Clive splashes out on a pack of condos
CLIVE Palmer, awash with Chinese cash, seems well and truly to have been bitten by the beach bug.
It’s emerged that at around the same time the revitalised would-be pollie was spending $12 million on a beachfront house at Mermaid Beach, he was shopping on the Southport Spit.
The upshot – Clive and family today own five condos in the elite, and equally discreet, Pacific Mirage condominium building adjoining the Sheraton Grande Hotel.
Clive’s fellow condo owners are believed to include the $13 billion Pratt family, multiMelbourne Cup-winning owner Lloyd Williams’ family, and furniture retailer Nick Scali.
It seems Clive’s timing was judicious, in that it was one of the rare times when several condos were on the market at once.
This wide choice might, in part, have resulted from some owners having bucked at spending $250,000 or more each on refurbishments so their condos could remain in the Sheraton letting pool.
Clive’s no stranger to luxury on the Spit – two years ago he sold a Palazzo Versace penthouse to managementrights veteran Frank Picone, who’s just sold another Versace penthouse for $5 million.
The Palmer purse has been opened in a property, and political, sense since Clive returned to the billionaire ranks thanks to a big court win over a Chinese company.
Citic last year was ordered to pay him $US350 million in a dispute over iron-ore royalties and he’s also expected to get annual Citic cheque for $250 million or more.
The Pacific Mirage condos were built in the late 80s for the late Christopher Skase’s Qintex group and were designed by the then Desmond Brooks headed DBI group.
If Clive happens to be wandering around a corridor he might bump into Desmond, who bought a condo last year.
Pacific Mirage, like the Palazzo Versace condos, is on State Government perpetual lease land and ownership is via shares in a company and a sub-lease of the condo from that company.
Titles, and prices paid, cannot be found by property searches, affording owners a ‘discreet’ presence.
The annual cost of owning one of the condos is not cheap, something that probably is of little worry to most of the owners, given their financial calibre.
Body corporate fees start at $26,000 a year and reportedly can top $40,000, figures that include rates, water and land rental on the leasehold site.
The best price paid for a Pacific Mirage condo is believed to be in excess of $3 million, received several years ago by Bob Jane for his exSkase two-level, six-bedroom beachfront pad. That’s since been split into two apartments.
Aspiring condo owners will need to spend more than $600,000, and probably more than $700,000 to buy a twobedder.
Meanwhile, owner Clive has a smorgasbord of options if he wants to wander to a restaurant, many of them across the street in Marina Mirage.
The options include, of course, the non-weight reducing buffets at the Sheraton Grande Hotel and Palazzo Versace.