Beach sale dwarfs riverfront records
JOHN Ramsden, goahead legal eagle, can’t regret swooping on a giant Isle of Capri riverfront home as the Gold Coast was struggling out of the global financial crisis in 2013.
The property, Riverpoint, had been auctioned by a mortgagee but bidding stopped at $3.9 million.
In came Kiwi-born John and, in a gutsy move, he tabled a $4.1 million offer that was accepted.
Seven years on, and after investing in improvements, he’s sold the three-level La Scala Court mansion for $11.75 million.
It’s a grand price but it also highlights the difference between beachfront and riverfront values in the central Gold Coast.
The $11.75 million Riverpoint is a 1651sq m house on a 2623sq m site on a point with a 90m frontage to the Nerang River.
By contrast, the beachfront family home of BreakFree travel group founder Tony Smith and wife Simone at Mermaid Beach sold last week for a Queensland recordequalling $25 million.
It is more than 600sq m smaller than Riverpoint, on less land at 2112sq m, and has a 40m frontage to the beach.
The Riverpoint site had a 2018 rateable value of $3 million – the figure for the smaller Smith site was more than four times that at $12.8 million.
The highest price paid for a home fronting the Nerang River is believed to be the $15.5 million paid for a Balinese-style house on The Corso on the Isle of Capri in 2016. That home was built in the ’90s by surfwear industry pioneer Doug Spong and then wife Mara and had a suggested replacement cost of more than $20 million.
The replacement cost of the Ramsden house was touted as being north of $10 million when it was first marketed in 2009.
Eventual buyer John, the 42-year-old principal of a burgeoning Bundall law firm that carries the Ramsden name, was no pushover when he sold Riverpoint, reportedly to a couple who own a riverfront Ashmore house.
The first offer was at $9 million but John was resolute and held out until the $11.75 million figure was reached.
John was also bold when he bought Riverpoint, via company Stone Pearl, from mortgagee Suncorp.
His buy was at a time when few people had the courage to invest such sums in a riverfront market still groggy from the GFC.
The Ramsden “courage” also caused John some pain – he quickly put the then Ramsden family home on the market and took a sizeable loss.
John, who’s been practising law on the Gold Coast for at least 17 years and has expanded his practice into Brisbane and Sydney, bought Riverpoint after previously acquiring three other waterfront properties.
On the heels of the
$4.1 million buy, he put a “highly renovated” riverfront Sorrento home on the market and booked a $400,000 loss – one that pales alongside the gain on Riverpoint.
Meanwhile, the executives at Suncorp who ordered the Riverpoint sale in 2013 might well be unsettled by the price John has achieved. There was speculation that Suncorp wanted a sale before June 30 that year because the result could be better than including the property in a basket of bad loans it was selling to Goldman Sachs for $1.6 billion – or 60¢ in the dollar.
Also unsettled by the latest sale price might be Peter and Kim McQueen who, after selling a Melbourne home for $5.2 million, built Riverpoint, then lost it to the mortgagee.