Home > Our Publications > Australian Outlook> 2005 > April

Move to beach gaining speed

A VACANT home site on the Gold Coast has sold for $9.5 million - a Queensland record. The 3500sqm waterfront site in a canal development at Sovereign Islands was bought by an expatriate Australian living in London. Land prices here average $2 million.

Real estate agents PRD Nationwide founder Gordon Douglas said the buyer planned to return to Australia and build a single home on the site.

The site boasts views of the sandhills of North Stradbroke Island in one direction and the skyscrapers of Surfers Paradise in another.

It is less than 15 minutes by car from Surfers Paradise and a few minutes by boat from the popular surfing and fishing spots of South Stradbroke Island.

"It will be the best home on the Gold Coast and certainly one of the best in Australia," Mr Douglas said.

The price was a recognition of soaring land values at waterfront and beachfront sites on the Gold Coast, he said.

At the Gold Coast's most expensive beachfront addresses, Hedges and Albatross avenues at Mermaid Beach, relatively modest homes have sold for huge amounts in recent years.

The highest price paid for a house with land on the Gold Coast was $18 million for a three-level holiday home in Hedges Avenue - known as "Millionaire's Row" - last September.

Five years ago, the average price for a beachfront home on Hedges Avenue wasp little more than $1 million.