Gold Coast Market Fundamentals

SIERA’S decision to focus our attention on the Gold Coast over the last few years was based on an immense amount of research. This research focussed on several factors, but particularly the fundamentals and outlook for the Gold Coast, plus ensuring our market offering met the needs of discerning purchasers. Understanding these purchaser needs, predominately in terms of their preferred lifestyle drivers, was critical in determining the location of Siera’s projects on the Gold Coast, plus the design and amenity on offer within each of these projects.

Recently, our business has witnessed an increase in leads, both quality and quantity, and sales volumes. This level of activity, where the rubber hits the road so to speak, has only further reinforced our belief around market trends, with more people increasingly gravitating to apartment living in locations / projects that offer a high quality of lifestyle and amenity. As also anticipated, we have noted the core purchaser demographic leading this lifestyle trend has consisted predominately of couples aged between 40 and 70 years of age, who plan on making these apartments their permanent homes.

The Queensland Government Statistician’s Office last completed their population forecasts for the state and its regions in December 2018. It is important to contextualise that these forecasts were completed prior to the announcement of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics and the structural social changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now logical to conclude that such forecasts were likely on the conservative side as it pertains to coastal regions like the Gold Coast.

On this basis, the “medium” and “high” population forecast scenarios generated for the Gold Coast in 2018 by the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office are logically the relevant forecasts to examine in relation to understanding realistic future population trends for the Gold Coast region.

These population forecasts bode well for the Gold Coast market. Further to this, the Olympics is a major international event that attracts media coverage from around the world. The Gold Coast will receive increased exposure as a result of the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, which is likely to drive strong overseas migration to the region in the future.

It is worth considering that the strong performance of the Gold Coast property market over the past decade occurred in an environment with annual population growth in the range of between 2% and 2.5%. As per the table above, taking an average of the medium and high series population growth forecasts for the Gold Coast prepared in 2018, also produces future annual growth in the 2% to 2.5% range.

The following data and research confirm what SIERA has been experiencing recently at the project level.

With its strong demand drivers, including population growth, appealing lifestyle and major infrastructure investment set to remain, combined with a highly constrained new supply environment, the Gold Coast’s property market is in good health and well positioned to continue its future forward trajectory.

One of the key demand drivers of the Gold Coast’s strong property market performance over recent years has been population growth. Exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, residents from other states migrated to the high-quality lifestyle region, thus driving strong levels of interstate migration on the Gold Coast.

As per the table below, the Gold Coast has outperformed Queensland significantly in terms of existing population growth over the past ten-, and fiveyear, time periods.