WHO OWNS THE COAST?
CITY’S BIGGEST LAND BARONS REVEALED
MORE than a dozen multimillion-dollar property barons own land equal to six times the size of Surfers Paradise.
For the first time, a Gold Coast Bulletin report into the Coast’s biggest landholders reveals 16 companies own 9108ha of land and development sites on the Gold Coast and northern NSW.
The holdings are equivalent to 6.82 per cent of the city’s 133,372ha land.
The top three landholders, comprising Songcheng, Leda Group, and Perron Group, owned 7965.9ha, which is the size of Ormeau and Yatala (7220ha).
Three landowners, comprising Leda Group, Perron Group, and Japan-linked Polaris, have plans for more than 17,000 lots and/or homes in northern NSW, Worongary and Coomera.
Ray White Special Projects (Queeensland) associate director Dax Roep said based on the current run rate of land sales, there would be 10 years’ worth of supply if the above projects were released to the market.
“Based on that number of 17,222, between those estates, it would appear that there is sufficient supply for more than 10 years,” he said.
“However, I’d stress that the bulk of this is within Leda’s two estates, which are both located south of the border, and will not satisfy the needs of buyers who will need to be on the northern end of the Gold Coast for employment or personal reasons.
“Taking out these two estates, the supply falls back to well under five years. This is not to say there aren’t other infill and smaller estates that will help add to the total available.”
Songcheng Performance Development is the biggest landholder with 6162ha under its control — the size of Mudgeeraba and Bonogin (6680ha).
At number two on the list is one of the city’s most successful property kings, Bob Ell.
The billionaire, who earned his stripes in the cutthroat Sydney property market, has huge land holdings in northern NSW.
Tipped to be valued at more than $1 billion, his two parcels at Cobaki and Kings Forest are earmarked for 10,000 new properties.
Plans for the Cobaki estate appear to be moving forward.
Last month the developer lodged an application to Tweed Shire Council to move stockpiles of material to the site to be crushed, screened and blended to be made into road base.
According to the development application, this material would then be used for the road network on the proposed estate.
Gold Coast businessman Clive Palmer also makes the top 16 – his 75.9ha slice of Merrimac could be considered a gamechanger for the suburb.
He bought the land in 2013 for $7.9 million and in 2015 lodged plans with Gold Coast City Council to build eight 30storey towers on the Robina Merrimac floodplain.
The plans recently went out for public consultation.
Plans for the $1 billion Pacific View Estate at Worongary, on the western side of the M1 motorway, are underway.
Western Australia’s Perron Group, founded by billionaire Stan Perron, owns the 342ha parcel off Hinkler Drive that was held by reclusive millionaire Bob Anthes, who died in 2004.
While prices for blocks have not yet been released, work is underway upgrading the area’s water and sewer system, and there are plans for a railway station and school on the site, which is expected to hold 3500 homes.
It is anticipated this community will ease the land shortage on the Gold Coast over the next 10 years.
However, the plans for the 3722-dwelling Polaris Coomera Woods project appear to have struck a roadblock.
The plans are on hold while the Federal Government investigates the risk to the koala population.
THE Gold Coast is poised to run out of land ready for home building, with some experts tipping the city has only two years’ supply if more is not released for development.
The lack of availability and increasing demand mean locals dreaming of building their perfect home are paying double the price for their land compared to 11 years ago.
According to data compiled by real estate group Oliver Hume, the median price per square metre of Gold Coast land has gone from $301 in 2007 to $630 today.
A standard 500sq m house block would have set back homebuyers $150,150 in 2007.
Today, median lot prices are sitting at $334,300.
At the same time land ready for development is drying up, with vacant land sales in the region tracking well below previous years.
While the Coast reported an increase in project land sales in the June quarter, with 149 sales, it represented just 9 per cent of all land sales in the southeast corner and lagged well behind other council regions
in the area, with Brisbane, Logan, Redlands and Moreton Bay all recording more than 300 sales for the period.
To top it off, Ipswich managed to pick up almost a quarter of all land sales in South East Queensland, with a huge 397 sales for the quarter.
Oliver Hume project director Queensland Matt Barr said in the past the Gold Coast land market had been reasonably consistent, but recent trends suggested the volatility in the sales rate was directly linked to land supply.
“At the current sales rate, the amount of stock available and in the pipeline for the Gold Coast represents about two years’ supply, compared to Logan which has approximately 30 years of supply,” Mr Barr said.
“We are already seeing the pressure of land supply impacting on the median price of project land sales, with prices increasing 5 per cent from last quarter and 13 per cent from this time last year.”
The data also showed that Gold Coast home lots were shrinking. In the past 10 years, the median size of a lot has gone from about 670sq m to a modest 450sq m.
The report noted that land sales on the Coast in the past year were substantially down from the previous year, with 2017 recording 1545 registered land sales compared to 2367 in 2016.
Griffith University business school professor of economics Fabrizio Carmingani said if the pricing trend continued it could create a city of haves and have nots.
“The immediate impact is that it will become much more difficult to afford a house on the Gold Coast,” he said.
“Over the past several years, we have seen this situation in Sydney and Melbourne where it has become almost impossible for young families to buy a house and this situation could hit the Gold Coast as well.
“On the positive side, people who own houses will see the value of their properties increase, which will give them the ability to leverage off that growth into other investments in the city.”
This month’s Ray White SEQ Vacant Land Market Report showed house and land package sales on the Coast fell 35.71 per cent to 261 sales in 2017 but the median price rose 3.48 per cent to $505,000.