Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin - Property
Searches start at $1 million
More people are looking for homes over the magic million mark, but the rise in prices hasn’t stopped sales, particularly those made sight-unseen by interstate buyers
HOUSE-HUNTERS are starting to come to grips with the fact that house prices have risen – a lot – in the past 12 months, with $1 million being the new entry point for most property searches.
According to recent data from REA, in regional areas in July, 24.3 per cent of searches were for $1 million-plus homes, up from 16.2 per cent on the same time last year, while searches for properties for less than $500,000 dropped from 32.3 per cent to 25.4 per cent over the year to July.
It makes sense, given that median house prices across the country are rising at a rate of knots. On the Gold Coast the median jumped $15,000 to $780,000. The figure is up almost $100,000 on the median price in January.
Units experienced a more modest rise of $5000 this week to reach $475,000, but is still up $50,000 on the January median.
The whopping shift has done little to deter buyers and investors, with sales on the Coast continuing to roll in, while the southern state lockdowns add a flurry of desperate buyers to the local mix.
Similar to what happened earlier in the year, the lockdowns have prompted many sight-unseen sales, which agents say are only ramping up.
Brad Coyne of Kollosche sold a Queen Anne-inspired home at 30 Grandview Terrace, Tallai, to an interstate buyer without them having inspected the property.
It sold for $1.75 million, cash unconditional after the buyers, stuck in lockdown, viewed it online and fell in love with its quirky appeal.
Tolemy Stevens of Harcourts Coastal managed to offload not one, but two apartments in Surfers Paradise for record prices this week, both to interstate buyers. The first was at 1/3478 Main Beach Parade, Surfers Paradise, in the resident-only Madison Point building, which sold for $3.3 million – the highest price paid in the building’s 34-year history. The other was a sub-penthouse in the Soul building for an undisclosed price of more than $3 million.
Mr Stevens said both properties were bought during lockdown and the demand from fed-up southern buyers was continuing to build.
In Sorrento, Maria Isaac Genc of Queensland Sothebys International sold a home at 48 Coogeen Street, which broke a street record for a dry block, to a Melbourne buyer who snapped it up within hours of it being listed for $1.13 million. The buyer bought it after seeing it on a video call.
“So many people from Melbourne, who are just fed up with the lockdown situation and want to get out, are buying properties sight unseen,” Ms Genc said.
Meanwhile, Mitchell Booth of Amir Prestige offloaded 2 Eastbank Terrace, Helensvale, that not only had the buyer never seen but which he hadn’t seen either.
Using pictures from a previous sale, Mr Booth canvassed the property offmarket to some previous clients from Melbourne who bought it without question for $1.15 million after missing out on other properties.