$20m buying spree nets six Coast properties
Baiyan Cheng, a wealthy fellow with a taste for Gold Coast luxury, has outlaid $20m on homes in a four-week buying spree. The Chinese-born investor has headed to waterfront locations to pick up six properties.
Baiyan, who calls a Sovereign Islands mansion home, has targeted houses between Runaway Bay and Varsity Lakes.
His buys have ranged from $1.35m to $6.5m – the figure paid for a property in prestige Isle of Capri street The Promenade.
Baiyan has wasted no time putting on a landlord’s hat and pushing some of the homes on to the rental market, one of them at $3200 a week.
The 60-year-old is no stranger to either the Gold Coast or to luxury.
He first popped up in 2011 when he and one Jinmin Qu paid $2.9m for an apartment on the 66th floor of oceanfront Surfers Paradise supertower Soul.
Two years later he and Jinmin came out of left field to buy the Ruffles lodge and spa at Willowvale.
It was far from a spectacular investment.
They paid $4.3m for the operating property, which came with a restaurant and eight luxury villas.
The couple went on to close Ruffles, which at one point was run under Mantra’s Peppers brand, and sold it for $4.8m in 2020 to a party reportedly linked to multi-billionaire mining queen Gina Rinehart.
Baiyan and Jinmin, three years after snaring Ruffles, headed back to the beachfront with a big buy in Multi-Millionaires’ Row, Hedges Ave at Mermaid Beach.
They paid management rights veteran Frank Picone $13.25m for a house that pubs and pokies billionaire Bruce Mathieson once called home.
They flicked the property five years later to another billionaire, Computershare founder Chris Morris, but missed out on a large piece of money pie.
They were paid $15.75m for the home, which includes six bedrooms and six bathrooms.
Chris sold it 15 months later for $21m.
Baiyan took some of the money and headed to Sovereign Islands.
He paid $8.05m for a Westminster Court home spanning nearly 1450sq m.
His latest opening of the wallet started in late November and ran through to five days before Christmas.
It started with a $2.38m deal on a canal-front house at Runaway Bay and ended with the $6.5m buy on the Isle of Capri.
The cheapest buy was a $1.35m contract on a Varsity Lakes house overlooking Lake Orr.
The Capri purchase appears to have been for redevelopment purposes.
The house was built at the start of the ’60s and sits on an 847sq m block looking across the river to the Surfers skyline.
Meanwhile, Baiyan is far from the first financially well-endowed person to spend $20m or more assembling a portfolio of waterfront properties on the Gold Coast.
Mining royalties billionaire Clive Palmer set the pace a few years ago at his home address, Sovereign Islands.
Supermarket operators Matthew and Joanna Malec took the same path on Sovereign.
They later sold down their multiproperty holding, with one of the titles going to Clive.
The last $20m-plus Sovereign indulgence came in 2019 when Kay Yee Choice bought three properties, which she has retained.
They included a triple-block estate called Sienna, described as offering an owner the chance to live in the equivalent of a six-star hotel.
SUPER PRICES
Ching Chiat Kwong, a Singaporean developer aiming to deliver super luxury at the front door at the Sovereign Islands, also looks to be going “super” with the prices.
There are indications that the head of Oxley Holdings will be asking $25m for each of three triple-level villas. He’s keeping a fourth for his own use.
The billionaire’s project, which will include six smaller villas and 30 marina berths, has been eight years in the making.
He spent $5.6m in 2016 buying the Sovereign Village Centre and the marina that flanks it.
SKY HIGH VALUE
Coast Entertainment Holdings, the new name for Dreamworld owner Ardent, has seen the value of its Surfers Paradise observation tower atop super-tower Q1 go sky high.
It’s just had Skypoint, which it bought from MFS receivers for $13.5m in 2010, revalued and the figure’s come in at $37m.
Not that Coast is intending to sell the asset which, after depreciation, sits in its books at $11.3m.
It terms Skypoint as continuing to trade strongly and will enlarge on that performance in this week’s halfyear results.
EYE FOR BUSINESS
Darryl Gregor, a fellow who’s done blinkin’ well in the eye business, could be wearing a wry smile over moves to sell his one-time property jewel, The Eye Centre in Southport.
The ophthalmologist sold the fivelevel building, which he built at the Broadwater end of Short St, for $17.5m in 2018 at a time when it was netting just over $1m a year.
The trust that bought it has it on the market 70 per cent let and with net income down to $928,000.
The 73-year-old Darryl’s property portfolio includes an office building across the road from The Eye Centre and one on Chevron Island.