If you invest in Australia, agents say you’re lucky. In Queensland, million-dollar estates have been selling these past weeks at a mighty clip, according to sources cited by The Australian. Some of them are relatively cheap, too.
There was the $25 million AUD (approx. $19 million USD) sale in Surfers Paradise as well as the sell of fallen mining giant Nathan Tinkler’s sprawling estate at Pullenvale. A beachfront mansion at Noosa’s swanky Sunshine Beach sold for record millions, while Scott Perrin’s Mermaid Beach estate toppled off the shelf for another $25 million AUD (approx. $19 million USD).
Records in the Gold Coast hover below those of 2008 when entrepreneur Tony Smith sold his partially completed beachfront mansion on Mermaid Beach for $27 million (approx. $21 million USD). But last week, Smith told The Australian that Perrin’s buy was a steal: “This sale is a great thing, it shows confidence in the beachfront market,” he said. Meanwhile, Tom Offermann, of Tom Offermann Real Estate, predicts Noosa’s getting there. The region has begun attracting year-round investors, rather than its seasonal buyers of the past. “Noosa used to have a lot of ups and downs," Offermann says. "When it wasn’t a holiday, you could fire a gun down Hastings Street. These days, it’s fairly even and hard to tell when it’s off peak. This year most of the resorts have been achieving occupancy rates in excess of 80 percent.”
Offermann cited his $9.3 million AUD (approx. $7.1 million USD) sale of Sunshine Beach House as an example of how sales are starting to gallop. “The coastal market recovery has been slower than capital cities, which is why suddenly over the past six months, we have experienced a lot of capital city buyers from Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne picking up properties in the Noosa market.”
It's true that property values are still below 15 percent of sales raked in at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008, but canny investors are picking up some relatively cheap deals, and interest is growing. A Portsea coastal property, for instance, located on more than 40,000 square feet, with a swimming pool and tennis courts, is on the market for $2.5 million AUD (approx. $2 million USD), mainly because it does not have 2016 finishes, according to Kay & Burton Portsea director Liz Jensen. Other beachfront homes are languishing for higher prices, which Offermann points out are still deals relative to general prices for comparative estates.
A mansion for five or six million dollars may well be considered expensive, but “They are all bargains because there is no way you could construct them for that money these days,” Port Douglas agent Tony McGrath told The Australian three weeks ago.
There’s no doubt that billionaires are looking for that holiday home by the side and finding them along Queensland’s swanky coast.
Next up is song writer Michael Chapman's 43.5-square-foot Tinbeerwah property called Cintamani. Offermann says that will be the next bauble on the market.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
