at the end of September – 82% of which are in Surfers Paradise, Main Beach and Broadbeach. Meanwhile, the North Shore, Coastal Fringe and Southern Beaches precincts all have limited supply with just 264 apartments remaining for sale across all three precincts.
Five new project launched during the September quarter, with four in Broadbeach and one in Main Beach.
In a significant trend, three key projects that were built as build-to-rent projects had also been switched to build-to-sell, signifying developers’ desire to capture sales in a constrained supply environment. One project flipped in the opposite direction.
“What the data tells us quite simply is that the demand for apartments has remained strong, with new developments harnessing the purchasers,” Riga said.
“This is great for the property market, underpins property prices but creates further problems with supply – meaning if new projects don’t get underway the supply will continue to diminish.”
Highland CEO David Highland, whose Sydney-based company has expanded its operations to the Gold Coast and is marketing one of the city’s key apartment projects, Sammut Group’s Coast apartments under construction on Garfield Terrace at Surfers Paradise, said the data underpinned the resilience of the market.
“What this shows us is that demand for the Gold Coast has not diminished since the boom times brought about after the COVID pandemic,” he said. Urbis data showed there were just 411 new apartments in total available to the market in early 2022.
“We are still seeing very strong interest from Sydneysiders keen to either move to the Gold Coast or at least take a stake in the Gold Coast’s future by purchasing an apartment here,” Highland said.
He said the current inflationary pressures and construction costs were drawing buyers to quality developers which had the capacity to deliver.
“Projects under construction or with a builder locked in are certainly at a distinct advantage in the eyes of buyers,” he said.
“There’s a flight to quality – people want certainty in an uncertain environment where we don’t know where prices are going to.
“This is certainly encouraging people to get into the market sooner than later and perhaps this is why there has been an uptick in sales in the third quarter.”
That is expected to continue heading into the peak selling periods for apartments over Christmas and New Year, where hundreds of thousands of people will be holidaying on the Gold Coast and inspecting property.
AW Holding Group’s Jewel Private Residences sold out the first releases of apartments in its Sapphire Collection at the fully completed $1.5 billion three-tower precinct in Surfers Paradise.
Last week, builder and developer 5Point Projects unveiled its ultra-luxe apartment project near the Palm Beach Surf Life Saving Club, where residences start from $6.35 million as it seeks to capitalise on demand in the upper end of the market.
Meanwhile, Queensland property developer MAYD Group has lodged a development application with the Gold Coast City Council for a $350 million luxury hotel and residential masterplan project on its North Kirra Property, and American development and real estate investment firm Sentinel got the green light for a 300-apartment build-to-rent project in Robina.
